Structural Analysis at scale
Column rundowns from a RAM export
The workflow interprets moment diagrams across every floor, detects post-tension and applies the defined design-strip rules.
- Client context
- Structural engineering team
- Built with
- RAM Concept, Grasshopper, AutoCAD
What changed
The workflow generates the column-rundown data from the export instead of requiring a manual floor-by-floor pass. What began as a quick proof of concept has since become a tool the client uses on live projects.
The problem
Column rundowns are methodical, manual work. For every column on every floor, an engineer reads the moment off the analysis output, checks whether there is post-tension, applies the design-strip rules, and records the result. The data is in RAM and the design-strip rules are known, but there is no clean data feed for this task. On a tall building with dozens of columns per floor, reading and recording the results manually just eats hours.
What I built
I built a Grasshopper workflow around a RAM DWG export. After the engineer exports the drawing, the workflow identifies the columns, floors and moment diagrams, detects where post-tension is present, applies the design-strip rules and produces the column-rundown data for review.
It started as a quick proof of concept to see whether the diagrams could be interpreted reliably. It has since grown into a tool the client uses on live projects.