RHCES

Substation Precast Canopy Shop Drawing

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Corbel 3D Model inside RHCES's Calculation Report.

🏗️ Structural engineering vs. architecture — what's the difference?

One is the invisible backbone: engineers design the frameworks that hold every building and bridge up against gravity and wind.
The other is the art and science of designing spaces: architecture shapes how a building looks, feels, and is used.

Engineering creates the strength. Architecture shapes the human experience. You need both — beauty and function.

Quick 20‑second explainer 👇

A dapped end is a beam end notched to sit on a ledge, and it can fail five different ways. This is a 3-minute walkthrough of the RHCES Dapped-End Designer: enter the reaction and the geometry, and it sizes the reinforcement at the dap with the PCI five-mode method, then checks the load path with an ACI 318-19 strut-and-tie model.

What the tool does:
• Sizes the nib flexural steel (As), the horizontal U-bars (Ah), the hanger stirrups at the re-entrant corner (Ash) and the nib stirrups (Av) automatically. Bottom bars, top bars and beam stirrups stay yours to specify.
• Runs 25 checks and names the governing one: bearing, shear friction, nib diagonal tension, anchorage and development, and strut-and-tie angles at every node.
• Flags what a spreadsheet will not: nib depth at least half the beam depth (PCI), shear-span ratio a/d no more than 1.0 (beyond that, treat the nib as a deep beam), and the nib shear-stress advisory.
• Draws the interactive 3D rebar cage, the strut-and-tie force diagram, and a bar bending schedule with cutting lengths and steel mass.
• Design mode sizes the bars; Check mode verifies the bars you actually have. SI or US customary units, one click.

Worked on screen: a 305 x 762 mm beam with a 381 mm nib and a 266.9 kN reaction, pushed to 350 kN, then 850 mm deep, and finally switched to US units at 60 kips.

CHAPTERS
0:00 What the Dapped-End Designer does
0:42 Pushing the loads: 350 kN and a wider beam
0:57 A deeper beam and the nib-depth warning
1:12 The 3D rebar cage
1:42 Bottom bars: when a check fails
2:07 Check mode, then back to Design
2:27 Load path and the bar bending schedule
2:42 US units and the a/d flag
3:11 Wrap-up

Made for structural engineers, precast designers, detailers, CE Board Exam reviewers, and site engineers working to an ACI or PCI-family code.