ATLAS
Structural analysis without hiding the engineering.
ATLAS is a structural modelling and analysis environment being developed through Queensferry. It brings geometry, analytical idealisation, loading, analysis, results and engineering checks into one connected workflow.
Experimental — in development
Purpose
Why ATLAS exists
Structural analysis software is powerful, but the relationship between the physical structure, the analytical model and the solver can become difficult to follow. ATLAS is being developed to make those relationships clearer without simplifying the underlying engineering.
The mechanics is unchanged. What differs is how much of it is reachable from the interface: what the solver was given, which assumptions a result depends on, and the path a load took to reach the ground.
The workflow
Six stages, in the order the work happens
Model → Idealise → Load → Analyse → Review → Understand. Each stage answers a different question and can be inspected on its own.
What is the structure?
Model
Build the physical structure as physical things — beams, columns, slabs, walls, supports and foundations — rather than as an abstraction you have to hold in your head. The model you draw is the building, not the mathematics of it.
- Beams, columns and braces with real sections and orientations
- Slabs, walls and cores as surfaces rather than as line approximations
- Supports and foundations, including their stiffness
- Levels, grids and the geometry a drawing would show
The idealisation
The structure you draw is not the structure it solves
Between the two sits a set of decisions: what became a line, what became a surface, what was joined, what was released, and what was assumed by default. Drag the slider to move between them.
Drag to move between the structure as it is built and the model the solver is given.
Member centre-lines
A 500 mm column becomes a line on its centroid. The offset is real and is carried.
Shell mid-surfaces
The wall reduces to the plane through its middle, half a thickness from each face.
Supports and springs
Foundations become restraints — some fixed, some with a stiffness rather than an assumption.
Releases
A connection that cannot carry moment is drawn as a release, not left implied.
Local axes
Every member has its own axes, and a section property means nothing without them.
Mesh
The mid-surface is divided into elements. The mesh is a choice, with consequences.
Applied loading
Load applied to a physical object arrives on the analytical one. Worth checking that it did.
What it can answer
Organised by the question, not by the feature
Capabilities are grouped below by the question they answer rather than by feature name.
How is the structure behaving?
The results themselves, and enough of them to form a picture rather than read a number.
- Displaced shape
- Reactions and equilibrium
- Axial force, shear and bending
- Plate and shell response
- Load-path visualisation
Is the model suitable for analysis?
Asked before the solve, because a model that is not ready produces results that look ready.
- Connectivity checks
- Instability detection
- Release and restraint checks
- Analytical-model inspection
- Guided diagnostics
What assumptions have been made?
Including the ones nobody typed in — the defaults, the idealisations and the settings that came with the analysis.
- Member idealisation
- Diaphragm behaviour
- Support stiffness
- Mass and modal assumptions
- Solver and analysis settings
How does the response change?
One answer is a number. Several answers under different conditions are an understanding of the structure.
- Load-case comparison
- Combination envelopes
- Modal behaviour
- Response-spectrum results
- Second-order and stability investigations
Worked through
Three structures, carried the whole way
Each example runs from the physical model through to an interpretation of the result, in six steps.
Gravity and lateral load paths in the same structure, and the point at which they stop being independent.
Step 1 of 6 — Physical model
Six storeys of beams, columns and floor slabs on a regular grid, with a core taking lateral load.
Learning
Analysis that can be inspected
ATLAS keeps the model assumptions, analytical representation and numerical results accessible so that users can examine not only what the result is, but how it was produced.
This is not a course inside the software. Explanations appear next to the thing they describe and are collapsed by default.
Idealisations explained where they happen
When a physical member becomes an analytical element, the reason and the consequence are available at that point — not in a manual.
Diagrams beside properties
A property panel that asks for a value shows what the value means on the section or the member it belongs to.
Warnings that say why
A warning names the engineering condition that triggered it and what would satisfy it, rather than reporting a code.
Worked verification examples
Models with a known answer, carried through the same workflow, so the tool can be checked rather than trusted.
Equations linked to results
Where a result comes from an expression, the expression is reachable from the result.
Guided model corrections
A diagnostic that finds a problem can also show what changing it would do, before the change is made.
Comparison against hand calculation
Simple cases can be checked against a closed-form result inside the tool, which is how you find out whether you believe it.
Status
ATLAS is experimental
It is in development and open to registered engineers for structured testing. It is a modelling and analysis environment, not a design-code package, and it has not been validated for every engineering use. Do not rely on it for safety-critical decisions.
Checked so far
- Linear static frame and shell analysis against hand calculations and worked benchmarks
- Cross-validation of results between two independent solver paths on the test suite
Not checked
- General-purpose dynamic and nonlinear workflows beyond the current benchmark set
- Use outside the scope covered by the test suite