Tekla Structural Designer?

[tliebhold]

We are an integrated AE firm who design buildings of all shapes, sizes, locations around the country. RAM Structural System is our primary workhorse for building design, with RISA 3D, RAM Elements, etc for more specialized tasks.

I am intrigued by the possibilities of Tekla Structural Designer as a competitor/replacement/compliment to RAM SS. Does anyone have experience or reviews of this software? Its ~$7500 1st year cost is high, but annual maintenance is on the same magnitude as RAM and RISA at ~$1300.

I have read their online promotional material, and have asked some questions of our sales rep, but real world experience is, to me, a better measuring stick. Of course there is no trial version available.

TIA

 

[SethGuthrie]

I don't see a lot of structural designers using Tekla Structures, it tends to be more in the detailing realm, but it's powerful and respected software for steel detailing in particular. There is some interoperabilty with Ram SS, Elements, and Tekla via the Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) technology. A second version of the Tekla ISM plugin was released just a few months ago. So I see it as a powerful addition to the Ram products if you are trying to perform structural detailing at a level beyond what you can do in say Revit.
ProStructures is a comparable alternative.

 

[tliebhold]

Seth -
I'm referring to Tekla Structural Designer [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tekla.com/us/products/tekla-structural-designer[/url] , which absorbed Fastrak and Orion when Trimble/Tekla acquired CSC. Not Tekla Structures. They need better nomenclature for sure.

 

[bookowski]

I had posted a similar question on here a while back. I think what they were calling Orion when I posted that is now structural designer.

If I remember correctly I looked through their manual and couldn't get much out of it - no mention of creep/cracking/long term deflection in concrete, and the ridiculous video that they have on their homepage of a guy swiping his way through a vr model but no actual technical info made me think it's not that great.