ETABS Enhancements | BUILDING ANALYSIS AND DESIGN (2024)

Serviceability assessment of steel-framed floor systems subjected to walking vibrations according to AISC Design Guide 11, Chapter 7 has been added.

Conversion of curved concrete beams to shell slabs is now available. Previously, only straight beams could be converted.

Response spectrum function for Kyrgyztan "SNiP KR 20-02:2018" has been added.

Auto wind load has been added for the Vietnamese code TCVN 2737:2023.

The AISC 360-22 design code has been added for steel frame design (including AISC 341-22 Seismic Provisions), composite beam design, composite columns design, and steel connection design.

Composite column design per CSA S16-19 design code has been added.

An enhancement has been added for Special Structural concrete shear walls per ACI 318-19. The design is now done using the amplified factored shear force, Ve = Omega_v * w_v * Vu < 3.0 * Vu) per section 18.10.3.1. This check for Special Structural Walls was not present in earlier versions.

Determination of shear demand for walls with h_w / ℓ_w ≥ 2.0 [Taken from ACI 318-19(22), Fig. R18.10.3.1]

An enhancement has been made to the ACI 318-19 concrete frame design code so that it now considers the interaction of major- and minor-direction shear forces in a column per sections 22.5.1.10 and 22.5.1.11.

An enhancement has been made to speed up joist design by using parallel processing.

Steel joist design per the SJI 2010 code has been enhanced so that the design calculations can now be exported to reports and tables.

A new material library has been added for United States materials per the ASTM A1085/1085M specifications.

New frame section libraries have been added conforming to AISC Shapes Database v16.0.

Auto wind-load calculations for AS/NZS 1170.2:2011 and 2021 loading codes have been added to the project report.

The ETABS API has been updated to support .NET 8.

Issues reported by users have been corrected.

Steel connection design is now available per the AISC 360-16 and AISC 360-10 codes. This includes Beam-Beam, Beam-Column, Column-Footing, welded, and bolted connections.

An enhancement has been made to the Eurocode 3-2005 steel frame design to update the design according to Corrigendum 2 released in 2009.

An enhancement has been made to allow the “Number of (Internal) Threads for Analysis" setting to also control number of threads that can be used by the Multi-threaded Solver. This creates less competition for resources and can speed up analysis.

An enhancement has been made to speed up direct-integration time-history load cases with additional modal damping specified for a large number of modes. For building structures, the higher-frequency modes typically respond statically to seismic and wind loading, and stiffness proportional damping is more efficient for the damping at high frequencies.

The option to disable saving of individual fiber results for Fiber P-M2-M3 frame hinges is now available. This can significantly reduce disk storage when individual fiber stress-strain results are not needed. Detailed hinge results will still be available, including the state and status of the hinge obtained from the fiber results.

The following "Analysis Results" database tables have been parallelized for increased speed during display or export: "Joint Displacements, "Joint Displacements - Absolute", “Joint Drifts", "Pier Forces", "Pier Force Status", "Spandrel Forces, and "Spandrel Force Status". In addition, individual table progress will now be displayed in the status bar while filling any of the “Analysis Results” tables for display/export. The progress bar is effective for tables that take significant time to display/export.

ETABS models exported to Perform3D now include shell uniform loads in the global coordinate system. These loads will be exported to Perform3D as lumped nodal loads on the nodes which form the shell elements.

For ETABS models exported to Perform3D, frame objects that are assigned a Pier or Spandrel label will be exported to Perform3D in separate element groups based on their Pier or Spandrel label names.

ETABS models exported to Perform3D now include Line and Quad gauge elements. Translational type line gauges in ETABS will be exported as Perform3D Axial Strain Gage (2-node) components. Rotational type line gauges in ETABS will be exported as Perform3D Rotational Gage, Beam Type (2-node) components. Shear type quad gauges in ETABS will be exported as Perform3D Shear Strain Gage (4-node) components. Rotation type quad gauges in ETABS will be exported as Perform3D Rotation Gage, Wall Type (4-node) components.

Issues reported by users have been corrected.

Parallelized design and response-recovery have been made more efficient for speed, memory usage, and disk IO for large analysis models and/or models with many long time-history functions, such as wind records. Parallelized response recovery affects certain larger output tables and time-consuming graphical displays.

Crack-width (serviceability) design of concrete members has been added according to Eurocode 2-2004 and Italian NTC 2008 codes. This feature is available for beam (M3) design and for the design or check of column reinforcement. Crack width, concrete stress, and steel stresses are calculated and compared against the limits imposed by the Eurocode 2-2004.

An enhancement was made to show PT tendon vertical profiles in slabs and beams in Detailing drawings. Previously the PT profiles were shown in the on-screen Detailing, but not in the drawing sheets produced for printing and/or export.

Issues reported by users have been corrected.

Detailing of concrete and steel structures, as well as the production and management of schematic design drawings, is now available from a new Detailing menu inside ETABS. It can now handle multiple towers as well.

Detailed reinforcement from beams, slabs, column stacks, and wall stacks can now be exported from ETABS to Autodesk^® Revit^® through the CSiXRevit^TM 2023 plugin to Revit 2023.

Tributary PT tendons are now accounted for in finite element-based design of slabs and cracked-slab deflection analysis (short- and long-term).

Auto-wind load, auto-seismic load, and response-spectrum function based on NBCC 2020 have been added.

Auto-wind load, auto-seismic load, and response-spectrum function based on ASCE 7-22 have been added.

Loads assigned tonull lines and null areas appliedin any local or global direction are now transferred to the underlying structural floors. In earlier versions only loads in the gravity direction were transferred.

AS 4100:2020 steel frame design has been added.

Eurocode 4-2004 composite column design has been added.

Cracked-section modifiers for beam and floor objects are now included in the database tables.

Nonlinear shear-material state and status output for general wall hinges is now available in the database tables, deformed shape display, and performance-check output.

Performance-check definitions can now be edited when the model is locked and selected for associated tabular output.

Support for .NET 6 has been added including a help topic in the "Key Concepts" folder.

Issues reported by users have been corrected.

Issues reported by users have been corrected.

The "Specified Rebar Layout" rebar option for wall hinges now allows the option of assigning the rebar in a Pier orientation or a Spandrel orientation.

The exponential and bilinear viscous-damper link properties have been enhanced to add a Fixed Length Damper option for the axial degree of freedom. When enabled, this allows a fixed-length damping device to be modeled together with variable-length extenders that are automatically determined from the length of the drawn link objects. For analysis, the extender is effectively a linear spring that is in series with the damper.

A built-in material library has been added for Canada with steel materials per the CSA G40.20-13/G40.21-13 standard, concrete materials per the CSA A23.3 standard, and rebar materials per the CSA G30.18:21 standard.

An enhancement has been made to speed up generation of the analysis model for models with nonlinear staged-construction load cases and many area objects using line constraints.

The concrete code “CSA A23.3-19” has been added for reinforced-concrete and post-tensioned slab design.

Reinforced-concrete and post-tensioned slab design have been updated for the NZS 3101-06 code to accommodate Amendments 1 to 3.

A new concrete slab design preference is available for the "ACI 318-19" code to optionally set the depth-dependent shear-strength reduction factor, Lambda_s, to 1.0 for mats and footings per ACI 318-19 13.2.6.2.

An enhancement was made so temperature loads on overlapping area objects will be applied additively. Previously, temperature loads assigned to the slab would not affect overlapping drop panel objects.

Integrated wall reactions are now available for graphical display and in a new database table.

A new general shear wall hinge has been added, which consists of a pair of orthogonal P-M3 or Fiber P-M3 hinges, plus a linear or nonlinear shear material. These features allow the hinge to be used for modeling spandrels as well as piers, and to handle more complex wall geometries, such as near openings or geometry transitions. General shear wall hinges can be used for nonlinear static, staged-construction, and direct-integration time-history analyses.

The age of concrete at which loading is applied can now be specified for long-term cracked-section analysis. Previously, the age at loading was assumed to be 7 days.

The handling of time history functions defined in external data files with many data points has been significantly enhanced for speed.

New section-property database files have been added for steel sections produced by Indian manufacturers TATA, Jindal Steel Ltd. and APL Apollo Ltd.

Support lines have been added for faster modeling of design strips, tendons, and slab panels. They can be drawn and edited on-screen as well as generated automatically along grid lines.

Slab panels are a new entity that can be automatically generated using grids or support lines, or they can be user-drawn. They overlay the floor system and can be used to apply live load for load-pattern analysis, and they can also be used to report mid-panel displacements and soil-pressure summaries.

Moment and shear releases can now be specified along lines within a slab object. Previously hinges could only be specified at the boundaries of slab objects.

Time-dependent behavior of concrete has been added for the AS3600-2018 code, including creep, shrinkage, and age-dependent stiffness.

Scale factors can now be applied to time-dependent material properties - creep, shrinkage, and stiffness - allowing more control over behavior for special situations.

Pattern Live load is now available as a type of loading, allowing manual assignment of live loads to different regions of the structure that will be automatically varied in load combinations to produce the maximum response.

Pattern loading, including Auto-Pattern loading, can now be assigned to slabs. Auto-Pattern loading automatically creates multiple load patterns from specified live loads on slabs, each loading a single slab panel.

Auto wind loading has been added for the AS/NZS 1170.2:2021 code.

Temperature gradient loads can now be assigned to frames and shells, representing a change in temperature across the depth that tends to cause bending.

New staged-construction operations are available to change stiffness modifiers applied to frames and shells, as well as end releases applied to frames. These operations reference named sets of modifiers and releases and they can be applied to individual objects or groups.

The speed of analysis has been improved for nonlinear modal time-history (FNA) load cases that have a large number of undamped linear link elements, such as for meshed base mats on an elastic foundation.

The analysis engine has been optimized for newer AMD CPUs.

The reporting for the PT design of slabs has been enhanced with tabular and graphical displays of the moment capacity at every station of the design strips, as well as a tabular display of the pre-compression due to PT along the strips.

Several enhancements have been made to Eurocode 2-2004 concrete frame design, including improved calculation of slenderness effects and new national-annex values of TanTheta for shear design.

Slab design for IS 456:2000 now provides an option increase longitudinal reinforcement in slabs as needed to avoid shear links in the slab.

Several enhancements have been made to steel frame design for the Eurocode 3-2005 and NTC 2008/2018 codes, including improved calculation of Mcr, and results output referred to y-z axes rather than major-minor axes.

Nonlinear frame hinges can now be automatically generated for coupling beams per ASCE 41, Table 10-19 for flexure-controlled members and Table 10-20 for shear-controlled members.

User-specified rebar material is now available for defining vertical and horizontal wall hinge reinforcement.

The hysteresis type can now be specified for certain types of auto-generated frame hinges.

Imports from Perform3D now support nonlinear components "Moment Hinge, Rotation Type", "Shear Hinge, Displacement Type", and "P-M2-M3 Hinge, Concrete Rotation Type". Additionally, the following load types can now be imported: Self Weight, Nodal Loads, and Element Loads.

On-screen measuring tools are now available to measure line lengths, the angles between two lines, and the areas and perimeters of closed polygons.

PT tendon display options now include Number of Strands, Tendon System, Vertical Profile Control Points, Vertical Profile Values, Total Length, Jacking Force, and Elongation.

A new table displays the applied, reactive, and net diaphragm forces acting at column and wall locations for selected floors.

EXR files can now be imported and exported directly between ETABS and CSI products SAP2000 and SAFE. Previously this feature required using CSiXRevit as an intermediary.

Shell uniform load sets can now be exported from ETABS for import into Revit using CSiXRevit.

API functions have been added or enhanced for accessing SP 63-13330-2021 concrete frame design, Eurocode 3-2005 steel frame design, and NTC 2008/2018 steel frame design.