Forte is a program I have recently been using a lot more in my day-to-day life. Forte is a member sizing program that helps size members, such as floor joists, drop beams, flush beams, roof joists, drop beams, hip/valley beams, wall headers, studs, columns, and posts.
Once you choose the member you are trying to size, there are many different subcategories that help further produce an accurate result. Those subcategories consist of member info, spans & supports, loads, holes, location analysis, product selection, solutions, and reports. I mainly use it to calculate what size headers, beams, and trusses I should use. I input the span of my member and details of the supports, next I calculate the tributary width and input any loads that member may be experiencing. I input more information pertaining to holes and location analysis if it applies. I can then pick from a variety of product options to help Forte calculate results based on my preferences. After all of the member information is inputted, Forte will calculate design results and report the percentage of which the member passes in each of the following categories, member reactions, shear, moment, live load deflections, and total load deflections.
The results also provide helpful information such as product solutions, which is a list of multiple solutions that you can then use to pick the one that works best for your project. From those results, you can choose for it to display all product solutions or only the ones that pass. If you were to choose to view all product solutions you can select a failed product and see where the product failed and either adjust the member information or pick a different product that passes.
To learn about other software that we use in the structural department, take a look at the following article Bentley RAM Structural Software used by EVstudio – EVstudio.
