Best Mat Design Software?

[jay156]

Hi, For a while, I just designed footers by hand, but now I'm working on a job at work on which some mat foundation design software would be nice.

My question is what is the most intuitive, best software out there that's easy to use, but still is robust enough to help me design mat foundations with little hassle. I looked at Mat3d, which is pretty nice. Are there any better?

 

[delagina]

mat3d is a rigid approach but limited to rectangular shape.

plate elements of staad or risa is flexible approach and do irregular shapes. i prefer to use it if on piles. i dont like it if soil supported.

 

[JoeBaseplate]

I have found pca MATs to be very useful in the past. Its also very easy to use. You can also model a 2 way slab sitting on piles in this software.

 

[rscassar]

I use the mat foundation module in Ram Concept. I'm not the biggest fan of it because I don't think it designs for Mxy nor does it use it in the flexural design.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

You might want to check out RISAFoundation. I work for RISA, so I'm not exactly an unbiased observer. Therefore, I'll let others extoll the virtues of one program over another.

I will merely point out that we have a robust demo version available on our websites for folks to try out. That way, they can easily determine if the program will suit their needs or not.

http://www.risatech.com/demos/demo_foundation.html

 

[jberg]

For smaller projects, I really like VisualFoundation from IES (

http://www.iesweb.com).

It is not as robust as SAFE or others, but I find there is a very small learning curve.

JWB