Concurrent Force Reporter – MIDAS Support

Intro

CIVIL NX will tell you the largest moment in every element of a set. It will not tell you what the rest of the structure was doing at the instant that maximum occurred — and those are different questions. Read each item's own maximum out of a result table, tabulate them side by side, and the row written down is a set of numbers that never occurred together. A bearing, a holding-down bolt or a pier cap has to be designed for forces that coexist. The Concurrent Force Reporter answers the second question. Nominate one reference item and one result quantity; the plugin finds the load case, combination, construction stage and step at which that quantity governs there, then reports every other item in the set at that same structural state. The driver can be any quantity the model publishes — a member force, a plate force, a general or elastic link force, a node reaction or a displacement — and the reported set can mix all of them. The plugin reads the model and its results and writes nothing back.

Developed with

MIDAS CIVIL NX 2026 (v1.0.0)

Benefits of this plugin

Results that genuinely coexist — two results are treated as concurrent only when they come from the same deterministic structural state. The join key is the load, the construction stage and the step carried on every result row, so what the table reports is one instant in the structure rather than a collection of separate worst cases.
Any quantity can be the driver — beam and truss forces, plate forces per unit length, general and elastic link forces, node reactions and node displacements. A reaction at a bearing picks the state exactly as well as a beam moment does, and one set can mix elements, links and nodes; a node is read from both the reaction and the displacement tables and the two merge onto a single row.
Envelope combinations are resolved, not refused — the plugin descends through the combination tree, pinning each envelope to the constituent that governs at the reference item and carrying the factors down, until the state is a single weighted sum of load cases. Re-reading a resolved name elsewhere in the model would quietly return that location's own independent extreme instead, which is the error this avoids.
What cannot be concurrent is blocked, not approximated — moving load, support settlement, response spectrum, ABS and SRSS combinations, and time history saved as max/min only, are each refused with the reason and the way round it, such as converting a governing moving-load condition to a static case through the Moving Load Tracer.
Nested combinations are checked to the leaves — a combination three levels deep can inherit a blocked constituent while looking perfectly clean from the outside. The whole tree is walked, so nothing is admitted on the strength of its name.
A few requests, not thousands — one bulk result query per source per result family, with every item and every selected case in the one call. A 220-element set across eight combinations costs three requests rather than 1760, and validation runs before any bulk query is issued.
Units and identity kept straight — every column carries its own unit, because a plate moment, a displacement and a rotation are not the same kind of quantity. Items carry their namespace too: a bare number is an element, N12 a node, L12 a general link and EL12 an elastic link, so colliding id spaces cannot silently select the wrong object.
Output an engineer can check — the results header carries the full resolved expression and the resolution trace, not just the combination name, and near ties at the reference item are reported rather than hidden. The distribution chart, the table and the CSV export all come from the same document.
Read-only by design — the plugin reads the model and its results and creates nothing. Nothing in the model is added, altered or overwritten.

How to use this plugin?

Open an analysed model in CIVIL NX and start the plugin — the connection details are supplied automatically; use Connection if the status badge does not read CIVIL NX connected.
Choose your combination — search and select a load case or combination, or several to find the governing condition across them. Expand a combination to inspect its constituents. Entries that cannot give a concurrent answer are listed with the reason and the suggested next step rather than being hidden.
Define the items to report — type element numbers and ranges, and node or link ids, or pick a structure group and choose whether to take its elements, its nodes or both. Include the reference item in the set. The panel reports how many entries are usable in each source before the run.
Choose what governs — set the reference item, the governing component, and whether the maximum, the minimum or the absolute maximum is wanted. The reference result is what fixes the condition reported for every other item.
Check the output units — force and length are chosen here, and every column in the result table then carries its own unit in the header.

Setup: an envelope combination selected from the list, 78 nodes entered as the item set, and the running checklist showing what is still needed.

Select Find concurrent forces. The run searches every output point, because which point to look at is a question about the view, and a state that governs at a quarter point is no less real for being there.
The Results view opens automatically — the governing value is stated first, then the state it came from: the load, the construction stage and step, and the full resolved expression where an envelope was pinned. Expand the condition details for the complete header and any notes on near ties.
Read the distribution chart and the table — every item in the set at that one state, the reference item marked. Filter by output position to narrow the displayed and exported rows.
Download or copy the CSV when the table is right. The export follows the current filter, so what is saved is what is on screen.
Use Edit setup to change any input. A notice identifies results produced by a previous setup, a refreshed model or a failed rerun, so a stale table is never mistaken for a current one.

Results: FZ governs at 193.67 kN on node N9229, with PERM_ULS_ENV resolved to PERM_ULS_PMAX. Every bar is that item's value at the same structural state, not its own extreme; the near ties found on the way are named above.

Conclusion

Designing a bearing, a holding-down bolt or a pier cap needs the forces that act together, not a row of unrelated maxima collected from separate envelopes. The Concurrent Force Reporter finds the single state in which the chosen quantity governs at the chosen item, resolves the combination tree down to that state, and reports the whole set there — with the expression it resolved and the ties it found written into the output, so the next reviewer can check it rather than take it on trust.