5.19Working with Files

In spCad, files may be one of the following three formats

•spCad (*.FCD)—binary format that can be read by spCad only.

•spFrame (*.FRM)—binary format that can be read by

•spCad and spFrame.

•ASCII (*.TXT)—text format that can be read by

•spCad, spFrame, or any other text editor or word processor.

After creating a data file, it must be saved in spFrame (FRM) or ASCII text (TXT) format, so it may be opened by spFrame for analysis.

spCad can also read FRM and TXT files that were created using spFrame. Any analysis results contained in FRM files are ignored by spCad.

NOTE: spCad v1.5 can open FCD files created by PCA-Cad v1.0, however, area loads and associated load reduction factors are not read and have to be reentered. PCA-Cad v1.0 cannot read FCD files created by spCad v1.5.