Information Requirements for Design and Detailing of Reinforced Concrete Frames in Multiuser Environments

The design and detailing of reinforced concrete frames is a complex process that requires intensive real-time information exchange between various design tasks. The monolithic behavior of concrete, differences in the geometric representation of structural members during the analysis and design stages, and design code requirements throughout the process add new dimensions to the problem. Additionally, especially in large projects, reinforced concrete structures are designed and detailed by several engineers simultaneously. These complexities can be resolved and the overall quality of the design can be improved by identifying information requirements for managing the design information between the design and detailing tasks and thus between structural engineers. In this paper, requirements for managing information for multiuser design and detailing of reinforced concrete frames are identified and a prototype information model has been implemented based on existing literature. The means of performing design computations on a standard basis and the requirements of a multiuser design have also been integrated into the abstraction of objects in the library. Definition of high-level classes that integrate multiple structural components, parametric relationship between components, and separating shear and flexural design tasks were determined as the main requirements for such a model. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000174. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.