When you begin a new project, only the Project Info, Foundation Plan, Loads and Factor and Job Setup groups will appear in the Main Navigator pane. The first three groups allow you to specify the physical model upon which the foundation design is to be performed. This data is global to all jobs which are created within a single project file.

A fourth group (Job Setup) allows you to create a new job or edit an existing job. It is only when you create a New Job (a set of constraints for the program to use in performing a foundation design) that groups related to the current design process will appear.

Now that you have created a job, a new group called “Isolated Footing Job” is created in the Main Navigator pane. This group allows you to enter design parameters like footing geometry, concrete cover, soil parameters etc. The data contained within this job is local to this isolated footing, but will make use of the common global data available to all jobs in the project file.

For the purposes of this example, you can use the default values provided for all design parameter sections. The parameter sections are explained in detail in the General Foundations .