When a large model must be analyzed and the workstation does not have the resources to cope with the analysis or maybe a smaller analysis time is desired then some adjustments can be made in order to accomplish this.
1. Not saving some unnecessary results on elements or families of results including options that do not make up the current analysis can reduce the required resources. From the menu bar select Options - Application - Results and in this window select only the desired results.
Not selecting the options does not mean that the solver will not compute these results but they will not be saved to disk at every result step (when there is a large number of combinations and elements, the computer's resources will be extensively used during this step).
2. Limit the allocated memory for usage by unloading the descriptive model from memory for the calculation phase. This way a larger amount of memory is available for the calculation process and improves the computation speed. This option can be accessed from the Options - Application - Memory menu bar:
3. Reducing the mesh step size and having a smaller number of degrees of freedoms can drastically reduce the computation speed and memory usage especially for the seismic analysis.
3.1. The mesh can be reduced or eliminated on linear elements where the deformation from shear force can be neglected. This simplification must be done with caution in order to not eliminate common nodes with other elements (linear or planar) and also nodes at concentrated forces.
3.2. Reduce the number of nodes by simplifying the mesh for planar elements until a level where results are acceptable. For this, a prior analysis must be done on a simplified model in order to observe how the modifications can affect results.
3.3. When the results on horizontal planar elements are not the purpose of analysis, the vertical components of seismic actions are not taken into account and no concentrated forces are acting on the planar elements, the slabs can be declared as "membrane"; for further details refer to FAQ:
"How is the rigid diaphragm behavior of slabs simulated?"
4. Free virtual memory by activating the simplified representation of the model and declaring a lower value for the expected frame-rate (good improvements can be observed only on really large models). These parameters can be modified by accessing Display - Display settings - Advanced options from the menu bar.
5. Use the external solver for analyzing the model. The advantage of this kind of analysis is that the memory used by
Advance Design is freed and can be used for the calculation process instead.
After the declaration of the model, start only the mesh process by clicking the Analysis and check only the Mesh option. After the successful mesh, save the model and close the program.
Open the executable ADSolver.exe by performing a search in the installed path of Advance Design or if the installation is done with default options the program can be found by following the path:
- For 64-bit operating systems
C:\Program Files\Graitec\Advance Design 2010\Bin\
- For 32-bit operating systems
C:\Program Files (x86)\Graitec\ Advance Design 2010\Bin\
Open the created model and either check or uncheck the Reserve memory option (it is recommended to not execute any other programs while analyzing) and click Start.
After the finalization of the analysis, close Advance Design Solver and open Advance Design with the recently calculated model. From the analysis window select Open the current analysis model.
Now you can view all the available results as if a classic analysis was done.
