EnCteX Documentation¶
Each product has two layers of documentation, and they answer different questions:
- The manual answers how to operate it — installation, licensing, tabs, workflow, export.
- The formulations answer what the program calculates — methods, assumptions, safety factors, standards and, above all, the limits of validity.
The second layer exists because foundation software is not an acceptable black box. The designer signs the project, not the software; to sign it, they need to know which formulation was applied, with which coefficients and within which range it holds.
The programs¶
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SPO
The pile core of SPX, without raked piles or stratigraphic modelling. Same geotechnical methods and same structural design.
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SPX
Piles: bearing capacity by three methods, settlement, subgrade reaction coefficients, finite element structural analysis, design for biaxial bending with axial force, DXF detailing and calculation report. Includes raked piles and stratigraphic modelling of the SPT.
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SPX AI
SPX with AI automation: intelligent PDF reading, DWG/DXF plan import and commands to generate pile caps and piles.
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PCO
Pile Cap One — rigid pile caps, by Blévot & Frémy and by the strut-and-tie model (MBT) of the IBRACON Commentaries, with finite element verification.
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PCX
Pile Cap X — everything in PCO, plus the design of flexible pile caps, modelled as a simply supported or fixed-end beam.
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SBO · free
Simple Beam One — reinforced concrete beams in bending, shear and torsion, with rectangular and T sections and a moment-curvature diagram.
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SBX · free
Simple Beam X — SBO with section optimisation: it finds the lowest-cost geometry that resists the internal forces.
Where to start¶
If this is your first contact with any of the programs, three pages are worth reading before the product manual:
- Installation — requirements and procedure.
- Conventions and units — signs, axes, units and the numeric soil codes. It is the page that prevents the most common data-entry error.
- Standards — what each program references.
About the scope of this documentation
It describes what the programs do; it does not replace engineering judgement or the standards. Semi-empirical bearing capacity methods were calibrated against a limited set of tests; outside that range, they extrapolate. Each formulation page states the range of validity of the method it describes, and that range must be read as part of the result.