Before You Begin
Welcome to the RISAFoundation
The Tutorials are designed to be read in two ways. If you are already familiar with structural modeling in general you can skip the supporting text and read only the underlined action items to quickly move through the tutorial. If you want more thorough explanations of the modeling process you may read all or some of the supporting text as you see fit.
After you have gone through the Tutorials, use this
Overview
RISAFoundation is a foundation analysis and design program. It has been developed to make the definition, solution and modification of foundation models as fast and easy as possible. Analysis, up to and including calculation of maximum deflections and stresses, may be done on mat slabs, spread footings, and grade beams. Complete reinforcing detailing is also included in the program.
RISAFoundation has full graphical modeling capability. You can draw your model on the screen and also perform extensive graphical editing simultaneously in multiple views. To modify your model data directly, RISAFoundation employs a powerful, proprietary spreadsheet. All this combined with flexible data generation algorithms makes modeling very easy. Graphic display of the model along with applied loads, boundary conditions and much more, is always available. The model can be rapidly edited, solved, viewed, modified, re-solved, etc. The truly interactive nature and design output of RISAFoundation is its primary strength.
You may access the features in RISAFoundation by using the menu system, or the toolbars. The best way to learn RISAFoundation is to go through the Tutorials. The advantage to this is that you are exposed to the tools RISAFoundation provides and the ways that you can take advantage of them.
Please see the following