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Free-form structures

Designing free-form structures presents unique challenges due to their complex, non-standard geometries, load distributions, and global structural behavior.
How can engineers effectively manage the intricacies of free-form structures without compromising precision?
Consteel offers the solution through multiple powerful in-built tools, such as Descript, and through the unique Pangolin plugin for seamless use with Rhino-Grasshopper.

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Specific Feature Solutions for free-form Structures in Consteel

Parametric model building in Grasshopper – Pangolin

In the dynamicly evolving landscape of structural design, Consteel’s Pangolin plugin for Grasshopper revolutionizes parametric model building, analysis and design. By seamlessly integrating Consteel’s powerful capabilities within Grasshopper’s intuitive visual programming environment, Pangolin empowers engineers to create complex structural models with unprecedented flexibility and efficiency.

Cloud-based model store, access, view, and share

In a field where real-time access and seamless teamwork are essential, traditional methods often fall short. Consteel’s cloud platform, Steelspace, ensures engineers can easily store, access, view, and share models, enabling efficient collaboration and keeping projects on track.

Automatic buckling design based on the ‘General Method’

General Method is the smartest way of stability design, described in EN 1993-1-1. It is applicable for any complex cases of out-of-plane buckling problems (flexural, torsional, and lateral-torsional buckling, and any interactions of these) with arbitrary members, loading and support conditions. Based on the global buckling and sensitivity analysis, it provides a comprehensive and automatic solution for stability design.

Immersive visualization of the true structural behavior

The key uniqueness of Consteel lies in its ability to model real structural behavior as accurately as possible, building automation and unique design procedures upon this foundation.
A crucial element of this approach is the immersive visualization, which enables a realistic representation of the deformations associated with the actual structural behavior—whether they result from applied loads or buckling shapes.
This visualization goes beyond conventional displacement components by also incorporating warping and other local deformations of structural elements, making the representation smoother and more realistic. It almost depicts the structure as if the beams and plates were analyzed using shell models.
Why is this important?
Because a visually striking and intuitive representation conveys the structural behavior far more effectively than even multiple pages of calculations or tables.

Buckling sensitivity analysis

The global model-based buckling analysis results a number of different, yet still relevant buckling shapes. For the design of individual structural members, identifying the critical buckling shapes and their associated slenderness values is essential. Buckling sensitivity analysis is an efficient tool that provides these key insights. It determines the critical structural members based on the deformation energies of the buckling mode shapes. This innovative procedure – developed by Consteel – eliminates the need for manually defining stability design parameters (buckling lengths, unrestrained lengths), while still accurately reflecting the real structural configuration.

ReferenceS by OUR users

How can Consteel IMPROVE your work?

Hungexpo Project, Arrival Hall

A real case study on advanced parametric BIM workflow.

The Hungexpo Budapest Fair is going through a massive revitalization. This project includes the new Arrival Hall Building, an attractive propeller-shaped building. A building with such geometric complexity requires advanced design methods and multi-platform collaboration. In this article, we aim to give an insight into the open BIM environment and parametric design methods used in the design process. 

TRUSTED EXPERIENCE

ConSteel Solutions Ltd. is a software developer company specialized in structural analysis and design for steel, composite structures with more than 25 years of experience in steel design.

Pioneer innovations

We continuously research and implement the most modern ways of steel design based on high-level, integrated numerical analysis. We are also seriously dealing with design issues outside of the standard methods in order to offer practical solutions for the engineers in these complex fields as well.

Unparalleled support

With Consteel, you benefit from expert local support and valuable guidance at every stage, provided by our highly regarded and experienced support team. We’re proud that our users are satisfied with the support they receive.

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Buckling analysis
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