Structural Engineering Software

[nicholi]

I think its time for an updated discussion on what's available for structural engineering software. I did some thread searches that went back to 2000 and 2001 and there is nothing current.

Our firm is looking to update its software, we currently use TEDDS, The Calculation Pad for Professional Engineers (old version 4.2). Can someone make some recommendations and comparisons. Our firm is involved in primarily simple structures of steel, wood and concrete. Is there any recent literature that one can refer to in this research? Also, a preference would for the ability to set the default to CDN codes. Thanks in advance for the advice and I look forward to a lively discussion.

 

[umgrego2]

We use RISA 3-D and Ansys at our office. Risa is a low-cost yet effective FEM program that we use primarily for modelling steel and wood frames. It has a plate option that can be used for concrete, but it is limited so we try and use Ansys as much as possible for concrete.

Risa is easy to use and has a nice little option of resizing steel elements to provide the most efficient piece available. We use it for CDN codes analyis and it seems to work fine for that.

As for non-FEM software, we use Mathcad for setting up calculation sheets for specialty applications. Very user-friendly, and it keeps track of the units and tells you when you've done something wrong.

 

[JAE]

RISA and RAM are both good products at reasonable costs.

 

[AJUK]

I don't know which country your in but I would recommend Masterseries, CADS or LUSAS.

http://www.masterseries.co.uk

http://www.cads.co.uk

http://www.lusas.com

I have done a lot of research into this area and tried many different packages. Unfortunaely, I doubt there is no one package that will fulfill all of your needs.

 

[haynewp]

I think everyone should have Enercalc.