Storey Force Viewer

When the tool is launched in T/HIS, the storey force curves will be generated for each graph setup existing in the Workflow file. Then you will be presented with the window below.

When the Workflow file is initially created from PRIMER, default graph setups are included, one for each force component, for each SET_PART defined. The storey force curves will be created for each of these graph setups and the first graph setup will be plotted in T/HIS and will be active in the Viewer GUI.

The Viewer GUI is generally split into four sections listed below:

Graph selection/creation panel

This panel allows you to cycle through the graphs you have generated. You can use the navigation buttons to view the graphs sequentially or you can select a graph from the drop-down list.

You will be provided with three toggles: SET_PARTs, force components, and model. The toggle for SET_PARTs will only be shown if more than one SET_PART is included in the current graph setup. All force component toggles will be shown, but only those included will be active. Finally, the model toggles will only be visible if more than one model is loaded in the current T/HIS session.

In this panel, you are provided with control buttons allowing you to create or modify graph setups.

To create a new graph, click Create. You will then be presented with a new window as shown below. Select the SET_PARTs and force components you wish to include. Once you have made your selections, the Add to Graph button will be active. Click Add to Graph to generate the list of curves that will be added to the graph, which will be shown on the list box on the right. You can then do any final selection adjustments (e.g. you can remove some of the curves listed by selecting them and clicking Remove).

Once you have finalised the curves you wish to include, click Create to generate the new graph and return to the Plot Viewer window.

Other commands available to you are as follows:

Edit – modify the currently active graph setup in your Plot Viewer. You will be shown a similar window as for Create.
Remove – delete the currently active graph setup. This will not delete the T/HIS curves associated with the graph.
Reset – delete every graph setup and recreate the defaults set in PRIMER.

Any modifications made in the graph selection panel will be automatically saved to the Workflow JSON file.

You may also wish to export the current T/HIS curves to an external file. You can do this by clicking Export to CSV.

Curve display settings

This panel allows you to define the formatting of the curves in the T/HIS graph. These settings will be applied to all graph setups stored in your Workflow file. Later when you generate the report, REPORTER will read these settings and apply the styling you have defined.

The Workflow file will hold two separate sets of settings for single model mode and multiple model mode. This is because you may want to have different settings when you are plotting results for only one model and when you are plotting results for multiple models. If you are intending to generate reports containing results from a single model and from multiple models, you need to define the settings for these two modes separately.

The first three settings are responsible for categorising your curves by SET_PART, force component and model – in the following hierarchy order:

You can categorise the SET_PARTs and force components by Colour or Line style. For instance, if you display the SET_PARTs by colour and the force components by line style, the tool will then assign one colour for all curves under a SET_PART and will assign one line style for all curves under a force component. As shown in the example below, all curves under ElementTag:All;GroupTag:All are red and all the curves representing shear force along the X direction (FX) have solid lines:

You can also categorise the models by Colour or Line style. However, there is a third option called Inherit (which is set by default). This option essentially tells the tool that the curves will not be categorised by model. Instead, they will just follow the formatting of the first two categories. This is particularly useful if you are more concerned with the aggregate curves and you are just displaying the model curves to see if there is an outlier compared to the aggregate curve. If you use this option, you can quickly identify visually which model curves are associated with an aggregate curve.

In the example below, the curves representing the shear forces (FX) of ElementTag:All;GroupTag:All are solid lines in red colour. The curve representing the mean storey forces follows the same format but with a thicker line width to differentiate it from the rest of the individual model curves under the same categories.

This current implementation of curve categorisation may not work for all scenarios, and could be improved in future. Please contact us with any feedback.

The other curve settings available to you are as follows:

Show Models – set whether the model curves are shown or hidden in the plot. This is only relevant for multiple model mode.
Summarise by – choose which aggregate curve is shown. You have the following options: None, Average, Envelope.
Model Colours – choose whether the model curves will be in Colour or Greyscale.
Summary Colours – choose whether the aggregate curves will be in Colour or Greyscale.
Model Line width – set the line width for the model curves.
Summary Line width– set the line width for the aggregate curves.

Any modifications made in this settings panel will not be automatically saved to the Workflow file. Click Save to write these settings to the Workflow file. You can also revert back to default settings by clicking Reset, which will simultaneously update these settings in the Workflow file.

Storey Force limits

This panel allows you to define vertical curve limits on the positive and negative X-axis. One scenario where this feature will be useful is when you are analysing member design utilisation – for a shear wall segment, for example. You can import the design capacity of the wall and plot it against the wall forces to illustrate whether the current wall design is acceptable.

There are two types of vertical storey curve limits that you can define:

Constant curve limit along the structure elevation
Stepped curve limit, where the desired limit per storey extent varies

You can define a constant curve limit using the panel. In order to define a stepped limit curve, you need to import an external CSV file. There are no default curve limits for the Storey Force Workflow. One way to get an example curve limit input file is to create constant curve limits in the panel and then click the Export button to write them to a file which will show you how these data are structured.

You can also import a constant curve limit using an external file and this file can contain multiple curve limits of different types. Theoretically, you can store all your curve limits in one file to quickly generate them later.

To define a constant curve limit, you need to define a label and the X-axis value in the textboxes provided. Then, click Add.

To define a stepped curve limit, create a CSV file following the data format of the exported sample file, as described above. Click Import to add the data to the plot.

The limits created will be listed below along with some control buttons to manipulate them:

Show or hide the curve limit using the ON/OFF toggle button
Change the colour of the curve limit using the provided colour selection drop-down
Delete a curve limit using the delete (X) button provided. Currently, this panel does not allow you to edit an existing curve limit. You may need to recreate a curve limit to modify the X-value(s) along the storeys.

The storey curve limits will be automatically saved to the Workflow file upon creation. Curve colour and visibility settings will also be automatically updated in the Workflow file. You may wish to store these data separately for future use. You can do so by clicking Export located on the right side of the panel header.

You can also revert back to default storey curve limits by clicking Reset.

Each Workflow will have a different set of default limits.

Storey datum settings

This panel allows you to define the formatting of the storey datums shown on the plot. This panel is hidden by default. Click the Show button to expand this panel.

The settings available to you are as follows:

Colour – choose the colour of the storey datums
Line Style – choose the line style of the storey datums
Line Width – choose the line width of the storey datums
Label Font – choose the font of the storey datum labels
Label Size – choose the font size of the storey datum labels
Label Position – define the location of the labels relative to the storey datums

Any modifications made in this settings panel will not be automatically saved to the Workflow file. Click Save to write these settings to the Workflow file. You can also revert back to the default settings by clicking Reset, which will simultaneously update these settings in the Workflow file.

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