Dear Bentley,

I request to expand SACS capabilities for model adjustment/modification to be more flexible to user.

As you known, offshore structure is subjected to variety of load condition since it is loaded out from the fabrication yard.

The boundary conditions might be different for each design condition i.e. loadout, transport, lift etc. Additional members or existing members might be needed to be modified i.e. changing member end release, adjust modulus parameter (E or G), revise joint fixities etc.

All of these are needed to be created a new model for each design condition which will end up with a number of SACS model. At the end, we might confuse which one is the latest sacs model. This is always a problem for user for a long time ago.

I just suggest SACS to have an options to modified the model by having an intermediate input file to help to adjust the small change in the model.

For example,

I would like to modify

• Changing the existing joint fixities from 111000 to be 111111

• Changing the existing member end release from 000000-000000 to be 000000-000111

• Add new joints with fixity 111111

• Add new members

To do these actions, user need to copy to the new model and modify it manually. If the calculation is repeated 10 times, user also needs to repeat these actions 10 times.

However, all of these can be pre-defined and they are all the same every times.

If we pre-define these actions in some intermediate input file, when we click run these actions can replace all the existing values and create a new model automatically. This will help to minimize the current work significantly.

Let's say sacs found the same member and joint number from intermediate input file and model file, sacs will use the information from intermediate input file to replace those info in model file and create a new model for user.

This intermediate input files can be seainp or other types of new input file.

FYI, at the moment, SACS does not allow to put any member or joint information in the seainp. If we can utilize seainp to help to modify the model file. This would be nice. Or you can create a new type of input file, that is also fine.

See the example in the attached picture.

Regards,

Kasiphon