Getting started

Elementarium opens at a URL and solves on your own machine. There is nothing to install and nothing to license, so getting started means learning the modeling idiom.

Work through the first three guides in order. They take about half an hour. At the end you have:

• a solved portal frame, with its bending moment diagram read and checked by hand;
• a report;
• a reasonable idea of where the numbers came from.

The rest are reference: system requirements, units, keyboard shortcuts, and Scope and limits, which is the page to read before committing a job to the tool.

In this section

• 01Keyboard shortcutsEvery key binding in the workspace, the pointer gestures in the viewports, what the number fields accept, and what the command palette understands.
• 02QuickstartBuild a portal frame, load it, solve it and read the bending moment diagram — about ten minutes from an empty tab.
• 03Scope and limitsWhat Elementarium models, solves and checks today, and what it does not — on one page, before you commit a job to it.
• 04System requirementsWhich browsers and devices run Elementarium, how threading affects solve speed, and where the practical ceiling on model size comes from.
• 05Tour of the workspaceThe ribbon, properties panel, dockable viewports, table dock, command palette and status bar — what each part of the editor is for.
• 06UnitsHow units work in Elementarium — SI inside, your unit system on screen — and the handful of conversions that cause most wrong answers in structural models.
• 07Your first analysisLoad cases, combinations and a linear static solve — then how to decide whether the answer is trustworthy.

What you need

If you have used other FE packages

Most of what you know transfers. Three habits are worth unlearning early:

• You do not submit a job. There is no queue and no solve server. Pressing solve runs the analysis on your cores, so the loop is closer to a spreadsheet recalculation than a batch submission.
• You do not manage files. Projects sync and version themselves. There is no master file to check out and no .zip to email — see Sharing a project.
• You do not license modules. Every analysis type and design module that ships is on every plan, the free one included. Free limits model size, projects and checks per project, and keeps generated combinations, full reports, export and collaboration for Pro; see Plans & limits.

Next steps

Once the quickstart makes sense, read Load cases, Automatic combinations and Sign conventions. The last one prevents most of the "why is this moment negative?" confusion.