Rapid assessment of modifications and variations in complex structural systems (3D models) - New technique in structural engineering based on influence functions.

The use of building information models in the planning phase allows for a convenient and simple way to create three-dimensional models (3D) for structural analysis from the geometric data. A negative side-effect of 3D analysis though is that the number of time-consuming calculations increases with the complexity of a structure. In the different stages of the design process various modifications must be tested to find the optimal structural system. This requires numerous recalculations and thus leads to a significant increase in computational time. In this paper an approximate method of analysis based on a novel use of influence functions is presented, which allows to predict the effects of design modifications with significantly less computational effort. In addition it is shown, that influence functions can be used very advantageously in computer-oriented structural analysis in order to optimize 3D models and to identify load paths.