STAAD Pro Macros

Manipulating the software - through the API

A SHORT INTRODUCTION

What is an API ?

Application Programming Interface are the set of contructs that allow control of the core engine - in this case the STAAD Pro Software.

Never saw an option for API in STAAD ?

Trust me .... its there,

Have a look at the ->All Programs->Bentley Engineering->STAAD Pro V8i (or your version) and you will find a file called OpenSTAAD Reference Documentation

What is OpenSTAAD ?

"OpenSTAAD is a library of exposed functions allowing engineers access to STAAD.Pro’s internal functions and routines as well as its graphical commands."

Functions, routines, commands ..???

This is what programming is made of, apparently its more than just mouse clicks.

To learn programming, head over to:

Language, Platform ?

Built on ATL COM and COM+ standards
Language: C, C++, VB, VBA, FORTRAN, Java, Delphi, C#
MS Windows, atleast upto Win - 7

What all can this API do ?

STAAD File Input and Output (I/O)
Structure Geometry
Member Specifications
Properties
Loads
Output Results

Nodes
Beams
Plates
Solids

STAAD Pre-Processor
STAAD Post-Processor
Creating Dialog Boxes and Menu Items

Refer code samples in the repository - 1

Step 1: Initializing OpenSTAAD Library

'Initialize the STAAD Appplication Object
Set objOpenSTAAD1 = GetObject( , "StaadPro.OpenSTAAD")

'Initialize the STAAD results object
Set objSTAADResults = CreateObject("OpenSTAAD.Output.1")

Work on the former, if you want to work on the model and the latter if you just want to work on the results.

Step 2: Now do what the API lets you do

For example,

 'Retrieve the Filename of the currently open staad file with full path
 bIncludePath = True
 objOpenSTAAD1.GetSTAADFile strFileName, bIncludePath

Points to observe:

objOpenSTAAD1 is the name of Application object we created previously.
GetSTAADFile is the name of OpenSTAAD function
VBA is case-sensitive, so the function name, should appear as it is.
strFileName & bIncludePath are variable names, that store the filename and function options