Etabs Mass Summary By Story Better -
It allows you to verify that the self-weight, superimposed dead loads, and required live loads are accurately applied.
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Once extracted, you can use libraries like Matplotlib to instantly up the height of your building. A simple bar chart can reveal a "soft story" (sudden change in mass) that could lead to a dangerous failure mechanism. You can also quickly compare the story mass from DL+0.5LL to your hand calculations to verify consistency across all design iterations.
Ensure all slabs have the correct thickeness assigned. etabs mass summary by story better
Are you troubleshooting a specific in your mass source?
Confirm the density of concrete/steel in the Material Properties .
Utilizing the table saves hours of post-processing time, reduces file sizes, and ensures your peer reviews proceed smoothly. Focus your energy on engineering interpretation rather than spreadsheet manipulation. It allows you to verify that the self-weight,
The table acts as a foolproof internal audit. It presents the net integrated mass that ETABS actually utilizes during the modal analysis execution. What you see in the story summary is exactly what the solver runs, eliminating any mismatch between spreadsheet math and software math. Summary of Comparison Feature / Metric Mass Summary by Story Element Mass Joint by Joint Data Volume Low (One row per floor) Extreme (Tens of thousands of rows) Processing Speed Instantaneous Slow (Prone to Excel freezing) Center of Mass Data Built-in and calculated Must be manually calculated Audit Readiness High (Ready for calculation reports) Low (Requires heavy filtering) Risk of Human Error High (Due to manual sorting) Conclusion: Work Smarter, Not Harder
: Roof levels where mechanical loads or parapet weights were forgotten. Step-by-Step: How to Access the Table in ETABS
They updated the mass source to include PARTITION and converted cladding to Additional Mass . The new Mass Summary showed a 28% increase in seismic weight. If you share with third parties, their policies apply
: Building codes require that you include enough vibration modes so that the sum of the effective modal masses (SumUX, SumUY) reaches at least 90% of the total building mass . If your total mass from the Mass Summary by Story is 10,000 tons, but your MPMR table shows SumUY for the included modes is only 7,000 tons (70%), you need to add more modes and re-run the analysis. This ensures your response spectrum analysis captures the building's true seismic demand. The first three vibration modes often capture over 90% of the mass for regular buildings, confirming accurate dynamic representation.
For a given story, manually compute:
A "Better" Mass Summary means matching three things:
It directly impacts the natural period and mode shapes of the building.