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Every article in the Elementarium knowledge base, grouped by section.

1 min read

Everything currently written, in reading order within each section. Use the search on the knowledge base home if you know roughly what you are looking for.

Getting started

  • Keyboard shortcuts — Every key binding in the workspace, the pointer gestures in the viewports, what the number fields accept, and what the command palette understands.
  • Quickstart — Build a portal frame, load it, solve it and read the bending moment diagram — about ten minutes from an empty tab.
  • Scope and limits — What Elementarium models, solves and checks today, and what it does not — on one page, before you commit a job to it.
  • System requirements — Which browsers and devices run Elementarium, how threading affects solve speed, and where the practical ceiling on model size comes from.
  • Tour of the workspace — The ribbon, properties panel, dockable viewports, table dock, command palette and status bar — what each part of the editor is for.
  • Units — How units work in Elementarium — SI inside, your unit system on screen — and the handful of conversions that cause most wrong answers in structural models.
  • Your first analysis — Load cases, combinations and a linear static solve — then how to decide whether the answer is trustworthy.

Modeling

  • Bars, beams and trusses — When a member should be a bar and when a beam, how to model trusses and bracing, and what to do about members that only work in tension.
  • Drawings & snapping — Importing a DXF as a reference underlay, choosing its units and plane, and snapping model geometry onto it accurately.
  • Elastic foundations — Grade beams, strip footings and walls on ground as line supports on springs — choosing a subgrade modulus, and where the model stops being true.
  • Plane frames in a 3D solver — When to use the 2D Frame and 2D Truss model types, why a flat structure in a 3D model is a mechanism, and how to restrain it.
  • Sections & materials — What a section and a material contribute to the stiffness matrix and the design checks, and the values worth checking twice.
  • Slabs, walls and shells — Modelling surfaces in Elementarium — outlines, openings and thickness, how a beam or a wall attaches to a slab, local axes, and what a surface result means.
  • Structure generators — Thirty-five parametric structures — trusses, frames, arches, towers, domes and shells — generated from a few dimensions, with supports and loads.
  • Supports & releases — Pins, fixities, springs and end releases — what each one does to the stiffness matrix, and when each is right.
  • Your first model — The modeling loop end to end — geometry, sections, supports and releases — on a structure small enough to check by hand.

Meshing

  • Choosing element size — Starting mesh densities for slabs, walls and rafts, and the convergence test that decides whether a mesh is fine enough.
  • Local refinement — Where to spend elements, where not to bother, and how to refine without wrecking element shape.
  • Mesh quality — Aspect ratio, skew and warping — what degrades a result, what the mesher reports, and how to tell whether the elements you are worried about matter.

Loads & combinations

  • ASCE 7 combinations — LRFD and ASD combinations to ASCE 7-22 — how the generator maps your load groups onto D, L, Lr, S, W and E, and pairing them with the AISC check.
  • Automatic combinations — Generating EN 1990 and ASCE 7 combinations, understanding the equations behind them, and reading the generated set critically.
  • Envelopes — Extracting the governing value across dozens of combinations without reading every one — and the traps in doing so.
  • Load cases — Actions, self-weight, imposed loads and load arrangements — how to build cases that stay separable.
  • Load panels — Areas that hand a floor, roof or wall pressure to the members around them as line loads, one way or two way, without meshing a slab.
  • Temperature loads — Uniform temperature change and through-depth gradients — what each does to a free and a restrained structure, and the coefficients to use.
  • Wind and snow — Wind to EN 1991-1-4 and snow to EN 1991-1-3, generated on a building envelope — site inputs, recognised roof shapes, the cases produced, and the limits.

Analysis types

  • Choosing a linear solver — Conjugate gradients with Jacobi, incomplete Cholesky or multigrid, or a direct factorisation — what each does, how to watch it, and when the choice matters.
  • Linear buckling — Critical load factors and buckling shapes — what α_cr means, why it is an upper bound, and how to use it for second-order effects.
  • Linear static analysis — The workhorse analysis — what K u = f actually assumes, what it returns, and where linearity stops being a reasonable model.
  • Modal analysis — Natural frequencies and mode shapes — mass modelling, participation factors and what the numbers are good for.
  • Second-order analysis — P-Δ and P-δ solved by iteration, geometric imperfections to EN 1993-1-1 §5.3, and why a second-order result cannot be superposed.
  • Verifying the solver — Closed-form cases you can build in ten minutes to test the solver — beams, frames, columns, plates, frequencies — with the expected error of each.

Design checks

  • National annexes — Where nationally determined parameters change the answer, how to select the right annex, and what to state in the report.
  • Section classification — How EN 1993-1-1 Table 5.2 classifies a steel section, why the class depends on the combination, and what the check does with shapes it cannot classify.
  • Serviceability checks — Deflection, drift and floor frequency checked member by member at SLS, to the national annexes, EN 1990:2023, IBC, AISC or EN 1995-1-1.
  • Steel — AISC 360 — Member strength to Chapters D to H, LRFD or ASD — compression buckling, lateral-torsional buckling and every C_b option written down.
  • Steel — EN 1993-1-1 — Member resistance to §6.2 and §6.3 — what is checked at every station, where buckling lengths come from, and the clauses left to you.

Results & reports

  • Exporting a report — Assembling a calculation package a reviewer can follow — inputs, model, results and checks, in the order a calc package should be.
  • IFC structural models — The IFC structural analysis view in and out — what IFC2X3, IFC4 and IFC4X3 files bring, what an export carries, and what IFC cannot say.
  • Import & export formats — IFC structural models and SAF workbooks in and out, DXF as a reference drawing, result tables as CSV or xlsx, and an OOFEM input deck.
  • Reading diagrams — Bending, shear and axial diagrams, contour plots and deformed shapes — the conventions behind what you are looking at.
  • Result tables — Filtering, sorting and extracting numbers — getting the value you need out of a solved model without scrolling.
  • Reviewing a calculation — For the checking engineer — how to interrogate a model you did not build, what the report guarantees, and the questions to ask first.

Collaboration & sync

  • Comments — Threads pinned to nodes, members, plates or points, @mentions, blocking comments that hold up a report, and the notifications they send.
  • Sharing a project — Inviting people to a model, what each role can do, and how to coordinate two engineers in the same structure.
  • Version history — Automatic checkpoints and named versions — how long they are kept, previewing an earlier state, and restoring it in place or as a new project.
  • Working across devices — One account on every device — how a project follows you from desk to laptop, tablet or phone, and what changes on a small screen.
  • Working offline — What keeps working with no connection, what does not, and how offline edits merge when you come back.

Theory notes

  • Element formulations — Degrees of freedom, interpolation and limits for every element type in the solver — what each one can represent and what it cannot.
  • Glossary — Finite element and structural terms as Elementarium uses them, from degrees of freedom to MITC4 and utilisation, each linked to its page.
  • Sign conventions — Axes, positive directions and how to read a diagram without guessing — the page that prevents most result confusion.
  • The direct stiffness method — How a finite element solver turns a model into K u = f and back — stiffness, transformation, assembly, constraints, solution and recovery.
  • Winkler foundations — The bedding model behind elastic foundations — what it assumes, how to choose a modulus, and precisely where the idealisation stops being true.

Troubleshooting

Account & billing

  • Invoices & VAT — Billing details, receipts, VAT handling and how to get an invoice your accounts department will accept.
  • Pausing or cancelling — How to stop paying without losing your work — what happens to projects, reports and history when a subscription ends.
  • Plans & limits — What the free plan includes, what Pro adds, and how the caps are actually measured.
  • Student accounts — A larger free tier for students and researchers — verify an academic email address, what it unlocks, and why it is re-confirmed every year.

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