ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the basic steps of structural design and analysis, together with the tools that are needed to execute them, including the use of databases and expert systems. In structural design, can distinguish three basic phases: conceptual design, creative and dimensioning phase; planning or development phase; and documentation phase. Documentation phase is a logical and essentially mechanical consequence of the first two phases. Structural design intended as dimensioning, is strictly related to analysis and prediction of the sizes for the structural elements: it can be reduced to repeated analysis and, to an essentially mechanical process. The confusion between design and analysis stems from this limited view of the design process in which analysis plays such an essential role. Digital computers make both simple and complex structural matrix analysis possible. The structure can be analysed as a single entity, possibly including the subsoil, modelled as an assemblage of finite elements.
