SuperBeam 4

Joist hangers: SCOSS warning

SCOSS issued (31 July 2006) an alert relating to the use of timber joist hangers in housing construction. A number of accidents have occurred as a consequence of incorrect installation. View the full alert at: http://www.scoss.org.uk/publications.asp

K8=1.1?

From time to time we get asked why SuperBeam has applied a K8 factor of 1.1 to a built-up timber beam?

Loft conversion structural design courses

One-day courses on the structural design of domestic loft conversions are run by ABE. For details click here (scroll to end of list). ABE tell us that these courses are very popular and book up quickly.

askTRADA timber information now available to non-members

Release 4.57g, 9 Dec 2011

Users whose activation key ends in B12 or C01-D12 can download this release using the Miscellaneous, Check Website for Updates option within the program. How to use the web updates facility

Changes affecting item (beam/bearing/column) notes

You will see a new button to the top right of the notes pane in each of the item edit dialogs. When pressed, any notes text is redisplayed in the same editor window used for text pages. Press OK to return to the item edit dialog.

A change has been made to the way in which item notes are handled:

1. The default is as before: consecutive lines are joined together and wordwrapped where necessary. Leave a blank line to start the following text on a new line, or two blank lines to leave a blank line before continuing. In this mode plain text only (no font changes or effects) is supported.
2. What's new is that if the notes text you enter contains any of the valid text page tags (e.g. <n> to switch to the notes font) no wordwrapping is applied; any line breaks you enter are preserved and the text is displayed or printed using the same routine used for text pages, with the tags being handled as elsewhere.

Other changes

• The Setup program now asks whether it should create a SuperBeam desktop icon
• Project Summary omitted details of R2 steel beam bearing when this was the same as R1 - fixed. If one or other bearing has a type of 'None', the summary now says 'Rx: Not specified'. If both are 'None' the summary omits this.
• Text page editor didn't show scroll bars - fixed
• Text page editor now includes Use/Add Standard Note buttons as for item edit dialogs.
• Tiny change to calculator: if you enter a number (only) and press [Enter] or '=', the number is copied to the register as entered. Old: Enter 2.718; with 2DP it appeared on register as 2.718=2.72, 3DP, 2.718=2.718. Now it appears as 2.718 regardless of DP setting. This is useful where you want to enter a number for use as a constant in following expressions
• The User Setup dialog contains an extra field, Product Data File. Please ignore this for now.

Release 4.57f, 27 Aug 2011

• Handling of errors relating to OLE pages has been improved
• The Cascade windows on loading a project option has been removed
• The Catalogue Project Files menu option has been moved to the file menu where it more logically belongs
• If you deselect everything in the Print Dialog report list or copy allocation list, the box turns red to emphasise this
• An additional button below the parameter list in the Page Heading Dialog toggles between the display of the parameters themselves (.e.g. %D) and their current values (e.g. 27 Aug 2011)
• TR20 has been added to the default timber grades

Release 4.57e, 2 May 2011

Two minor fixes:

• For columns, any user-entered moment was correctly evaluated but shown on the summary calculation as being in kip-in (US units) rather than kNm - fixed
• File, Export as EuroBeam file now correctly handles projects with B/F loads (previously such loads were duplicated within EuroBeam if you had selected Dead+Live Load entry in SuperBeam)

Release 4.57d, 18 Jan 2011

There is no 4.57c

Users whose activation key ends in B01-D12 can download this release using the Miscellaneous, Check Website for Updates option within the program. How to use the web updates facility

Changes in this release:

• Number of standard load descriptions increased from 20 to 40 following a user request.
• The recently opened files list has been moved from the end of the File menu to a submenu accessed by File, Reopen
• Range check error on selecting Configuration, Window Colours fixed
• OLE page error handling has been enhanced
• OLE data was not exported when you selected File, Save as XML EuroBeam file. Fixed: note that EuroBeam OLE data will in future be saved as ProjectName.eub.ole. This exported data will only be picked up by the next EuroBeam release

Release 4.57b, 27 Oct 2010

• Beam edit copy bearing details now only functions if R2 bearing type is set to padstone or bearing plate. Unreinforced padstone setting is now copied for padstones.
• The Page Heading editor now has options to export and import heading templates. These options are for use when you install SuperBeam or ProSteel on a new computer and save you having to recreate the heading from scratch. You can also now replace the current template with another one if you have saved more than one.

Release 4.57a, 5 Oct 2010

• The 0.01 version number change is because this release is built with Delphi XE - this is a technical change that does not affect end users
• When we changed the code to allow any number of laminations in glulam beams, K15 values above 15 weren't added. Fixed
• Trying to move an item above the top of the item list in the Project Manager caused an AV. Fixed
• The creep deflection calculation for flitch beams is now explicitly labelled as being at mid-span
• Certain text on printouts could be misaligned. Fixed.
• Print Project edit dialog did not list columns correctly. Fixed
• Use/Add Note buttons in edit dialogs were not always appropriately enabled/disabled. Fixed
• F5 removed as zoom hot key (use F8 Expand)
• Several small visual tidy-ups

Release 4.56j, 24 May 2010

• The Project Details dialog has now been enhanced so you can choose one of the four project fields as the filename on new projects.
• Twin or triple steel beams are now correctly identified in Project Manager as such
• The last steel column edited serves as the default when a new one is added; if the last one had a checked section, the check was carried over but not the section size - fixed
• Glulam beams can now have any number of laminations, not just a number selected from the drop-down list
• Entering a number with two decimal points and no operators in a calculated field (e.g. 2.3.4) caused a lockup, now correctly handled
• Calculator erroneously stripped trailing zeroes if set to 0 decimal places; the fixed version adds a 5 decimal point button to make it obvious which version you have
• PDF margins can now be set independently of those for the current printer (separate tab on Configurations, Page Layout dialog)
• Export to EuroBeam file improved (the first release of EuroBeam is now available to SuperBeam users with current update cover)

Release 4.56i, 2/4 Feb 2010

• Auto o.w. bug: if you selected 'Auto o.w.' and the o.w. entry was not the first entry in the load table, the load data could be corrupted if you saved and reloaded the project or copied and pasted the beam - fixed Fixed
• Print Page Heading only returned a blank sheet with no heading - fixed
• If you changed a Project Text page to a User Text Page or vice versa, the menu options were not updated - fixed
• 4 Feb build The beam and post load edit dialog positions were not remembered when you closed them - fixed

Release 4.56h, 11 Jan 2010

• This fixes a bug in earlier 4.56 releases that caused a crash on printing if you had selected cm. as the dimension unit in Configuration, Page Layout.
• Bug fix: if you selected 'Load sharing' with a glulam beam a K8 factor of 1.1 was erroneously applied to the permissible bending and shear stress
• C30 has been added as an option for glulam beams at the request of a user. We would suggest checking availability before specifying this.
• In parallel with the ongoing development of our new EuroBeam program, the File, Export to EuroBeam file code has been extensively revised. Exported files from 4.56d-f will not be readable by the release version of EuroBeam. Hopefully the EuroBeam file specification is now fairly firm, but it is possible that we will need to further revise it.
• This release incorporates MadExcept error handling which should provide some insight into the printing problems experienced by a few users. If an serious error is triggered a box pops up which gives you the option of sending us a full error report. To see what this looks like you can generate a dummy error by going to Miscellaneous > User Initials and entering 'ZZZ'. Change them back afterward of course! Please do not send us reports unless requested.

There is no 4.56g