RAM Elements

The Structural Engineer’s Toolkit System

For analysis and design of almost any type of structure or structural component complete with sophisticated design tools to help you with your everyday analysis and design needs. RAM Elements delivers the industry’s most productive and easy-to-use engineering analysis and design toolkit.

Unparalleled Flexibility from a Single Program

The only structural engineering software system that offers finite element analysis and design plus standalone or integrated design modules all in one low cost, easy-to-use package. RAM Elements is the only product that offers all of the features you need, such as designing beams and columns, concrete or masonry shear walls, retaining walls, tilt-up walls, continuous beams, footings, trusses — all with one familiar, easy to learn and use graphical interface.

Instead of using a stand-alone finite element program for frames, trusses, and other indeterminate structures, and one or more specialty programs or spreadsheets for your everyday design needs, use RAM Elements for all these tasks. This eliminates learning different programs for steel, concrete, masonry, wood, or cold-formed steel design and purchasing additional special purpose products for retaining walls or tilt-up walls. All the functionality you need is in one low-cost package.

Provides Comprehensive Structural Modeling

Finite element analysis and design offerings that can tackle most structural analysis problems. Utilized by thousands of engineering firms, RAM Elements provides unmatched productivity for modeling, optimizing, and designing structural elements and systems.

Dozens of modeling tools are available to make modeling even complex projects quick and easy. For increased flexibility, a user customizable desktop environment is provided so your favorite commands can be a mouse click away. Physical member modeling features allow users to design as engineers, not finite element specialists. The sophisticated design modules for structural elements such as retaining walls or isolated shear walls can be run as integrated with the finite element model or in stand-alone design mode. With our continuous enhancements RAM Elements provides confidence that our products are up to date with codes revisions.

Quickly Design a Single Structural Element

Easily design a single structural element such as a tilt-up wall, or utilize its integrated analysis and design capabilities to design these components as part of your 2-D or 3-D finite element model, which will bring all the information into the tilt-up wall design module automatically from the model.

Current design modules include: tilt-up walls, continuous beams, concrete shear walls, masonry walls with openings including lintel and column design, concrete spread footings, and concrete columns with interaction diagrams, trusses and retaining walls.

The tilt-up wall module will assist you in designing and detailing all rebar requirements, perform all the necessary design checks, and produce complete drawings in DXF format along with detailed reports designed to go directly into your structural calculations.

Customizable

Model quickly and accurately any way you choose using customizable features. RAM Elements allows you to personalize almost every part of the program to your needs or company standards and rules-of thumb. With 7 different ways to lay out nodes, 5 ways of modeling members, quick shell creation, import options, and plenty of tools to manipulate every object, you can quickly and accurately model to the detail and obtain the expected results. Customizable toolbars and personalized model views, display options, and unit's system are also available.

This allows for templates to be created easily for everyday design structures allowing you to save even more time on every project.

RAM Elements Capabilities

Analyze for time dependent effects

• Capture the time-varying properties of concrete in your analysis. Account for creep, shrinkage, and cracking at various time stages in the analysis, accurately predicting deflections with consideration for how concrete truly behaves.

Analyze gravity and lateral load

• Design and analyze simple or complex structures for a wide range of loading conditions, including those induced by gravity such as dead and live loads, including skip conditions, in combination with lateral loads including wind and seismic.

Calculate punching shear

• Calculate and design concrete slab/column connections for punching shear, including the effects of unbalanced joint moments.

Comply with seismic requirements

• Design and detail seismic force-resisting systems, generating seismic loads according to the relevant building code. Consider these forces in the design of elements and, where applicable, the design of frames and the larger structural system. Enforce the ductility requirements of the selected design code in element proportioning and detailing.

Design and analyze with finite elements

• Complete building analysis, design, and drafting for the entire structure accurately and efficiently using our state-of-the-art finite element analysis. Reduce or eliminate the time spent waiting for results using our fast solvers.

Design structural steel connections

• Design and detail structural steel connections, including beam-to-beam, beam-to-column, brace end, and complex multi-member connections. Simplify the arrangement of plates, stiffeners, bolts, and welds with a comprehensive library of standard connection types. Easily compare the economy and practicality of connection scenarios.

Design foundations to international standards

• Design a wide variety of foundations, from simple spread footings to complicated mats and specialized machinery pads. Complete your designs with confidence thanks to extensive support of international standards.

Design post-tensioned and conventional systems

• Design elevated concrete slabs with or without post-tensioning. Consider all major aspects of slab design including service, ductility, and strength limit states, code-prescribed requirements, long-term deflections, punching shear, and walking vibration.

Generate design loads and load combinations

• Apply code-prescribed wind and seismic loads to the structure using built-in load generators. Calculate relevant loading parameters automatically based on the structural geometry, mass, and selected building code provisions without the need for separate hand calculations. Combine these lateral load cases with gravity and other types of loads using load combination generators.

Model building structures

• Model, analyze, and design with intuitive applications tailored especially to the needs of building structures. Quickly obtain comprehensive and thorough designs that conform to international building code requirements.

Share structural models

• Transfer structural model geometry and design results from one application to another and synchronize changes over time. Quickly share the structural model, drawings, and information with the entire team for review.