Rev 13.3 is a minor release for our newer software. While several things have changed, datasets from the previous release should still run even if some of the commands have been removed from the documentation.

In the past, bodies, parts, and elements have been "static" in the sense that once they have been defined, they always exist. New commands have been added in the MEDIT Menu which allow one to alter the "activity status" of these three quantities. In other words, bodies, parts, and elements can now be switched on of off for a given process. Also, one can now move parts from one body to another.

The concept of a node alias (or slave) has been added. This concept makes it easy to "connect" parts without adding stiffness elements.

A new STATUS has been added which gives the master/slave pairs which result from the node alias concept, and new values for &NAMES have been added to report the names of inactive bodies, parts, and elements.

A new summary, SCF_SUM has been added. This summary gives the stress concentration factors for tubular joints and the API joint strength ratio.

The definition of the compression flange bracing has been moved from the class definition to the element definition. While the -CFB option can still be used on a class, this is now only what will be used if there is no -CFB option on an element definition. -CFB for classes has been removed from the documentation and will probably be removed from the program in the future. Also there is a new way to define the buckling length of a member. If one specifies a -BLENG option followed by an element name, the program will automatically compute the buckling length. In particular, if the specified element is in tension, the kl factor out of the plane of the two elements be the kl factor in the plane. An alternative manner of defining this type of buckling length is provided in the MEDIT menu with the new command XBRACE. Here one can define length dependencies of a set of elements by either nodes of element names.

The &DATA menu has been totally altered so that it is now more traditional. It now contains three sub-menus: SHAPES, SOIL, and ENVIRONMENT. Most of the items which were previously defined via options on &DATA have been moved to the ENVIRONMENT sub-menu. The -QUICK and -SCALE options of &ENV have been removed from the documentation. The alternative to &ENV -QUICK is not the ENV command in the ENVIRONMENT sub-menu of &DATA, and -SCALE is simply not a good idea.

There have been several additions to the STRPOST menu. Computation of SCFs for tubular joints can now be accomplished via the formulae of Efthymiou as well as API and Kuang & Smedely. The CASES command has been extended to give one the ability to define different spectral cases for different process response operators, and the -DURATION option has been replaced with a new command DURATION which expedites the reading of fatigue data. Finally, the API simplified fatigue computation has been added.

In addition to these major changes, several minor changes have been included. A new string function &EN_NODES has been added which returns the name of an element based one the nodes at the ends of the element. One can now specify the maximum number of iterations and the closure tolerance for nonlinear structural solutions.