Reinforcing bar standards can be customized in RAM Structural System, with the design in RAM Concrete reflecting the bar labels and sizes specified by the user. Of course, RAM comes out of the box with the reinforcing standards for each national standard supported by the software. But these default bar sizes can be easily revised and duplicated. Here's how:
Under the Criteria menu in RAM Manager (the main window in RAM Structural System), there is an item called Concrete Tables, which would more accurately be called Reinforcing Tables.
This opens a list of the bar reinforcing tables for each geographic standard. Note the path displayed above the list. This is the folder where the tables exist and are read from.
Navigating to this folder, we see that each of the tables listed in the Concrete Tables dialog is a *.ren file (simply a text file) within the tables folder. These tables can be revised and copied to make new tables. Any file with an extension *.ren will be available for use as a bar table in RAM Manager.
Opening the file in Notepad, we see that each line in the table follows the designation:
Bar Label Bar Area Bar Diameter Minimum Bend Radius
In the case above we are revising the Australia bar table to include an R6, so that it can be used for column ties in RAM Concrete Column. The out of box table includes only the N series bars.
After changing the bar table, the R6 will be available for use in creating column reinforcing cages in RAM Concrete Column, as shown below.
