Tips & Tricks

December 23, 2024

How To: Maximizing Productivity During Winter Slowdowns

The winter months bring a unique set of challenges to structural engineering: projects slow down, site conditions become less predictable, and downtime can be harder to avoid. However, this season also brings opportunities to work smarter, streamline workflows, and plan ahead for a productive year. Here’s how you can help keep projects on track even in the frostiest months. 1. Winter Prep: Tackle Delayed Analysis Cold weather is often the perfect time to tackle those time-intensive analyses that may have been put on the back burner. With RISA-3D’s robust modeling environment, winter downtime becomes the ideal chance to dive into in-depth analysis and design. RISA-3D lets you quickly model complex geometries and visualize load paths in ways that manual calculations simply can’t replicate. And for foundation design, RISAFoundation can handle everything from frost heave assessments to wind uplift forces, enabling you to get the clearest picture of how your structures will withstand winter’s impact. Take advantage of the winter slowdown to refine and validate your foundation designs, ensuring every project element is prepared to endure the season. 2. Expand Your Toolset with RISA’s Comprehensive Training Programs Winter is an ideal time for skill building. RISA offers a range of training…

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How to View Wood Design Values
July 31, 2013

How to View Wood Design Values

We have recently added a new View Design Properties dialog to allow you to now have the ability to easily view the wood design values prior to solution.

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How to use Live Load Special
July 2, 2013

How to use Live Load Special

In RISAFloor, there are several different Load Categories that define Live Load. The IBC and the ASCE7 both have provisions that allow you to reduce the tributary area of the Live Loads. These codes have equations that adjust the Live load based on the tributary area and usage (KLL*AT). In...

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Customizing Labels in RISA-Revit Link
June 23, 2013

Customizing Labels in RISA-Revit Link

You can now customize the member and nodes names Revit uses during the export to RISA. When you export your Autodesk Revit model to RISA, the member and joint names are automatically altered with “REV” listed in front. This can helpful for you to identify that the model was created in Revit,...

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Import DXF Drawing Grid in RISAFloor
January 7, 2013

Import DXF Drawing Grid in RISAFloor

This video shows how to import a DXF as a drawing grid in RISAFloor. To do this, you can save any drawing file as a DXF file format and import points, lines, polylines, arcs and circles into RISAFloor. This gives you the ability to create your own drawing grids with complex geometries and use this...

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Using Virtual Joist Girders in RISAFloor
October 10, 2012

Using Virtual Joist Girders in RISAFloor

The Steel Joist Institute (SJI) has recently put together a Virtual Joist Girder table which converts common joist sizes into equivalent wide flange beams. This topic describes how to use these Virtual Joist Girders within the RISAFloor program.

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How to Add a Deck to a RISAFloor Model
July 12, 2012

How to Add a Deck to a RISAFloor Model

RISAFloor has some default decks provided for you when you open the program in the Deck Definitions spreadsheet. You can use one of these decks or you can create your own by going to the bottom of the spreadsheet and press ENTER.

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