If you have not used Dr. Software's products in the past, welcome also to real-time, direct manipulation structural analysis. Dr. Software strives to make as direct and rich a link as possible between you and the structural models you need to produce efficient, well-understood designs. We hope you will see that Dr. Frame2D will allow you to work with structural models with unprecendented convenience, flexibility, and interactivity.

Click here to view the downloads and resources section of the product web pages on the HRS website to dowload a demo.

Getting Started

For a detailed introduction to Dr. Frame2D and for full documentation, see the user's guide. For those of you who have a copy and want to get started immediately, see how below. 

• Double-click the Dr. Frame2D icon to start the program, and enter your registration number as necessary.
• Hit the 'u' key to turn on displacements.
• Choose the point load tool, click and drag on a member as if pulling down on it, and watch the structure respond.
• That's it--you're in business.

The built-in interactive demo/tutorial can give you a good overview of what Dr. Frame2D can do. Type 'y' to start the demo, and note that at any step along the way, you can try things out yourself: the demo is running the program live rather than simply playing back animations.

Version 3.0 Release Notes

This release of Dr. Frame2D entails many changes from previous versions (starting with the appending of '2D' to the product name). Many of the changes revolve around the adoption of various features from Dr. Frame3D, and additional new features have been added, as well (these and other new features will appear in the next 3D release). Here is a partial list of what's new:

• The overall interface now matches that of Dr. Frame3D: dialogs have been largely replaced with inspector panels, and there is a consistently available text-based results pane.
• Cross section management has been revamped, and there are now facilities similar to Dr. Frame3D, including automatic property computation for common custom shapes. This version also adds more general section database capabilities that will appear also in the next 3D release. Different standard database files can be loaded, and custom section sets can be saved and imported across projects.
• Dr. Frame2D supports named selections: select any arbitrary group of objects (e.g., 1st-floor columns, truss diagonals, a set of supports, etc.), give that selection a name, and you can then immediately recall that selection group via an automatically created menu command.
• Shear wall modeling (or any basic 2D finite element analysis) capabilities have been enhanced. The former constant strain elements have been replaced with higher order elements. These new triangular elements have corner drilling degrees of freedom, and perform particularly well in bending. It is also possible now to view stress magnitudes numerically at selected areas within a mesh (although one should always be cautious interpreting stresses generated via a finite element analysis).
• Transformation and extrusion capabilities are now available to help in model creation.
• Loads now can be specified using tributary areas and load intensity values, as well as using direct values.
• Member and wall self weight can now be included automatically, and an overall total self-weight for the structural members is part of the model summary.
• HTML-based reporting facilities have been added.
• The text-based results window can now be used to select model elements (i.e., click on an output line and the corresponding object will be selected in the graphic display pane).
• JPEG screen shot export support is now provided.
• Automatic nodal labeling has been overhauled to support larger models.

As with any new release, we are interested in receiving feedback and bug report concerning these new features, and/or any other problems with the program that arise during use.