A Sections Cut is a horizontal or vertical segment at some location in a Wall Design Group. A horizontal Section Cut may be composed of multiple segments, while a vertical Section Cut is always composed of one segment. A Section Cut is a location or station where the design is performed in the Wall Design Group: that is, where capacity and demand are evaluated and the prescriptive design code checks are calculated. Section Cuts may be created and placed either manually by the user, or automatically using a special feature available in the program (as discussed here).

The Add Automatic option allows the user to automatically place Section Cuts at locations in a Wall Design Group that are likely to represent critical locations for shear or axial/flexural design. As shown below, the dialog offers several options for Section Cut placement which may be turned on or off.

Section Cuts may be placed at equally spaced intervals along the Wall Design Group by selecting a non-zero Max Cut Spacing for either the horizontal direction or the vertical direction, which represents a Section Cut spacing not to be exceeded. By using zero for this value, Section Cuts are placed only at the locations specified in the Location of Cuts menu, and a maximum cut spacing is not enforced.

Assigning Section Cuts by the automatic method will delete all existing automatically generated Section Cuts in the Wall Design Group(s), while all manually created Section Cuts will remain. In addition, automatically generating Section Cuts will delete the design results for the Wall Design Group(s). The Bar Patterns associated with all Panels that are not frozen will be cleared, while the Bar Patterns for frozen Wall Panels, as well as Manual Reinforcement, will remain.

Note that any Section Cut, whether manually or automatically created, may be deleted at any time. Thus, even if the engineer does not wish to use as many Section Cuts as are generated by the automatic generation option, it may still serve as an effective starting point after which unnecessary Section Cuts may be deleted. Also, please be aware that the required design execution time is roughly proportional to the number of Section Cuts considered in the model. Thus, it is in the user's interest to avoid placing Section Cuts in locations that are not likely to control the design.