retug January 28, 2023

The Beginnings of an ETABs Plugin

My first "Hello World" addin for ETABs is shown above. No matter how many times you see it, it is always satisfying to get Hello World to print out.

To make the addin, I followed Jeremy's examples on his website. Big thanks to him and his github for walking me through the initial setup process for the ETABs API with C#.

The examples that he presented were from the 2017 community edition of visual studio, so there were a few buttons that had been moved around in the 2019 version that I was using.

First, the events tab that is shown in his examples has moved into its drop down menu, indicated by a lightning bolt. This threw me off for a bit until I found the events tab in its new home.

Also, upon re-compling the application, while having ETABs open, I would get this error:

I was able to solve this by navigating into the big/debug directory and removing the ETABS_Plugin.pdb and ctrl+alt+deleting to kill ETABs. Some weird bug that I will need to dig into more, just be sure to close ETABs before recompiling the code.

The Future

I am hoping to make the diaphragm slicer into a full fledged application. This will make the application much more approachable for others in the office and out in the interwebs.

Things I will need to research in C#, let me know if you have suggestions on these topics:

  • A matrix math package for converting between local and global coordinates
  • A graphing package in C#
  • Learning windows forms more in depth

I uploaded the code on github (basically a copy of Jeremy's code) if you want to take a look.

ETABs C Sharp

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  • Latest Comments
  • retug on Transfer Diaphragm Design -

    @316Jq, The way I understand, the diaphragm design force (inertia force) per 12.10.1.1 is the inertia force.

    Using the blog example numbers let's say this is 1392 kips.

    The transfer diaphragm force could be estimated to be the delta in shears above and below the transfer level ~ (1500 -  …

  • 316Jq on Transfer Diaphragm Design -

    Just wonder how do you separate inertia force and the transfer force? The inertia force might be controlled by the Fpx,min per ASCE12.10-2,  while the transfer force might need to be multiplied by rho or omega. This is also briefly discussed in NHERP design guidance you used. 

  • retug on Section Cutter - ETABs Plugin -

    Hi Rodrigio, thanks for reaching out.

    My email is retug.austin@gmail.com, feel free to shoot me an email.

    The section cutter tool needs a bit of updating to work with the newer version of ETABs, but happy to discuss what you might have in mind for the add-in.

    Thanks