Enhancements

Defects Rectified

1. For isolated footings, an error that causes a failure to converge of the iterations involved in calculating the soil pressure for a biaxial bending situation where one of the moments is non-zero but negligible, has been corrected. Due to this defect, the footing may fail the design if it was designed using the "Set Dimension" method. For the "Calculate Dimension" method, it would result in a larger footing size than necessary being selected.
2. If the vertical load on the footing from the column reaction is of the uplift type (meaning, acting in the upward direction), and the footing is designed to the "Set Dimension" method, in some instances, the footing was reported as having failed the design, and is accompanied by the following message:

   DESIGN FAILED AS THE LOAD IS CAUSING UPLIFT, FOOTING SIZE
   REQUIRED EXCEEDS MAX. VALUE PERMISSIBLE

   It was caused by an error in the calculation used to determine the total vertical load on the footing. This has been corrected.

3. For pilecaps designed to the Eurocode, an error that caused the program to freeze during the design has been rectified. This error is known to be present only in version 9.6.0.62.
4. In some mat foundation models, in the Zone reports for longitudinal and transverse directions for top and bottom surfaces of the mat, the area of reinforcement provided was observed to be smaller than the area of reinforcement required. This was caused by an error in the program's algorithm that arrives at an optimum value of the reinforcement required. Also, this error is known to affect mostly the codes that are based on metric units. This error has now been rectified.
5. For pilecaps designed to the Indian code, in some instances, the reinforcement required in the pilecap was reported incorrectly in the calculation sheet. This has been corrected. It was only a reporting error, meaning, the calculations done to arrive at the thickness and reinforcement required for the pilecap were not affected by the error.
6. For mat foundations, in the Cut Slab by Line feature, an error that made it difficult to select section cuts that were created in prior sessions of the model has been corrected.
7. In mat foundations designed to the British code, in the calculation of the maximum punching stress due to the applied loads and moments, an error resulted in the computed value being much higher than the correct value for that term. This caused the program to conclude that the design had failed when the true result was a Pass. This has been corrected.
8. For mat foundations designed to the Indian code, the punching shear capacity which is reported as a stress in kN/m2 was found to be showing a variation between the various columns on the mat, when there ought to have been no difference. Meaning, all the columns are supposed to have the same capacity for a given grade of concrete. This error has been corrected.
9. For mat foundations, for columns with circular shape, the punching perimeter is calculated on the basis of an equivalent square column having the same area as the circular column. An error caused the length of the side of the square to be erroneously set to 304.8 mm (12 inches) in this calculation. This has now been corrected. This error is observed in all the codes for which this feature is available.
10. For mat foundations, in the moment envelope generation page, there is a facility titled "Select ultimate and primary load cases" for selecting the type of load cases that should be used for flexure design and punching shear checks. Two choices are available in this page: a) Use ultimate and primary load cases b) Use all load cases. In version 9.6.0.62, if option (a) is chosen, the program fails to consider the load cases having the type "Primary" while performing the punching shear check. In other words, only load cases belonging to the type "Ultimate" are considered for this check. This has now been corrected.