Member Attributes

Often additional attributes need to be applied to various individual members in your frame.

These include attributes such as Tension Only or Compression Only where, for example, a cross bracing member may be considered as tension only. Therefore, it is ignored in the model when a compressive force appears in it during analysis.

To access these member attributes, select the option from the Properties menu. The various attributes appear at the bottom left of the screen. These can be expanded by clicking on the More Attributes button.

Note that most of these attributes can also be edited in the Member Property Editor.

You can set a member as a De-activated or Dummy member. These members are usually used to define the edges of an area loaded panel, wind loaded panel or an FE surface where no actual member exists but something is required to show an edge for the panel. These members are ignored in the frame analysis.

There are also options to Ignore the Self Weight of a member, apply Partial Fixity to the member ends (see Restraints section) and change the member Name.

You can choose to have Auto Connect on so that a member that intersects with another member will automatically connect at the intersection point, eg, cross bracing. Note that this applies to individual members. For the whole frame this and similar attributes can be globally controlled in the Modify Geometry menu under the Check and Modify Analytical Model > Model Auto Connect and Clean Up control box. Equally, the No Intersection option can be applied to individual members so that they cross each other without being connected and hence share no load.

The No Axial option is useful in some circumstances so that no axial load is transferred through the member, for example, a sliding joint in the direction of the member or a slotted top joint in a portal frame gable column where the rafter is not to be supported by the gable posts.

The Stiff Deck is largely not used any more. Instead you should use the more accurate semi-rigid stiff deck – see below for further details. It is still included here as it can apply to older files before the semi-rigid method was introduced.

A Rigid Link attribute is assigned to members which create a rigid link between a floor slab and a shear wall. This is usually set up automatically when the shear walls are created from the Create menu. It is a modelling technique used to help transfer the lateral loads from the floor into the shear wall or core.

The Auto Merge option provides member level control for automatically removing redundant nodes in a member.

The Auto-Connect attribute. This has an ON/OFF setting. When the setting is ON, the member will always be intersected with other internal intersecting member regardless of the global rules above. With this setting is OFF, the member will not be automatically connected to other internally intersecting members.

The No-Intersection attribute. With this attribute present the physical member will always be one analytical member. Even if there are End Intersect conditions, these will not be connected to the member.