What's new at ClearCalcs? (February 2024)

This month, we're introducing automatic retrieval of design parameters for wind, snow, and seismic using your project's address, the ability to add custom and linkable loads in your project defaults, the release of the ASCE 7-22 Wind Load Calculator for the Florida Building Code 2023, and many more.

Table of Contents:

• Get design wind and seismic parameters automatically using your project's address.
• Easily input custom distributed loads for dynamic load linking with design calculators.
• Override the snow load duration factor in project defaults.
• Florida Building Code 2023 is now available with the release of the Wind Load Analysis Calculator to ASCE 7-22.
• Live load patterning is now available for beam calculators (US standards only).

Let's get right into it.

Project Defaults

Get design wind and seismic parameters automatically using your project's address.

If you're designing to ASCE 7-16, you can now automatically retrieve the design parameters for wind, snow, and seismic in ClearCalcs when you input your project's address located in the United States.

For example, let's say you have a project on California Avenue, Palo Alto, California.

Here, you'll see your Project Defaults automatically locate your project's location on the wind speed contours map and retrieve the design parameters for wind, snow, and seismic, such as the Basic Wind Speed, Ground Snow Load, Site Class, Seismic Design Category (SDC), and more.

This new feature helps you save precious minutes in every project by eliminating the need to obtain these values manually using the ASCE Hazard Tool or navigating wind speed contours map on the physical copies of standards.

Easily input custom distributed loads for dynamic load linking with design calculators

Do you find yourself entering loads again and again when you work on large design projects involving multiple loads with different locations and tributary widths?

You can now set up your custom distributed loads in Project Defaults and link them to different calculations in your projects so that when you need to update the loads, you only need to update the loads once, and the reactions will calculate and update automatically across all your calculations in a project.

This way, you no longer have to manually input your loads each time you calculate or search through different calculations to retrieve old values when your loads change and risk making mistakes in the process.

Override the snow load duration factor in project defaults

If you are working on a design project in mountainous areas such as Utah or Alpine County, and the International Building Code (IBC) amendment by the local authorities requires the NDS snow load duration factor for timber elements to be 1.0 when elevations are above 5,000 ft, you can now modify the load duration factor for snow in Project Defaults.

This will allow you to override the default value and ensure that your design project is up to code without any messy workarounds.

Building Code

Florida Building Code 2023 is now available with the release of the Wind Load Analysis Calculator to ASCE 7-22

The Florida Building Code 2023 took effect on January 1, 2024. One key change is that it now refers to ASCE 7-22.

For this reason, we have just released our Wind Load Calculator to ASCE7-22 standards for both Components and Cladding and MWFRS.

This ASCE 7-22 wind load calculator is very similar to the ASCE 7-16 with a couple of minor differences in equations and coefficients that are listed below:

• The Wind Directionality Factor (Kd) is applied when calculating the Design Wind Pressure (p), instead of the Velocity Pressure (qh)
• Formula for Velocity Pressure Exposure Coefficient (Kh) is updated
• External pressure coefficients and number of zones for gable and hip roofs for Components and Cladding calculator are updated
• Load case name change for MWFRS from Load case A and B to Load Case 1 and 2

If you're an engineer in Florida or you're designing to the Florida Building Code, you can rest easy knowing you can keep using ClearCalcs to submit your project calculations to your local building department.

Beam Analysis

Live load patterning is now available for beam calculators (US standards only)

If you're designing wood, steel, or concrete beams to US standards, you now have the option to enable automatic live load patterning to your load application.

When you activate this function, ClearCalcs will automatically generate load combinations for distributed (psf) and line (plf) live loads on all continuous beams. This means that you no longer need to create separate calculations or iterate your designs in ClearCalcs for each structural element based on different live load patterns.

See it in action.

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That's all for this month. If you have any feature requests, submit them in our subscribers-only community forum, the Blueprint.