RAM Concept/Bentley Licensing and vs SAFE

[bookowski]

I've become that guy asking about software on here. Next I'll be asking if column bases are assumed to be pinned.

I'm thinking of switching from SAFE to Concept and have a few questions.

First, here what I typically do and need:
- A good amount of flate plate design (in the US), essentially no post-tension. For ballpark let's say about 1M sq.ft. of slab design per year.
- Currently have SAFE (along with Etabs) and have some infrastructure built around safe, i.e. several spreadsheets that directly speak to safe for load takedowns, design, etc.
- Current frustration is that SAFE is entirely useless for slab design. It is essentially an analysis tool and relies on the user to manually design the rebar via post processing. Back when I was starting out the company I worked for would plot the safe results on the big plotter and we'd sit with a calculator and manually work out and mark down the rebar. Recently I've been working on tools for post processing, but I am starting to realize that this is stupid. SAFE's automatic design is so bad it's laughable so that's off the table.

So I've been looking at Concept. I have used Concept a long time ago and my partner is quite competent with it, so there's some learning curve but not starting at zero.

Now the questions:
- Does anyone know of any benefit of SAFE over Concept?
- The only benefits I have found in my research so far are: 1) connection to etabs, 2) safe is cheaper, 3) it seems like safe is faster for a quick and dirty schematic model
- I am very confused by the Bentley licensing. Their website directs you to their blog to explain the "practitioner" license which they go on and on about as being superior to "old license models" but how their licensing actually works is very fuzzy. I found some older threads on here with some very unhappy customers that got stuck with extra usage bills. Is this still happening? Any other input/complaints/info on their license model? Is it possible to still buy perpetual licenses?
- A big advantage that I see in RAM, and my main reason for wanting to switch, is that the user can manually define their rebar in the model, verify designs, etc, and then directly export that to cad. Since I don't have a license I've been relying on a peer that has a license to test it out and it seems quite good, with a little tweaking it looks like you could dump rebar to cad and only need minimal drafting cleanup. Are people using it like this? If this is the case then it makes safe look like a high school science project in comparison.
- The licensing is one of my main concerns. For a few thousand bucks I'd give it a shot but if I'm buying into a system that is forever going to be trying to scam me I'll stay away. I find it very strange that almost all licensing info comes from their blog or the bentley communities forum. I see a posting from them on their from April 1, 23 (so quite recent) about another change to the way they are licensing Concept. They seem to be in constant flux with their model and always testing how to squeeze the max out of users. Does anyone with experience have any input?

 

[sticksandtriangles]

I've used concept and safe a fair amount, not an expert by any means at either program.

Concept is the better tool for the job 90% of the time and if something gets complicated, I definitely prefer concept over safe.
I think the only thing that safe does better is load combinations. RAM concept has this "alt envelope factor" which is always super confusing to me. Maybe if I lived in the program it would make more sense.

A big advantage that I see in RAM, and my main reason for wanting to switch, is that the user can manually define their rebar in the model, verify designs, etc, and then directly export that to cad.

This is a great advantage and you can take it one step further. I wrote a dynamo script that extracts all the rebar data out of RAM concept and will place the user defined rebar on the drawing specified, all with revit detail components. Super slick and it doesn't have the "this is autocad" look on your typical revit drawings. A huge time savings for large flat plate mild rebar jobs.

With regards to licensing, I have not stayed up to date on that, hopefully Bentley has that part figured out by now.



S&T -

http://www.re-tug.com

 

[bookowski]

@S&T - Thanks, this is great feedback. We've got perpetual safe right now so we'd still have that. The one thing I think we'd still use it for is mat foundations via export out of etabs. The rebar design within RAM and then straight to drawings is a potential huge time saver. I was already brainstorming about straight into revit but didn't want to muddy the first post by adding too much. Annoyingly we're still in both cad and revit here, about 70% of our jobs (even big ones) have architects using cad. So we'd try to develop ways to dump into both. If your dynamo is something that you'd be willing to share some day, or if you're interested in some side work in helping to develop one for us, let me know.

 

[Aesur]

Have you tried Adapt? I have been using Adapt for a little over a year and thus far find it extremely easy to use. I started with Adapt-PT/RC and did strip analysis manually in it, only recently getting into Builder.

I have used Concept in the past - about 5 or so years ago and while it was good, I did hate the licensing model. At that time, the way it worked was essentially, you purchase the licenses you needed, say 1 for concrete module, 1 for beam module etc.. (I honestly forget the exact module names, but they were all separated out as separate pricing). Every period you are allowed to use that 1 license at any given time by anyone, however, if you have the program open and another user opens the software at the same time and exceeds the short grace period (I believe 5 to 15 mins) then you pay for the extra license for that billing period. Once that extra license has been started, you can then use both license for that billing period (can't remember if it was 1 or 3 months). If you and the other person are then using the software at the same time, and a 3rd user opens and uses the software, again you are now paying for 3 license for that period. Basically it's a monthly rental for excess licenses without (at the time) any way to block others from opening the software at the same time and the only ways to see if someone else was in the software at the same time was to literally ask everyone, create a spreadsheet to check in and out the software, buy a third party piece of software from I believe one of their former developers who spun off a new licensing management company when they went to this model or to have admin access to the licensing server and open a tool on there that shows who is in it and when. I have seen companies spending 10's of thousands extra a billing period because an engineer didn't want to deal with checking in and out the licensing or forgot and left the software open over night etc..

 

[structSU10]

Bentley has a license manager they implemented a while back to try and smooth that out. It throws a warning to anyone launching a program if there are no licenses available and they can continue or not for the extra cost. Ram concept only has 2 'modules' mild steel and PT. Ram structural system had a bunch of modules with differing licenses but they merged them together a few years back to simplify things. Overall our cost for ram software is pretty modest compared to some of the costs I see on csi's website - are those misleading? I think we play less than the cost of one etabs license for multiple seats for multiple programs.

 

[sticksandtriangles]

bookowski,

Send me an email, I would be happy to share with you.

S&T -

http://www.re-tug.com

 

[Luceid]

I have only used SAFE briefly, and Concept definitely has a lot of weird things about it that takes getting used to, but Concept is much better documented than any of the CSI products. The bentley forum is pretty helpful along with the program Manual, much more so than any CSI documentation. That said, I haven't been able to get every question answered, but usually I can work out how to understand what the program is doing. A lot of times with SAFE/ETABS, I'm completely stumped and find very little help on figuring it out.

 

[bookowski]

Aesur - I haven't tried Adapt, but at this point I'm only weighing the save vs ram options since I'm at least semi-familiar with both.

StructSU10 - I haven't looked at Structural System so I don't know how that compares on pricing to Etabs. Since we don't do pt I was comparing the basic version of SAFE. Concept is no longer splitting mild and pt into two, it's only available combined now. A standalone perpetual SAFE license (the standalone can be moved to different machines by a simple click of a desktop icon) is $4,400. We already own the standalone version and move it around as needed. They try to push the cloud version but I will never switch unless they force it. If you do get the cloud license for SAFE it's $5.7k one time and then $1k/year. The price for Concept appears to be about $3k/year. I'm going off of the websites so I may have something off but in the end they are probably in the same ballpark to stay competitive. Either way, I'd be ok with the cost as long as the licensing is clear and the past issues that others have described are sorted out, which it sounds like you are saying they are.

S&T - Will do, thanks!

So far zero votes for SAFE which confirms my suspicions. Maybe it's a regional thing but in may area SAFE seems to be the go to, but when comparing the two I struggle to see why. Maybe Etabs is the actual driver and the packaging makes sense, i.e. SAFE is the little brother that gets to tag along.

 

[bookowski]

Hijacking my own thread here but this begs the question - how is ram structural system compared to etabs? If going to concept from safe I guess I should consider going all in.

 

[EZBuilding]

In my opinion RAM Concept is far superior to CSI Safe, especially for elevated slabs. For shallow/deep foundations the difference is a bit closer, but Concept is still better.

RAM Structural Systems performs well for steel structures and simpler buildings. In more complex structures or with reinforced concrete structures - I think it lags ETABs capabilities. If you are primarily in low/mid rise territory with your RC design, going full blown RAM might be the best course of action from a cost-benefit perspective.

My current work flow primarily uses ETABS for the primary building system, RAM Concept for the flat plate design and SAFE for the foundation designs (primarily due to the connectivity with ETABS).

 

[bookowski]

EZBuilding - Thanks. My current thinking is as you say, keep using etabs and I'd still have the current safe license to do foundations via etabs export. I'm mostly in the low to mid rise, i.e. usually < 25 stories. I assume that there would be added efficiency in using ram struct system for the entire building and being able to export directly to Concept, but I've spent so long battling Etabs and learning it's quirks though that I can't see giving it up and starting a new 3d marriage so that loss of efficiency is probably worth my sanity.

Looks like another vote for concept.

 

[EZBuilding]

In my market and building typology - considerations of any possible lateral frame action that the slab may have with either shear walls or columns is the biggest drawback to the ETABs->Concept work flow. If the engineer identifies - or considers - this frame action, I am not aware of an easy way to transfer those forces from ETABs into Concept for consideration.

 

[bookowski]

Thanks. We do not typically use slab frames unless in a real pinch.

 

[Trenno]

Concept over SAFE anyday of the week.

A few years back, we had two CSI representatives come in the office for a lunch n learn. We obviously asked as many questions as we could as I think the CSI documentation and support can be lacking at times. Anyway, one thing I remember being discussed was that CSI were going to focus on essentially integrating SAFE into ETABS (ie SAFE becoming redundant in the future).

Also just one thing on the core foundation and raft interoperability between ETABS & SAFE. Can't you just model these rafts in ETABS and use the section cut tool to design them?

 

[SethGuthrie]

I'm a bit late to the party but I can help with Ram Concept questions. Regarding ETABS, we actually have a custom tool that can read ETABS reactions, though of course we prefer the tight integration with RAM Structural System. In addition to license alerting, we also offer one year leases through Virtuosity that don't trigger term licenses at all.
PS sorry for the prior accidental post.

 

[bookowski]

SAFE is getting it's clock cleaned here.

@Trenno - You could but I don't see the advantage. If you want to put soil springs, and non-linear ones, in etabs you're going to mess with your periods, increase run times, etc. Yes, you could pin, run, get your periods and calc lateral, then re-run with springs, then pull forces and design but the export to safe is one thing that does work very well and I've already got a safe license so no rea

@sethguthrie - Thanks for chiming in. Where can I find info on the licensing? The website is very unclear. From the Concept page it sends me to this (

https://virtuosity.bentley.com/virtuoso-subscription-keys/)

licensing info page. That page describes the "virtuosity" license, a license type that seems to be invented by Bentley, and in their description of the "what is a virtuosity license?" it describes it as a "12 month practitioner license".... as far as I know "practitioner license" is also made up by Bentley. At this point it starts to feel scammy. I did find a blog post that was supposed to explain "what is a practitioner license?" but it never actually explains it, it only opines on the "old fashioned licenses" used by other companies. It'd be much easier to use the terms we all are familiar with - I don't see much competitive advantage in tying up potential customers with searching the blogs for how this new license type works.

Could you direct me to a clear explanation or if there isn't one: how does this work, is it could based? Can I move it between users, i.e. if we start with 1 license can a few of us share it (non-concurrently)? I also see this idea of getting "keys" which seems like another made up thing. As far as I can tell I trade my "keys" for tech support? is that right? Is there any level of tech support if I run out of "keys"? All of these new terms seem like someone let a new gradurate marketing guy come up with some ideas - "forget standalone license, that's for old companies, we'll call it.... wait wait virtuosity...". The one point I will award CSI here is that on their website there is table - cloud based or perpetual license and a fee associated with each. Anyone on this forum could look at it and in 10 seconds understand the price. Having people fish through blogs to read about new subscription models doesn't seem helpful and if anything makes me nervous given the complaints on this forum about licensing issues.



What is a Virtuoso Subscription?
Every software purchase sold through virtuosity.bentley.com comes exclusively as a Virtuoso Subscription.
Beyond a 12-month auto-renewing practitioner license of Bentley software, Virtuoso Subscriptions also include “Keys” to unlock customizable training, mentoring, and consulting services.

 

[SethGuthrie]

The practitioner license was designed for those who don't need the full flexibility of dynamic pooling or the responsibility to manage alerts. It's essentially a checked-out license that can be reassigned periodically. Here are some details.

https://virtuosity.bentley.com/practitioner-licenses/

A practitioner license can be used on conjunction with other SELECT licenses too. When we started using practitioner license for RAM SBeam I wrote a step by step guide:

https://communities.bentley.com/pro...ign__wiki/54479/step-by-step-sbeam-activation

The key is just a credit for training.

 

[bookowski]

If I’m reading that correctly we can only switch users every 30 days, is that right?

That wouldn’t work. I don’t really see how any office could work around 30 day increments.

I’m not seeing other licensing options. When I go to the concept page there’s a button to buy it but it doesn’t specify the type of license so I assume it’s the practitioner? What are the other options? Can I get a cloud based license that we can move around as needed? Or how about a perpetual license? I’m really not understanding why this licensing model is so different. I’d want to start with 1 license and be able to occasionally move it around, but as needed not tied to any 30 day increments.

 

[bookowski]

And is the assigned user tied to an email or the computer, ie could I create a ramconcept@xyzengineering and whoever needs ram can login from their computer under that account? Sorry to be asking these questions on this forum but when you click the help chat it’s a useless chatbot that wants your email and phone number before it will answer questions and I can’t get anything from the website.

 

[structSU10]

for what its worth I have network licenses for all out bentley software. The virtuosity thing has always confused me but we have been with ram for a long while so I don't know how that may affect things as far as what license types are offered.