The speed of the base plate solution is controlled by several factors. The most important of these is the mesh size. As discussed in the topic regarding the analysis procedure, the plate mesh is obtained by identifying the smallest distance between any two adjacent control points. This distance is then split up into piece to obtain a satisfactory mesh.
Note that you have some control over the mesh density by specifying a coarse mesh using the “Coarse Solution” check box on the load combinations screen. Checking this box will give less accurate results, however the solution can be many times faster than using the regular meshing.
The control points are generally made up of the Column shape end points and/or intersection points, the anchor bolt points, and the stiffener end points. The edges of the base plate itself are also used as control points.
If you have a model that is taking a very long time to solve, you may try to make the distance between the known control points not less than 1 .5" or so apart.
If you put an anchor bolt a very small distance from the edge of the column shape ( less than 1" or so), you will get a very large model because RISABase will attempt to submesh this distance and the entire model will be enlarged in the process. In this case, you might consider moving the bolt to be closer or further away from the shape.
Other factors that control the overall solution speed are the size of the design increments ( both plan dimension and thickness), the distance between the minimum and maximum design values, and the number of total load combinations.
An analysis of a known base plate size will be much faster than a design run. This is because an analysis doesn’t have to run through all the possible base plate sizes that work to find the optimum one. If you think you know the ballpark size for your base plate, it’s much faster to an analysis of your educated guess than to simply run RISABase through all possible sizes.
RISABase uses a rough design algorithm to get the base plate dimensions in the ballpark. It then employs a “fine” design algorithm to “fine tune” the rough design. Even with this arrangement, if you specify a very small design increment, or a very large distance between the minimum and maximum values, you will have to wait while RISABase crunches through all the numbers to get to the optimum design.