Performance Issues in RAM Foundation

The RAM Foundation module has been designed to make the analysis and design processes fast and accurate. In most cases, experience has shown that the design of all spread, continuous, or pile footings in a RAM Structural System model of typical size takes only a few seconds. Listed below is the set of parameters that can affect the speed of the foundation design.

Setting	Description
Design Criteria	The only parameter that can significantly affect the speed of design in this dialog box is the list of reinforcement sections that are to be considered for shear and flexure design. The smaller the list of bars specified the faster the design will be completed.
Optimization Criteria	This dialog box defines the starting size for the footing and the increment size to use when optimizing the footing size. The larger the difference between the minimum and maximum footing dimensions the longer the design will take. The increment size also affects the speed of design by increasing the number of footing sizes that will be checked between the minimum and maximum footing dimensions.
Footing Geometry	The footing geometry is used to define the maximum or absolute size of the footing. The maximum size will affect the design speed as discussed in the Optimization Criteria section above. Defining an absolute value can significantly increase performance as it circumvents the dimensional optimization.
Load Combinations	The RAM Foundation module performs an analysis and design check for every load combination. There can be some significant gains in design speed by reducing the number of load combinations used. However, the number of load cases used within the load combinations has no affect on the performance of the program.
User Defined	The user-defined option removes all the dimensional and reinforcement optimization parameters for the given footing. This will reduce the required design time since the footing will simply be checked and not optimized.
Footing Uplift	The process of accounting for the no-tension behavior of soil is a computationally intensive process and will reflect in longer design times for foundations in which some portion of the footing plan area is not in contact with the soil.