Bentley Structural Modeller > Integration with Analysis > Bentley Structural to GSA import & export

Introduction

Most of the information related to the BSTR import/export for GSA is held in the CADtools Structural Modelling manual by the CADtools team, or the Report on GSA to BSTR link by Briar Fleming.

This page is a temporary holding place for for 'errata' or other small FAQ's.

Known issues

Compile Error in module : Main

With Structural Modeller 8.11.7.94 running on Windows 7 PC's, this problem could be caused by a couple of things

1) You have GSA 8.6 installed, but not GSA 8.5.
Structural Modeller 8.11.7.94 will integrate with GSA 8.6, but As of Apr 2012, you must also have GSA 8.5 installed.

2) The RAM and Staad components were not installed correctly.
The UAC must be turned off during installation, or the components will need manual registration afterwards

GSA versions or the "This module was written by a newer version of GSA and cannot be read" problem

As of Jan 2010, the GSA import/export routines in the Bentley Structural XM 'Data Exchange' toolbox are written for GSA 8.3 although many Arup users now use GSA 8.4. The importer is hardwired to use GSA 8.3 and has not yet been updated to try and use 8.4.

This results in an error message along the lines of "This module was written by a newer version of GSA and cannot be read" when you try to import a GSA 8.4 file, but there is a work around, so long as you have both GSA 8.3 and GSA 8.4 installed on your PC.

1. Open the GSA 8.4, open the file you want to import and save it is a "gwa83" file

CADtoolsUstn_BSTR_SaveAsGWA83

2. Rename the file so it's xxx_83.gwa (where xxx is the original filename or some other identifier)

3. Open GSA 8.3 and open the xxx_83.gwa file.

4. Save it as a GWB (The BSTR importer can technically handle GWA, but it keeps defaulting to GWB as the filename)

CADtoolsUstn_BSTR_SaveAsGWB

5. From the Data Exchange tools in BSTR browse to that file and import it.

Compile Error in hidden module "Library"

If you receive this error when you start the import/export process, it can be a bit of a red herring. Usually this error message indicates a typographical type error in the code, but in the case of the GSA <> BSTR link, this message often indicates that GSA 8.3 has not been installed. (Note: At this stage it must specifically be GSA 8.3)

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