Cost of the Service

The cost of the Service is by joint successfully designed. The cost is paid by tokens, that can be bought at our website..

By joint it is meant the connection of a slave element to a master or of an element to the ground (or better: to a fixed reference system). A joint can be made of several fittings and connectors, like plates, cross-section trunks, stiffeners, haunches, welds and bolts.

The welds can be fillet welds, or penetration welds, and in general have more than one weld seam.

A joint is successfully designed if it is computable (which requires that all the components are connected and that all the connections are appropriate, well-posed and recognized), and if it has passed all the checks.

The checks are always in closed form, that is described by formulae clerly readable and understanable, and enclosed to the report. Depending on the cases, among the checks are usually found:

  • Bolt spacing and edge-distances (chosen by the user)
  • Length of weld-seams
  • Bolt shaft resistance (N, T, M)
  • Weld seams resistance
  • Bolt bearing
  • Block tear
  • Net cross-sections
  • Buckling
  • T-stub
  • Whitmore section
  • etc.

The service that is paid is the joint design starting from:

  • the cross-sections of the members (chosen by the user);
  • the mutual layout of the axis lines of the elements and their orientation (chosen by the user);
  • the analysis member forces (chosen by the user, they are load combinations effects);
  • the design-criteria set before asking the service (chosen by the user). Among these design criteria, one has implications related to the cost of the service: if a design must be a minimum-cost design, or not. In the first case, the service costs 50% more (this value could be modified in the future, it all depends on how many requests of this kind will be received and which computational time will require).

The cost of the service we refer to in this page is that of the automatic design made in our server.

The automatic design covers a given set of joint-types, that are those available, and some cross-section types. For instance, it is not sure that if a joint is available with Hsm (I or H rolled section) it is also available with Asb (I or H rolled section with unequal flanges). Check well in the pages referring to the available joints in order to avoid sending requestes that cannot be fullfilled (but look here).

The activity to widen the set of available joints is continuous.

The cross-section type most universally used is Hsm, which includes:

  • IPE
  • HEAA
  • HEA
  • HEB
  • HEM
  • ILS
  • HLS
  • UB
  • UC
  • M
  • W
  • et cetera

The minimum-cost design chooses among all the possible design the one that implies the minimum fabrication cost (cost of material and cost of the work-processes like welding or plate-cutting. Therefore it requires a computational time much higher, as it is necessary to generate all the possible designs. You are kindly asked to use this option only for nodes that repeat many times in the structure, and therefore meaningful for this option. If this option will be asked massively, we will have to increase its cost, that now is only 50% higher than normal design.

The fabrication cost is defined on the basis of a metric that is chosen by the user.

At the moment the cost of the service does not depend on the joint-type, nor by the load combination number.

If it is requested the design of many nodes, discounts are available.

The cost of service that is mentioned in the movies is not to be considered as the definitive or current one. The movies have been prepared in a preliminary stage. The cost of the service to be kept in mind is uniquely that listed in this page.

This said at the moment the cost of the service is the following:

TYPE OF DESIGNCOST 1 JOINT
(Tokens )
Joint “first OK design is fine”1
Joint minimum-cost design (*)1.5
Table with the cost per joint valid since 2024, May, 20. (*)This value might increase in the future depending on the number of requests and on the computational time needed. Clients will be pre-emptively informed.

The following table lists the number of tokens that can be bought with different possible re-charges, and the relative cost-per-token, gradually decreasing.

Zone 1: Europe, Middle East, Asia, Japan

Zone 2: Americas, Australia, Africa

RECHARGE
Zone 1: € (EUR)
Zone 2: $ (USD)
Number of TokensCost per token
Zone 1: € (EUR)
Zone 2: $ (USD)
Discount
50 (*)
(first recharge)
501.050%
502520
1005020
2001151.7413%
3001801.6617%
4002501.620%
5003501.4328.6%
100010001.050%
Recharges and related number of tokens. Discounts. (*) VAT is not applicable to international clients.

Examples of cost per nodes:

NODENumber of jointsCOST
(tokens)
Main beam with two 90° secondary beams. First design OK.22
Column with 4 beams, 2 moment and 2 simple shear. Minimum cost design.46(*)
Main beam with secondary beam and two horizontal adjacent bracings. First design OK33
Ground column with 4 bracing diagonals, 2 connected to the flanges and 2 connected to the web. First design OK.55
Examples of cost per nodes, in tokens. (*) This value might increase in the future depending on the number of requests and on the computational time needed. The Clients will be informed pre-emptively.