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Structural Design Program

Structural Design Program

Structural Design Program

(OP)
I am relatively new to the structural design industry, however my company is looking to purchase a design program to aide and expedite the process. All the work done now is completely by hand with drawings created in Autocad. The difficulty of the calculations vary, and it is almost entirely steel design, with a sub-catergory for rigging and reaving. I have experience with GTStrudl (went to GT) and have seen Risa 3d, SAP2000 and Midas but have limited to zero working knowledge of them. I assume these are all reasonably compatible with Autodesk, but I am looking for reviews and advice regarding available design systems. I have also researched Scia but have found useful information regarding the system hard to come by.

thank you all for your help it is greatly appreciated.   

RE: Structural Design Program

If I had gone to GT, I think I'd feel compelled to use GTSTRUDL!

I have always used STAAD...not many here seem to like it however.

RE: Structural Design Program

I would not recommend Scia, there are better programs out there.

SAP is very good but it may be overkill depending on what you need. You can do almost anything in SAP but for that reason it is a little cumbersome if you are trying to do something very basic. Etabs is basically SAP but with a focus on building structures, it has a lot of useful additions to sap that make doing buildings really easy - it's not so great for non-building structures though.

Risa a good all around program and cheap compared to sap. For buildings it doesn't match up with Etabs but it's good enough most of the time and it's very user friendly. It's great for doing small stuff - a simple truss, small frames etc.

One thing to note is that the above (and a lot of others) are analysis programs that also handle member design. They do not however handle design of connections, base plate, footings etc etc. I don't know if you need that or not. You can make a lot of that yourself with spreadsheets.

You can download a free trial of RISA that is only limited by model size. Maybe give that a try for a while. There are also loads of other programs out there.

RE: Structural Design Program

It's not clear to me if you're looking at 20 story steel buildings with seismic detailing or misc metal handrails. Something like SAP is definitely overkill for handrails.

I`m a fan of RAM elements for the random stuff that comes up around the office.

 

RE: Structural Design Program

It would be best if you could describe how you will use the software .

RE: Structural Design Program

(OP)
The primary use will be to verify and/or identify member sizes with regard to designing conveyor belts. IE. simple repeatable modular tables. Truss sections spanning bents. Bent design and foundation loads(not full design of the foundation), and multiple story towers. Ease of conversion between Metric and Imperial useful(including member prop), dynamic analysis and seismic a must, Natural Frequency beneficial. Connections, and Base Plate thickness would also be helpful, but as mentioned excel tables are effective (though potentially cumbersome) for that as well.
 Thanks again, I hope this helps clear some things up.  

RE: Structural Design Program

In that case (bang for the buck) i would suggest RISA 3D. I have used SCIA a whole bunch and can attest that RISA is a better product.
You will be without connection design.

RE: Structural Design Program

I like RISA3D

You can buy other connection programs

RE: Structural Design Program

Another recommendation for RISA-3D.

RE: Structural Design Program

(OP)
Seems rather clear and most other reviews hint that as well. Thanks you have all been extremely helpful and I really enjoy this site. good work.
 

RE: Structural Design Program

I am currently using STAAD to analyze an almost failed material conveyor truss (80 feet between bents).  Seems the original design assumed pinned connections  but under designed welded connections for the diagonals.  

STAAD is a little clunky but I like it for noodles.  My biggest complaint is that it is set up with the Y axis as vertical.  Thats as bad as flipping the moment diagram upside down!

RE: Structural Design Program

RISA 3D

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

RE: Structural Design Program

And RISA now has RISA Connection. You can buy it as a standalone addition to RISA or as part of a bundle with their other products. Although again you can probably develop your own spreadsheets for this. I still say try the demo and see if it makes sense for what you will be doing.

RE: Structural Design Program

Another vote for RISA.  We also have STAAD, but nearly everyone prefers RISA.  I will probably drop the maintenance on STAAD next year.   

http://www.FerrellEngineering.com

RE: Structural Design Program

RISA. But as others mentioned, try the demo.  

RE: Structural Design Program

Teguci you can check the configuration/orientation of the vertical axis of STAAD.

RE: Structural Design Program

I have, in the past, properly reconfigured the axes in STAAD.  However, the analysis gives me a warning everytime because some features do not properly work with the corrected axes.

RE: Structural Design Program

Mathcad is the appropriate program.

If you are working by hand, have your methods and know how, Mathcad allows you to set up templates to be used over and over and over...and over...  Very intuitive and it follows your hand calc's.

You will need to supplement it occasionally with something like Risa and some specialty programs, for say things like retaining walls, and concrete columns, but otherwise Mathcad is it.

I strongly recommend Mathcad for structural engineering.  It's just more all purpose, versatile, and transparent than the "structural" programs.

Disclaimer:  I no longer do engineering design and do not have Matchcad installed.

RE: Structural Design Program

I have used STAAD and RAM Elements and for your usage, I would choose RAM Elements for ease of use and good tech support.

RE: Structural Design Program

I work in the aggregate business and here we use RISA.

Just make sure you are familiar with the software as it ignores some of the Lb and K values making your desing inadequate.

BTW, Just completed a stacker model in RISA3D, very neat.

RE: Structural Design Program

I use RISA3D and hate it.  So many illogical menus, input, and output.  Importing from Autocad doesn't work very well, and drawing members is a PITA compared to other programs.  I would look into RAM products.

RE: Structural Design Program

My only gripe with STAAD is the output files are not formatted nice for reports.  

RE: Structural Design Program

STAAD reports are okay but at least they should have tried to consider other format and saving options.

RE: Structural Design Program

I have found ways to copy and save the code checks out of the output file, but other programs seem to have much nicer formats for the code checks.
STAAD is almost embarrassingly bad.

My other gripe is, STAAD doesn't always show the details of the design check.
For instance, STAAD will design double angle compression members and take into consideration LTB, but no where on the on output does it show it.
Same thing goes for compression members designed according to appendix B in the 1989 code.
 

RE: Structural Design Program

My vote is for Bentley's RAM products.  

RE: Structural Design Program

I'll check this RISA-3D other members are talking about and see if it will live up to the legend.

RE: Structural Design Program

Consider VisualAnalysis.  a versatile program that is intuitive to use.  IES has other stand alone structural tools that have clear output results.

RE: Structural Design Program

@MainMan10

Never had a problem importing DXF files into risa.  If you assign layers in AutoCAD with the HR_ prefix in the beginning it will transfer that information into Risa as a Hot Rolled section set and all you have to do is to assign proper member sizes.

Make sure that you round off joint coordinates and then perform a model merge.  It works very efficently for me.

One thing with Risa is, like I said before, after importing files from AutoCAD you need to check Lb and K values for members, they tend to get wacky sometimes.

One more good thing about Risa is the support.  There is plethora of webinars on their website that show you how to do things, some of them are free and some are payed, but some payed ones even count for continuing education credits for PE.

For me risa is far better than SAP.  The only other program I could suggest is Dr. Frame, but I have very limited exposure to the program so I am of no help.  

RE: Structural Design Program

I've used RISA 3D extensively, and it is the quick and easy way to analyze framed structures.

I also now have CASA 3D on the iOS platform, which seems to work similarly.  I cannot speak about ease of use since I have not mastered it just yet.

RE: Structural Design Program

RUS, I have used both RAM Advanse (Elements), Ram Structural System and RISA, and in my experience RAM is far more productive and less prone to input error.  Simple stuff like looking at a moment diagram is so much more difficult than it needs to be in RISA.  I just did a composite floor design in Risa Floor last month and thought it was dicy and cumbersome.  Beam input and modification took three times as long as with RAM.  Its design output was somewhat black box, and the load input (deck self weight) is very misleading.  There were a handful of instances where we'd read the help file to see what it's doing and we'd all ask ourselves why in the heck did they choose to do it that way.  IMHO, RISA has a few iterations to go.
 

RE: Structural Design Program

RAM Steel is excellent for building design, but I've not had as much success using it for non-building, non-uniform structures.

RE: Structural Design Program

That's where you use Advanse

RE: Structural Design Program

What were the complaints about Scia Engineer related to?  

RE: Structural Design Program

I use RISA 3D in my office.  I feel it has a really simple work flow.  You can start with the top tab and work you way down to the bottom tab.  When you get done you know you've covered everything. Then I'll use the graphical interface to cross check my input.  I have found it to be really useful to work with.  I haven't kept up with all of its developments.  The only pain is that in braced frames you need to break the members up to capture little delta amplifications.  This might have been fixed with physical members but I've never bothered to check it.  I just break up my column members anyway.  But I have always liked its intuitive work flow.  

I haven't used any of the other programs in a very long time.  They could be better now.  I think if you are going to do a lot of Floor framing it might be better with RAM.

RAM has a really good separate base plate program I use.   

John Southard, M.S., P.E.
http://www.pdhlibrary.com

RE: Structural Design Program

I had said that I wouldn't recommend Scia. I probably shouldn't have said that as my experience is limited with it. We have it in our office and I've found the interface to be less user friendly than other programs. Every time I try it I give up and move to Risa or Etabs depending on what I'm doing. At the end of the day all of the major structural programs should produce accurate results provided that you understand how to use the program and what is input is required etc. I'm sure if you know how to use it well it is fine. I would just prefer a more intuitive interface.

southard - you still have to break up members to get little p-delta in the newest version of Risa but this is still true of most programs.

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