What is a Design Group?

A Design Group in VisualAnalysis is simply a collection of member elements that are designed using the same set of Design Parameters. There are currently seven types of design groups in VisualAnalysis:

• Aluminum
• Cold Formed Steel
• Concrete Beam
• Concrete Column
• Generic
• Steel
• Wood

Each Design Group is assigned a design specification by the user (e.g. a steel design groups can be assigned AISC or CISI design specifications). Design Groups can significantly reduce the required amount of data entry and can simplify the design of a structure by grouping similar members together. Design checks are only performed on members that are in a Design Group and members can only belong to a single Design Group (e.g. Column A cannot belong to both Steel Design Group 1 and Steel Design Group 2). To design an individual member, simply place the member in its own Design Group. Members in a group are designed collectively and the resulting parameters (shape, size, etc.) will be the same for all members in the group. VisualAnalysis checks all the members in the group and verifies that the selected parameters for the group will satisfy the strength and serviceability requirements for all members. To obtain design results, members must have parameters that are consistent with the Design Group (e.g. a wood beam cannot be designed in a concrete beam Design Group, a member with a cold-formed shape cannot be designed in a steel Design Group, etc.).

Auto-Groups

VisualAnalys will automatically generate Design Groups when the Auto-Group Member feature is enabled in the Design Checks region of the Project Manager | Modify tab. Auto Groups are generated for members with similar shapes, materials, lengths, and orientations. Turn off the Auto-Group Member feature to manually control the grouping of members. Note that manually manipulating members in a group (such as removing a member) will automatically disable the auto-grouping feature.

Manual Design Groups

Members can be manually added to or removed from a Design Group or new groups can be created using the buttons in the Design tab of the main ribbon (these features can also be accessed using the context menu in the Design View). As previously mentioned, manually manipulating members in a group (such as removing a member) will automatically disable the auto-grouping feature which can be re-enabled at any time. When grouping members manually, take into consideration the members' shapes, lengths, orientations, material properties, and how the members are braced.

Member Selection

The Selection Mode in the Project Manager | Design Filter tab controls what happens when members are clicked on in the Design View. When set to "All in Group" clicking on one member in the Design View will cause all the members in the Design Group to be selected. When set to "Individual Element" clicking on one member in the Design View will cause only that individual member to be selected, which is particularly useful when removing members from a group. Modifying the parameters of an individual member in a Design Group that is selected still changes the parameters for the rest of the unselected members, since all the members within a Design Group share a single set of parameters.