The final longitudinal main reinforcement selection in the optimization process is based on finding the bar patterns from a single pattern group that have the least reinforcement weight for the full column line (see Section 3.9.4 for a description of bar patterns and bar pattern groups).

The design process goes through each pattern (bar size) in the group starting with the smallest assigned bar size until a pattern is found that has no design warnings. This is repeated for each pattern group and each level in the column line.

Once an acceptable pattern has been found for each pattern group that was assigned to the column line, the program calculates the total reinforcement weight for the selected pattern in each assigned group. Then the group with the smallest reinforcement weight is selected as the final design pattern. If there are design warnings for any of the designed patterns the lightest group with the least number of design warnings is selected as the final design group. Therefore it is possible that the final design pattern group that was selected is not the one with the least reinforcement area but rather than one with the least design warnings.