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In a Nutshell For those who already know our other direct manipulation modeling products, Dr. Frame and Dr. Beam, Dr. Frame3D will seem very familiar -- to everyone its use will seem natural. Structural analysis is intuitive within the Dr. Frame3D environment: structures, and the applied loads and supports can be defined and modified interactively and the resulting structural behavior is apparent immediately, visually and numerically via a variety of feedback mechanisms including displacement, shear, and moment diagrams. Overview of the Dr. Frame3D Environment The main components of the Dr.Frame3D environment are shown in the screen shot below: - Tools and Controls Button Palette - contains Dr. Frame3D tools for creating and manipulating structures, and for quickly modifying viewing parameters
- Modeling Pane View - the main modeling/visualization pane: used for creation, manipulation, and inspection.
- Feedback Pane - provides useful information concerning objects, views, and tools.
- Results Pane - provides basic numerical results summaries in tabular format.
- Property Inspector - hierarchical display of object properties with support for direct editing of values.
 Note that the figure above shows the Dr. Frame3D environment for Windows. The layout in the MacOS version is very similar and the main difference is the positions of the Tool and Viewing Control Button Palettes. Dr.Frame incorporates a wide range of modeling features and capabilities. Basic Modeling Features - Direct manipulation of the basic modeling components
- Load types include: point loads, distributed loads, moments
- Support types include: pinned, fixed, pinned roller, translational and rotational springs
- Internal, sprung hinges
- Members: pinned ended (trusses) and framed ended (beams) and hybrid.
- Shell elements
- Joints
- Snap to background grid
- Load set/combination manager
- Easily accessed viewing control buttons and tools
- Editable element cross section database that includes standard cross sections
- SI and English units
- Customizable number formatting
- Automatic frame generation
- Real time element length incrementation
- Quick zooming capabilities
- HTML report output
- Multiple undo/redo of modeling actions
Analysis Capabilities - Linear static analysis
- Second-order analysis with load-dependent EI
- Plastic hinges
Feedback Mechanisms -- All updated in real time! - Displacements superposed on main view of structure
- Moment and shear diagrams -- raw values or normalized to member capacities
- Automatic labeling of diagram maxima and minima
- Labels to indicate numerical diagram values, member lengths, Joint IDs, force values
- Shear and moment diagram envelopes
- Axial force coloring indicator
- Joint and Element freebody diagrams
- Multiple vector decomposition options
- Visualization of reactions
- Scaling of force representations
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