Ram Elements vs STAAD PRO - Should I battle to get other another brand of Software 1

[Bodgy Engineer]

Hi All,

Firstly, id like to say I'm sort of stuck with Bentley systems. Unless I put a lot of effort in to convince others, and will likely take a long time.

Secondly, I have used STAAD a little, but cannot get over the horrendous user interface / work routine. I remember the first time I used it, getting the program to analyse a simply supported beam was a 15 minute odyssey!!!!


I really like the ram elements user interface, and general functionality. The only problem is, it is incomplete and Bentley do not seem to really prioritise it's development. They instead prioritise Staad!!!! ( I think it's a sunk cost mentality (from the user's of STAAD that is))

I don't really want to swap from Ram Elements, given the interoperability with Concept and SS, and it will be bitter pill to swallow when they finally develop Ram Elements to it's full potential (limited design codes, function's missing).


If I were to switch, what's the best alternative? I think Spacegass is very similar to Ram Elements, in terms of interface and workflow. I think it's more mature, and has more functions closer to STAAD, but without the horrendous interface.

Further to the point above, i need something easy to learn. We are likely to have junior staff come and leave, so a intuitive interface / workflow is a must.

I mostly model the following

[ul]
[li]free standing Structural steel - with spread footing analysis[/li]
[li]Industrial buildings - Tilt up, Steel, Suspended slabs[/li]
[li]Lattice towers and other lattice type structures[/li]
[/ul]

Most of the stuff is fairly simple, but there can be a bit of bulk to it.

Cheers

 

[JAE]

Have you looked at RISA?

 

[Celt83]

RAM Elements is one of the cheaper options it is also pretty easy to learn and comes with some nice one off calculation modules.

Does your firm use Revit? If so see if you have the AEC collection as that grants all licenses access to Robot which is pretty good as a an analysis tool.

IES Visual Analysis is another low cost option that is pretty easy to pickup.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

There are various pros and cons with sticking with what others in the company use:
Pros:
You look like a team player
The company doesn't have to lay out any new money.
You get to develop skills with a program you haven't used much before.

Cons:
You will be less efficient in the short term.


The real answer depends on how much of the value you bring to your job depends on your efficiency working with an analysis program. If that's the PRIMARY role you're expected to fill, then you should definitely be begging for whatever program you're most efficient with.

If there are things that your preferred program does that the others just can't do that will make you're company more profitable, then you should push for it. I mean that if there are projects / customers you can bring to the company because of it, then that's a strong argument. Maybe it's an analysis feature, maybe it's better integration with some CAD or BIM program.

Maybe you can demonstrate that the other program will cost a lot less in the long term. That's a good argument as well.... though it is tough to be a fortune teller like that. Who knows which company is going to force you to switch to a new licensing plan that will cost your company more money.

 

[Bodgy Engineer]

[ Have you looked at RISA?/quote] I had a quick look. That's something I'm after, but doesn't seem to have much Australian Code.

After all this time, there still seem to be plenty of opportunity in the software market.

 

[human909]

After all this time, there still seem to be plenty of opportunity in the software market

SkyCiv and Clearcalcs are two cloud based Australian software companies that are: trying to take advantage of that opportunity. Clearcalcs is more targetting basic residential calcs, I haven't tried SkyCiv.

Australia is a relatively small market so the desire to add AS code support hasn't always been there.

Plus there are some very well established tools in Australia that are hard to knock off their perch.

Personally I find Spacegass pretty simple to use. The interface is antiquated (Windows 3.1) but it is an effective piece of software.

For the steel industrial structures, that I spend most of my design time doing, it is great. It has non linear analysis, bucling, member code checks and connection design that covers most cases.

 

[milkshakelake]

I used STAAD for a few years. Used some other FEM software since then, like IES Visual Analysis and ETABS. (I haven't used RAM Elements.) The grand winner for me is anything except STAAD. STAAD is very difficult to use and takes a lot of training for employees.

 

[Bodgy Engineer]

The grand winner for me is anything except STAAD. STAAD is very difficult to use and takes a lot of training for employees.

That's what I arrived at. I'm still bewildered why thy perserve with it as the primary application. I'd be trying to move users to a better interface / work flow (Ram Elements etc.). The horrendous learning curve of Staad is not compatible, when you may only have a grad for a year or two. That combined with the fact that we aren't using it daily, it's a non starter.

SkyCiv and Clearcalcs are two cloud based Australian software companies that are: trying to take advantage of that opportunity. Clearcalcs is more targetting basic residential calcs, I haven't tried SkyCiv.

Yeah i did see that. It's looking promising, although it does not look mature at this point in time.

Australia is a relatively small market so the desire to add AS code support hasn't always been there.

Yes, is a bit of an issue. Although, plenty of slab software(RAM concept) has been coded to AS, which is a lot more effort, then say a simple pad footing module.
All the ASI standard connection's have been coded in.


So, I'll finish my whinge, by saying they could have a great program in Ram elements, if they actually developed it. That's instead of developing a program that I'm never going to contemplate using.

 

[TLHS]

STAAD has a place in the market for analysis of arbitrary, generally non-building, structures. They really just seem to be working hard to recommend though. It used to be one of the cheaper pieces of software out there. It was a bit rough and dirty but it had a heck of a lot of analysis features even though you had to battle a bit to figure them out. Now it's expensive, rough and dirty, and has a tacked on physical modelling thing that isn't usable with other features of the software a bunch of the time.

Like, the damned thing is still basically just a plan text file fired into an analysis engine. You can actually do a lot of funky stuff quickly if you understand it, but the documentation is pretty meh and it's got so many legacy quirks that it's really hard to get people into. Weirdly, I think it's still probably an okay solution if you've got a pretty stable team and the core of it is familiar. If you're used to it, there's actually really quick ways to work with lots of it. It's just not obvious.

If you're quickly expanding or have consistent turnover, it feels like a liability because you really need to be on top of people for quite a while to make sure they aren't accidentally doing something dangerous because they don't know they need to set some random design engine variable. As a checker it's really frustrating having to have conversations like "I know you set a material property and it says 350MPa, but the code check module isn't going to see that, you need to set a code check variable or it will pick a default value without throwing an error"

There's not a right answer for software, though. It's a huge balancing act of cost, simplicity of throwing a reasonable production model together, availability of complex analysis tools, projected future cost/availability and ease of reporting.

 

[CrabbyT]

I use RAM nowadays, but I used to use RISA 3D to design lattice towers. I really liked the fact that, in addition to "tension only" and "compression only", RISA has a 3rd option which is "Euler buckling". It's really useful for things like tension only X-bracing. Basically, it allows the member to take compression up to its Euler buckling limit. Once it hits that limit, I believe the FEM solver pulls it out of the stiffness matrix and doesn't allow it to contribute any additional stiffness to the model.

The only thing I didn't really care for with RISA was the layout. It doesn't seem to bother most people, but I just never got the hang of it, even after a year of daily use. I had high hopes with the revised interface, and it was an improvement, but I still found it challenging to develop muscle memory. I ended up resorting to AutoHotKey to create keyboard shortcuts, which wound up being a pretty good work-around. I also put stickers on the right side of my monitor so I could find things like the "nodal coordinates" button without having to read through several items on the Explorer.

For comparison sake, I prefer RAM's dedicated spreadsheet approach over RISA's pop-up dialog approach. I feel like RAM does a better job at compartmentalizing all the functions of their software like a nested doll, whereas RISA felt more like a scavenger hunt.

On that note, if anyone at RISA reads this, I think your program would be way nicer if you implemented the following changes.

[ul]
[li]Allow the button layout in "Explorer" to be customized (for example, I'd like "nodal coordinates" to be the very first button)[/li]

[li]Allow the user to insert a passive gray line to separate certain buttons from others in the Explorer (for instance, all the buttons I rarely use could be grouped together and placed towards the bottom of the explorer)[/li]

[li]Color code the last-clicked button in the explorer (for instance, if I click "Node Coordinates", maybe RISA could highlight it green until I click a different button)[/li]
[/ul]

 

[milkshakelake]

I like ETABS myself. The reason I didn't recommend it is because it has a long way to go in terms of usability. It's gotten better with general meshing features, but it's still not there yet. It's at least a hundred times more usable than STAAD, but it takes years of experience to learn how to eliminate errors. I've been with support many times to get little issues resolved, like loads not transferring properly. It's incredibly powerful and you can make it do pretty much whatever you want to (which is why I use it over the other FEM suites I've used in the past), but still takes a while to train people on how to use it because of its many quirks.