May 19, 2025

Tower 8.5 (Build 8597) has been released, bringing several new features and a number of improvements and fixes.
The most important new features relate to the improvement of the design procedure for concrete columns with buckling, the harmonization of the influence naming in reports, the improvement of the combination scheme for SLS, ...
The list of new features introduced in this version is:
- Local buckling of columns - EC2 EN:
- included reduction of imperfection in isolated columns by a factor depending on the column length
- imperfection is applied in the less favorable direction
- minimum eccentricity is no longer additive and "controls" (is compared to) the total bending moment in a direction and not just imperfection
- correction in calculating minimum eccentricity as 1/30 of the static height instead of the full height
- report has been changed in accordance with the changes made
- change in the procedure for calculating second-order eccentricity where the coefficient Kr in the nominal stiffness method is limited to 0.25 from the bottom
- since imperfection is added only in one direction, and can be applied in both positive and negative directions, four exclusive cases arise per imperfection to which second-order eccentricities are applied, so there are a total of eight possible cases to be checked (previously there were only 4).
- Change in the naminmg of influences. The influence "Shear force", "Transverse force" is now marked with "V" instead of the symbol "T", thus aligning it with the usual naming in Eurocode.
- Change in the procedure for creating combinations for the Serviceability Limit State for EC2 EN codes. The long-term part of the combination for all three types of combinations (characteristic, frequent and quasi-permanent) is equal to the previous long-term part of quasipermanent combinations, and the short-term part represents the difference between the resulting combination and the long-term part. (The difference compared to the previous
- situation is in determining what represents the long-term and what the short-term load component)
- New option in the dialog to change visibility by sets. When a line or point load is selected, you can select in the right-click menu in the list to mark sets related to forces "P" or moments "M"
- Dimensioning of walls - information on the use of the Seismic Impact Multiplier has been introduced
- In the "Information" command for entities, the ability to display the area of the area it acts on has been added for surface loads.
In addition to these new features, this Build also contains a significant number of bug fixes and minor optimizations.