Masterseries Design Software 1

[270771]

Hi,
I work for a medium sized Structural Engineering Consultancy in the U.K. We, as a company have just decided to ditch the QSE software in favour of the Masterseries Design Suite. Now I have extensive knowledge of a number of software packages including CSC analysis & design, CADS analysis & Design, Robot, Lusas and Masterseries. The last company that I worked for ditched Masterseries because there were a number of fundamental errors that we found and pointed out the Masterseries to rectify. However we continually ran up against a brick wall. This kind of service and the general feedback from the engineers on the useability of the software lead to its downfall.
I have not used the Masterseries Suite for approx. 18 months.
Can anyone tell me the goods and the bads of Masterseries - better the devil you know!!
Also can anyone further the debate about the way forward with the software that we use ti design in general - all views welcome.

Cheers,

Mick21

 

Masterseries has some excellent features such as the composite beam design. However the composite design can't be directly linked to the frame analysis package and is therefore inefficient. RAM provides the automatic link from frame analysis to composite design but is American and therefore seems incapable of dealing with inclined members (non-composite).
Masterseries have a less than brilliant attitude when given suggestions for improvement, seemingly treating constructive comments as criticism of their software.
Masterseries also seem to be incapable of understanding that for most engineers the jump from a Superstress-type interface to the Masterseries interface is not an easy one. Online videos are provided but they are nowhere near as effective as training. The Masterseries interface is not too difficult once mastered and has a few advantages over other packages but I seem to spend most of my time showing people how to use it. A well designed piece of software should be more intuitive.

 

[billyrayjimbob]

Mick21,

I use Masterseries everyday and find some things to be good and some not so good.
Maybe it is best for a company of your size to identify the strengths of several packages and run several licences on each of them rather than restricting to one package. This allows constant montitoring of software developments by the companies and the ability to use the best part of each package. It also allows individual engineers to use the software that suits them best.