When Steel Designer is activated within Multiframe the content and/or the behaviour of the Frame, Plot, Data and Results windows is extended and the Report window is used to display a summary of the design checks made by Steel Designer. You can also paste text and graphics into the report to help document your calculations.

The following sections document the additional content and behaviour of the windows in Multiframe when Steel Designer is activated.

When using Steel Designer, the Frame window sets up the design properties for the members in the frame. You can do this by selecting members and then using the items in the Design menu to set the various design values. You can also change the design properties of a member by double clicking on it in the Frame window. This will produce an extended Member Properties dialog that contains separate tabs for setting many of the design options. The same dialog appears if you choose Design Details from the Design menu.

The Data window includes an additional table named Design Details. You can display this table by choosing Design Details from the Data sub-menu under the Display menu.

This table displays all of the design information required for each member so that Steel Designer can carry out the design checks. You can change this data by clicking on the value you wish to change, typing in the new value, and typing Enter. You may also copy and paste data to and from the table.

Numbers in this table that are displayed in Italics (in the Cb, Cmx and Cmy columns) will be calculated by Steel Designer, you do not have to enter them. If you wish however, you can override the calculation of these values by typing in a value to be used. Any values you enter will be displayed in normal type. To revert to the automatic calculation of any value, type in a value of zero.

In addition to the tables of results displayed in Multiframe, the Result Window contains an additional table named Design Efficiency. If a member was checked for its compliance to a code then this table displays the efficiency for each design check. If Steel Designer was used to find the optimal section size then the table displays the optimal section as well as the efficiency of that section.

With Steel Designer there is an additional display function in the Plot window that lets you display a graphical representation of the efficiency of the members relative to the design code requirements.

You can display efficiency by choosing the required item from the Efficiency sub-menu under the Display menu. This displays the same information that is displayed numerically in the Efficiency table in the Result window. Steel Designer uses a colour display to show the stress or deflection level in the member relative to its allowable value. The scale on the right hand side of the window indicates the relationship between the colours and the level of efficiency. Members that are more highly loaded, stressed or deflected than the level allowed by the code are shown in red.

You can use the Symbols command from the Display menu to turn on the display of Plot values. When this option is on, the values of the efficiency will also be displayed on each member that has been checked.

This window is used to create a progressive summary of the design that has been carried out.

This report can be edited via Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear, printed, or saved to and recalled from a disk file. You can type directly into the report or edit the text in the report however modifying the properties of the fonts in equations can easily corrupt the formatting of the design equations as the Greek characters and mathematical symbols are displayed using the Symbol font.