Software gets to grips with geometry and materials

New software enables structural engineers to quickly and easily determine the geometric section properties of any shape of cross-section and the equivalent material properties for composite sections.

Sigma-X Section is billed as the most user-friendly tool available to structural engineers, enabling them to quickly and easily determine the geometric section properties of any shape of cross-section and the equivalent material properties for composite sections.

It has been designed to be user- friendly while maximising the practical applications of the results generated and to achieve this at a cost which is not prohibitive.

As a result Sigma-X Section, unlike other products, is easy to use because it is a native Windows package and therefore more graphically advanced.

It is also training-free, and can be used to its fullest extent from the first mouse-click.

Structural engineers will immediately see the benefit of this program as it calculates geometric and equivalent material properties of any composite cross section - that is cross-sections of two or more shapes and two or more materials.

It has a section storage library enabling users to save their own customised cross-sections.

Cross-sections can be imported from CAD, drawn graphically or written directly to the program.

All input data can be easily edited.

Results are calculated in a fraction of a second and can be printed out in a report format or can be cut and paste to other Microsoft programs (Word, Excel).

The final section properties can then be used in any structural analysis or design program.

Sigma-X Section calculates all the properties which the structural engineer requires for an analysis: area, centroids, moments of inertia, torsion constant, equivalent material modulus and the associated geometric properties.

It will also calculate properties of sections with any number of voids or openings.

Sigma-X Section contains libraries of standard sections.

Sigma-X Section can be purchased as an indefinite or an annual licence or those who would not expect to have heavy usages of the software may avail of the option to purchase a licence valid for as little as one week or one month.

Sigma-X also produces Sigma-X Designer enabling the checking of structural stresses extracted from FE analysis or stiffness-based software programs and Sigma-X Solver for the determination and analysis of structural stresses.

Two new products are scheduled for release in late 2005 Sigma-X Pre-Tension and Sigma-X Post Tension.

All Sigma-X products are designed to function either as stand alone elements or as additional components to any finite element analysis of stiffness method based software programs.

A free evaluation copy of Sigma-X Section can be downloaded from the Sigma-X website.

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