The option: Draw stress using contour lines has been included in the new Forces dialogue box of the Analysis menu. This option appears in the “Forces” dialogue box when the “Envelopes” option in the same dialogue box has been activated, and once it has been activated, its effects can be seen when the option “Stress/Use” in the same dialogue box is selected.
By activating the “Draw stress using contour lines” option (meeting the conditions indicated in the previous paragraph) the stress or use factor of the bars is represented on-screen using a colour scale varying from green to red. This representation is carried out for all the bars of the structure if the option “All bars” is activated or only on the selected bars if the option “Draw stress using contour lines” is activated.
Bar spans that do not meet the stress requirements are displayed with a more intense red without differing them from those whose use factor is at 100%. In either case, to see which bars fail the stress requirements, the option: “Draw stress using contour lines” should be activated, which will display the stress distribution of each bar and show those in green whose the use factor does not exceed 100% and in red those that do.
This graphical representation using a colour scale provides a quicker results interface for user to view the use factors of the bars of the structure.
