Structural Steel Design Software - Opinions? 1

[cal91]

I'm relatively new to my firm, hosting a total of 3 engineers including myself. The way they have "always done things" is the one has Sap2000 on his computer, and the other has Revit. Mr. Sap2000 creates a model on SAP (from scratch) and does the analysis/design. Mr. Revit creates a model on Revit (from scratch) to create the drawings and the coordination model.

We have a new project where we are building a steel building on top of a concrete building. We're the steel engineer and another firm is the concrete engineer, and we will need to coordinate models. They asked what program we used and I told them Sap2000. That got some chuckles to my surprise. They asked if we used RAM or ETabs, which they much preferred, and which we don't have.

This got me thinking, especially since Mr. Sap2000 is retiring soon and I will be taking his place, is Sap2000 the best program for us? We do heavy seismic steel design, and I'd like to be able to just create one model, either in Revit or the Analysis program, and just share it between the two softwares. I've looked at previous threads on this but can't find anything since 2011, which was centuries ago as far as technology is concerned. Also, why did they chuckle. Whats wrong with Sap?

 

[Celt83]

In my experience everything is terrible in the back and forth between analysis software and Revit, you end up spending more time cleaning up the mess than just doing the model changes manually in both.

SAP2000 and ETABS are pretty much the same with SAP geared more towards general analysis and includes tension/cable structure capabilities where ETABS is geared towards us building folks. If you're doing heavy seismic ETABS will be far and above the better choice over RAM. RAM is great for simple structures and not much else and their extortionary licensing practice is just best to not get roped into.

Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[JoshPlumSE]

In my experience everything is terrible in the back and forth between analysis software and Revit,

I completely agree. Though I will throw in a caveat.... If you only go one way. Say you create an ETABs first, then you can save yourself some time and energy by importing it into Revit. You'll certainly have some clean-up to do with the model. But, the problems don't occur until you start to go back and forth.

Note: I have the same opinion of the RISA-Revit link, but I have never attempted RAM + Revit.


Also, my opinion is that ETAB is more preferred over SAP for the design of commercial buildings. And, that SAP2K would be more used for bridges or industrial or general purpose FEM.

 

[UcfSE]

ETABS is story-based, and geared for buildings especially repetitive ones, much like RAM Structural. ETABS does a better job than SAP2000 with design/assessment of elements. SAP2000 is more versatile and has a ton more capabilities. For most buildings, ETABS will be much faster to work with. There's always a trade-off.

I've had the same problem with cycling between Revit and analysis.

 

[MrHershey]

ETABS and SAP are pretty much the same program. I think it's fairly easy to go back and forth between them, more details here: Link. I've used both and personally prefer ETABS for building design. SAP's got some nice features for more general analysis but ETABS is streamlined for buildings which is nice.

Personally I think RAM is hard to beat for day-to-day steel design. Think it's best on the market for composite floor design. But it's really hard to manipulate it to do anything that isn't 'standard'. Lots of tricking it into doing things. Beyond being cumbersome, having to trick a program into doing something it wasn't intended to do always makes me nervous for the accuracy of the results. For that reason, once I start doing anything unusual in steel I usually switch over to RISA or perhaps ETABS, both of which can handle a lot more general situations.

And be wary of Bentley's (publisher of RAM) licensing practices, make sure you understand exactly what they're doing. If you're that small I assume you'll only get one license. You'll want to make absolutely certain that only one person is using it at a time or they'll send you a bill every quarter that is almost as big as your yearly license.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Does no one here use RISAFloor / RISA-3D for commercial buildings?! I know I'm biased (since I was a RISA employee for 16 years). But, I'm sometimes surprised (after reading comments like MrHershey's) that he hasn't switched over to RISAFloor.

I've got no skin in the game any more. But, RISAFloor should do most of what RAM does for composite beams and steel joists and such. It doesn't have the corporate licensing headaches that he describes with RAM. And, it gives so much of the RISA-3D interaction / flexibility that he wishes RAM had.

 

[UcfSE]

We use RISA3D also. We don't have enough regular building work to justify purchasing RISA Floor, so I have not used that one.

 

[Celt83]

JoshPlum: have wanted to get out of the RAM system for awhile now big hurdle is RAM Concept which is the one saving grace of the product line that keeps us locked in because of the back and forth communication with RAM Concrete and RAM Frame. Since we have RAM SS for that it's a hard sell to not use it in favor of a another software package for steel. Looked into RISA a couple times but was never impressed with the concrete two-way slab side of things. So begrudgingly we stick with Bentley and I end up having to fight their accounting department ever quarter on false overages because their own reporting breaks if the software crashes or various other reasons like installing the software counts as "use" so god help you if all your staff installs an update within 10 minutes if you only have 1 or 2 licenses.

Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[SethGuthrie]

We (Bentley) just updated the ISM link with Revit to support 2019.

https://communities.bentley.com/pro...ki/39850/ism-revit-plugin-10-03-release-notes

We are also in the final testing our improved Connect Licensing which allows users to restrict application usage based on sign-in, set threshold alerts, etc.
I know we have been talking about it for a while, but I just went through so rigorous testing last week and it looks very promising.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Looked into RISA a couple times but was never impressed with the concrete two-way slab side of things.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail because I don't want to point fingers or burn bridges. However, I totally understand your opinion. Personally, I think the program is actually pretty good. Just not good enough to truly compete against the current versions of Concept, Adapt, and SAFE.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

We are also in the final testing our improved Connect Licensing which allows users to restrict application usage based on sign-in, set threshold alerts, etc.

That's awesome Seth! I've always thought you and Allan might have been more frustrated with Bentley's licensing issues than most of the engineers using the programs. So, it's nice to know that you'll be rolling out a true solution soon. I hope things are going well for you!

 

[Celt83]

Cal91: If you can get your mapping database set perfectly and remember not to make edits to structural members like deleting and then replacing then the ISM link to Revit is OK. Like Josh mentioned though they can really shine in that one off first pass, things always break down the more back and forth you try to do. This isn't to knock either development team its just the nature of two different databases of elements growing in size you eventually get to a point where things move or get deleted and the databases lose sync with each other.

Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[Lily_Linton]

Nice thread
I like ETABS, but I only used it on concrete buildings. I don't know but when it comes to steel structures, I trust STAAD more in doing that job. Right now i am always towards RISA as it gives etabs interface but analyzing in staad way.

 

[MrHershey]

But, I'm sometimes surprised (after reading comments like MrHershey's) that he hasn't switched over to RISAFloor.

Similar to Celt83, we stick around for Concept (though have been actively courting other options). Problem with switching to other things is more of inertia right now. I cry about Bentley's licensing stuff, but as the person who handles the IT infrastructure and software purchasing/management, I'm the one who sees the vast majority of that. End users still love it and licensing stuff doesn't move the needle for them because they don't have to deal with it.

Other fun item is since RISA got bought by a big multinational, prices have increased quite a bit. Our RISA license renewals took a 30% hike this year from what we previously paid. Looking at the subscription (not purchase anymore) cost for RISA Floor + RISA Floor ES, I'd be paying $2900 annually for a license. Bentley's Structural Enterprise only cost me about $1700 this year and includes RAM SS, RAM Concept, RAM Connection, STAAD, pretty much every piece of structural software they publish. So I have to sell to the money deciders that we should be paying 70% more for fewer capabilities and switch the software we've been using for over a decade (that really works just fine for most of our stuff). Kind of a tough sell.

So begrudgingly we stick with Bentley and I end up having to fight their accounting department ever quarter on false overages because their own reporting breaks if the software crashes or various other reasons like installing the software counts as "use" so god help you if all your staff installs an update within 10 minutes if you only have 1 or 2 licenses.

We use Sassafras Link to control our use, which has worked reasonably well. They've been very helpful getting us set up and helping troubleshoot. Just have to stay on top of making sure it's installed and you have the right amount of seats. We also made the financial decision to buy one more Bentley license than we need and then in Sassafras set our license limit to one less than we own. Total waste of money but costs us less than the chance of a QTL or wasting billable hours arguing with Bentley's accounting department every quarter. So far with this system we've received just a single QTL over the last 8-10 quarters. It was when we had a couple rogue computers not reporting to Sassafras so they were let in to software on our end when they shouldn't have been. The 'overage' as measured by Bentley was literally for ten minutes on one day but Bentley still sent us a QTL for almost $1000 and took months of back and forth to get them to waive it.

 

[271828]

I am a huge SAP2000 fan for analysis, but have struggled to implement its design features, and have given up at least for now. Similar with ETABS. If you are designing regular buildings and are not already committed to SAP2000 or ETABS, I'd go some other direction because some basic features are embarrassingly poorly implemented. For example, say you have a steel beam that has lateral braces at various locations and is unbraced otherwise. The last time I checked ETABS, it computed Cb for each segment and then used the worst Cb for each unbraced segment. In SAP2000, if you want the load distributed according to tributary width, there's no easy setting for that; you can assign load "uniform to frame," which seems like it would do this, but you still have to mess around with the shell properties. For design, you have to set up groups of members to pick from, and the process is pretty clunky. If it picks a size and you want to change, it sometimes it will seem to ignore you. The last time I checked, neither SAP2000 nor ETABS would do a decent live load reduction calculation. These fall into the "what the #@*% were they thinking?!" category.

I realize that these programs might be able to do these things correctly. If that is true, then the fact that I can have 25 years of experience and couldn't beat them into doing the design checks correctly with a reasonable amount of effort says something.

Owning a copy of SAP2000, I might try to beat it into working for design, but it would be a painful process, and I'd be watching it like a hawk after that.

At a job in the mid-90s, we had STAAD; I remember it having default values that seemed to be set by someone who was drunk at the time. Some of my students try to use STAAD in class, and they always seem to struggle, and I usually can't figure out how to help them make modifications that should take about 30 seconds. I'm not a STAAD guy, though, but then again, back to the idea that if an experienced user can't figure it out quickly, then it's probably not a problem with the user.

At my old job, we used RISA-3D (early 2000s), and it behaved sanely. I don't remember it doing anything that was just flat-out stupid like these others.

 

[Agent666]

Use ETABs if you have buildings with nice defined floor elevations, like a 20 storey office or apartment building. Its well suited to this type of work.

Use SAP2000 for structures that are not easily defined by floors. Thinking things like domes, curved roofs, etc. ETAB's really isn't setup for this type of structural form with its storey based approach.

For some reason I trust SAP2000 more than ETAB's, the engine just seems more robust/mature and I guess its more like other analysis programs than ETABs is. ETABs has definitely substantially improved in the last 10 years, but it does always seem like CSi uses their users to beta test new versions. Over the years the first vX.0.0 always seems to be initially riddled with errors, and its only by the end of the version cycle things seem to be addressed, then they do it again (review all the historic change logs for the types of things being addressed).

I never use analysis software routines directly for member design, simply don't trust the answers coming out of the black box enough, and our local codes are not well supported as well. These systems are not a substitute for never touching pen to paper, it worries me that people simply hit the button and accept that the computer output must be right (go read some posts in the analysis software sub-forums and you will see this trend in some of the posts).

We used to use Microstran which was taken over by Bentley. We got a bill for $25k the first time round, 4 quarters worth all built up and sent as one bill when it was first implemented. Came as quite a shock I can tell you. We looked at getting software to manage the licenses like MrHershey noted. However the initial cost and annual maintenance cost of this were more than simply switching to something else, another vendor offered us a banging deal to change. For about $2k we traded in out 4 Microstran licenses to 4 competitors licenses.

Boss eventually refused to pay the $25k due to the underhanded practices involved, which Bentley begrudgingly agreed to. After he had that agreement, he simply severed ties completely.

Bentley used to change your license into a perpetual license if you move off the annual maintenance subscription and you owned the perpetual licenses prior to the subscription scheme (they did it for us a few years ago, but things might have changed, this was only presented as an option once we called it quits and swore never to use their software again as we had purchased the licenses years before and had the subscription thing forced on us because of a server issue that meant we had to upgrade to a new version or something). Still have the codes they sent us for these in my email somewhere, don't think we ever registered them, never looked back once we changed vendors.

 

[Boiler106]

we are a RAM firm, currently, and trying to get out from under their fee structure/licensing system and switch to something else. Do your research on fees before you sign up with Bentley/RAM. We've gotten some very big surprise bills the past few years. Never thought we'd have to discuss software with our attorneys.

 

[southard2]

I've been using RISA 3D for steel frame analysis for years. For small projects like the ones I do it is great. I rarely do building designs over two stories so I really don't need something like RAM or SAP. My RISA 3D is now out of date but thank goodness it isn't a subscription model. I think for most small firms the cost of analysis software has gotten out of hand. I might use my RISA 3D 8 times a year and on small things.

Recently one of the local universities in my area requires all drawings to be in REVIT. I simply don't work on any projects requiring REVIT. It is like using a sledge hammer to smash a flea in most cases.

John Southard, M.S., P.E.

https://www.pdhlibrary.com/

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I'm similar to you southard, I use a non-subscription copy of RISA 3D which is slightly out of date now and was planning on getting an updated version soon but am now looking elsewhere as I don't want to be tied to an expensive subscription unless it offers some very powerful design and analysis tools.

At this point is there any 3D structural design software companies that still offer a stand-alone (non-subscription based) package? I was extremely disappointed that RISA stopped offering a stand-alone package.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/

 

[KootK]

I like IES Visual Analysis in many respects which still has non-subscription options. And, based on a recent conversation with their sales department, I get the sense that they prefer the non-subscription model too, even though they have one as an alternate. I actually prefer subscription so long as it's affordable. As far as I know, Visual Analysis is the least expensive north american options that I'd consider somewhat "serious" alternatives. I wish that it handled live load reduction but, for the smaller projects for which it excels, that's not too big of a deal. I also feel that all of the "extras" in VA are divided up into to many discrete offerings for my liking.

Initially, I chose RISA because their subscription model allowed me to legally share the software with subcontractors that I sometimes collaborate with. As it turns out, IES is very amenable to this kind of thing as well even though it's not at all apparent from their pricing models and EULA agreements. I don't want to commit IES to things that they don't publish formally but, if anyone needs inexpensive licensing that is flexible in this way, I'd highly recommend that they contact IES's sales department for a "possibilities" chat.

While I like many things about RISA, one thing that I've not particularly enjoyed is the interface. Relative to other software options, I find the interface almost a bit cartoonish. Workflow often feels non-intuitive to me and it almost feels as though it was programmed in Windows 95 and never got fully updated. This stuff probably shouldn't bother me because it's really just cosmetic. It does bother me a bit though, particularly at "real software" pricing levels.