ProSteel 2011 changes

Release 5.41g: 10 Nov 2011

Changes affecting item (beam/bearing/column) notes

You will see a new button to the top right of the notes pane in each of the item edit dialogs. When pressed, any notes text is redisplayed in the same editor window used for text pages. Press OK to return to the item edit dialog.

A change has been made to the way in which item notes are handled:

1. The default is as before: consecutive lines are joined together and wordwrapped where necessary. Leave a blank line to start the following text on a new line, or two blank lines to leave a blank line before continuing. In this mode plain text only (no font changes or effects) is supported.
2. What's new is that if the notes text you enter contains any of the valid text page tags (e.g. <n> to switch to the notes font) no wordwrapping is applied; any line breaks you enter are preserved and the text is displayed or printed using the same routine used for text pages, with the tags being handled as elsewhere.

Further connection checking and design changes

In release 5.42f we tightened up the calculation of bolt bearing resistances, calculating a reduced resistance where the end or edge distance was less than 2d. We are now calculating the vertical and horizontal loads arising from the load being carried by the connection, and from these the direction of the resultant load. The bolt end distance is now taken as the distance from the bolt centre measuring along this line until the edge of the beam web or cleat/plate is reached. This change has the effect of increasing the bolt bearing capacity where the end or edge distance is less than 2d. Where the end and edge distances are >=2d nothing changes.

Other changes

• The Setup program now asks whether it should create a ProSteel 5 desktop icon
• The flange plate beam splice now shows the splice moment and shear capacity
• Flange plate beam splice web plate bolt capacity was slightly overestimated for splices with four or more pairs of web bolts
• The correct connection cleat/plate thicknesses and lengths were not written into EuroBeam export files
• Placement of connection drawings within bounding frame has been improved.
• Angle cleat connection capacity with one row of bolts was erroneously shown as -3kN
• Text page editor didn't show scroll bars - fixed
• Text page editor now includes Use/Add Standard Note buttons as for item edit dialogs.
• Tiny change to calculator: if you enter a number and press [Enter] or '=', the number is copied to the register as entered.

Release 5.41f: 23 Aug 2011

• Handling of errors relating to OLE pages has been improved
• You can now add notes to beam splice calculations
• The Cascade windows on loading a project option has been removed
• The Catalogue Project Files menu option has been moved to the file menu
• An additional button below the parameter list in the Page Heading Dialog toggles between the display of the parameters themselves (.e.g. %D) and their current values (e.g. 18 Aug 2011)

Connection checking and design changes

• If you are checking an independent connection and press one of the change section buttons on the first page of the edit dialog, the steel selection dialog now defaults to the last selected section.
• The connection edit dialog is now resizeable. A new field on the first page lets you add notes as elsewhere. The second page now includes a small drawing of the connection
• You can now enter a load of '0' on an independent connection. If you do this, the capacity of the connection will be calculated.
• Several bolt group capacity checks have been moved from their 'Green Book' positions to make the checks more logical.
• Connection printouts now finish with a summary of the different checks and capacity for each one where applicable.

Release 5.41e: 2May 2011

• For columns, any user-entered moment was correctly evaluated but shown on the summary calculation as being in kip-in (US units) rather than kNm - fixed
• File, Export as EuroBeam file now correctly handles projects with B/F loads (previously such loads were duplicated within EuroBeam if you had selected Dead+Live Load entry in SuperBeam)

Release 5.41d: 18 Jan 2011

• Wrong bolt size could be shown on flange plate splice calculation printout (calculation was correct)
• Range check error on selecting Configuration, Window Colours fixed
• OLE page error handling has been enhanced
• OLE data was not exported when you selected File, Save as XML EuroBeam file. Fixed: note that EuroBeam OLE data will in future be saved as ProjectName.eub.ole. This exported data will only be picked up by the next EuroBeam release