Import & export formats

Besides its own project file, Elementarium reads IFC, SAF and DXF, and writes IFC, SAF, an OOFEM input deck, result tables, PNG images and the PDF report. None needs a plugin.

The project file

File › Save as (Ctrl S) writes the project to an .elproj file and File › Open (Ctrl O) reads one back. It is not a translation: the file is the project's own document, so everything the project holds comes back exactly — geometry, loads, load groups and combinations, analysis setups, design checks, drawings, report configuration and project settings, including anything a later version of the app has added that this one has never heard of. IFC and SAF go through an intermediate model, and another program receives only what that format can express; this file does not.

Opening a file replaces the content of the current project. The project itself, its URL and the people it is shared with stay, which is the same contract the IFC and SAF imports have. To keep both, create a new project first and open the file into that.

The file works on every plan, so it is the copy of a milestone that lives outside the project and its version history, the way to hand a model to someone outside the project, and the way to keep a model after a subscription ends.

IFC — the structural analysis view

IFC is the format BIM and detailing tools write. Elementarium reads the structural analysis view of an IFC2X3, IFC4 or IFC4X3 file — nodes, members, plates, supports, releases, load cases, combinations and loads — in whatever units the file declares, and writes the project back as an IFC4 structural analysis view. Between Elementarium projects, everything the app models survives the round trip: what standard IFC cannot express travels in an Elementarium property set. Other programs ignore that set and receive the standard part, including the loads it produces. Imported entities keep their GlobalIds through edits, so an export goes back with the identities it came in with.

A file that holds only the architectural model (IfcBeam, IfcColumn and IfcSlab solids) is not imported. See IFC structural models for the mapping, the tolerances and what IFC cannot say.

SAF — models in and out

The Structural Analysis Format is an open, spreadsheet-based interchange format: an .xlsx workbook with one worksheet per object type. Elementarium reads and writes SAF 2.2, which is what SCIA Engineer, RFEM and others speak.

What travels:

Axes are carried, not converted. SAF states which way is up in its global coordinate system field, and so does an Elementarium project. The geometry is imported untouched and the file's vertical becomes the project setting — no rotation, no sign flips, and a round trip gives back the coordinates that went in. The one case that cannot be taken is a file with X vertical, which leaves nothing for the viewer's plane to be built on; the import stops rather than guessing.

DXF — a drawing to work against

A DXF is imported as a reference underlay, not as a model. Nothing in it becomes a member, a node or a load; it gives you accurate geometry to snap against while you draw.

• Units, plane and placement are yours to set.
• Blocks stay as inserts rather than being exploded.
• Object snap finds endpoints, intersections, centres, midpoints, quadrants and insertion points from the entity definitions, not from the rendered curves.

See Drawings and snapping.

OOFEM input deck

An analysis exports as an OOFEM input file: nodes, elements, materials, cross-sections, boundary conditions and the solver settings the analysis was configured with. The settings matter: an analysis in Elementarium is its solver settings, so exporting one without them would hand OOFEM a different problem.

Load cases become solution steps. OOFEM has no load case; it has a step and a load-time function on every load record, which is enough to carry the whole set in one file:

Two options:

Result tables — CSV, xlsx and the clipboard

Any result table exports with its filters applied, in three forms:

CSV and the clipboard carry formatted text at the table's own decimal places; the spreadsheet carries the numbers themselves.

The report

The calculation package goes out as PDF. See Exporting a report.

Earlier versions

Exports write the current model. To export an earlier state, open it from version history and Restore as new project, then export that. The original project is not touched.