Members are proportioned to resist the design loads without exceedance of the allowable stresses or capacities and the most economical section is selected on the basis of the least weight criteria. The code checking part of the program also checks the slenderness requirements and the stability criteria. Users are recommended to adopt the following steps in performing the steel design:

• Specify the geometry and loads and perform the analysis.

• Specify the design parameter values if different from the default values.

• Specify whether to perform code checking or member selection.

The method for calculating allowable bending stress was updated for the AIJ 2005 from the AIJ 2002 code. All other allowable limit states, analysis and design methods, etc., remain unchanged. Refer to the AIJ 2002 documentation for additional details.