COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN AND DRAFTING OF R C BUILDINGS

Abstract

It is a well known fact now, that a major portion of the total engineering time goes in the design and drafting (preparation and coordination of working drawings and specifi-cations) of- a structure. • With the escalation in material costs and rapidly increasing construction costs, the design and draft-ing part must be executed in the shortest possible time. Most of the software packages developed in structural engineering are basically analysis oriented and contain very limited design option, moreover, little or no use at all is made of plotters which make the dr of ting p art very economical. The present dissertation work consists of the development of a software package for the design and drafting of H.C. build-ings. The design of the building elements (beams and columns) conforms to the ISal+56 requirements. The computer programs are written in FORTRAN and, developed and implemented on the LEC-2050 system. The drafting was done using the CALCOMP subroutines and plotting carried out on the calcomp drum-type plotter. A brief description of the programs is given below," The beam.design program is quite general. It can design any type of beam of a multistorey, multibay R.C. frame. For continuous beams, rectangular sections are designed at supports and T or L section at midspan. The program does not have any option for analysis of the structure and the design moments and shears have to be fed as input data. The computer output contains . (iv) the designed sections for each span, longitudinal reinforcement detail tables and shear stirrups detail tables. The beam drafting program derives its input from the beam design program and has several options - like drafting of recta-ngular, T or L sections, standard curtailment detail, moreover it can plot over any number of spans and at any scale. The column design program is written for uniaxial bending of rectangular columns, both long and short. The column can be designed for many sets of loadings with provision for bars equally distributed on all four faces or on two opposite faces only. The computer output contains designed section and reinforcement details. The input to the column drafting program is taken from the output of the column design prograon. It can produce the structural draw-ings of column for any number of storeys continuously. The scale of the drawing can be modified as required. The slab drafting program plots completely dimensioned drawings of a continuous, slab for any number of spans. The relevant input like .span, slab thickness, reinforcement details etc, have to be specified by the designer. The usage of this package will not only increase the productivity of the designer and quality of work, but will also save him from repetitive and laborious work.