Which software for rebar, formwork and steel works do you recommend or use ?

[JoeH78]

Dear All,

I'd like to hear from you colleagues, what is the software you use for structural steel, formwork and rebar detailing and which one do you recommend? I personally prefer Autocad structural detailing, but still seems that there is so many bugs.

Regards,

 

[JoeH78]

Dear All,

I really will appreciate your guidance,

Regards,

 

[JAE]

We use Autocad. Not sure what you man by bugs...there aren't any significant bugs in it.


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[JoeH78]

Hi JAE,

AutoCAD really became as milestone over the years for digital drawing industry, but having the robustness, expediency and versatilty with software tools industry itself(from client point of view) became more and more demanding in terms of providing the details. So IMHO AutoCAD is good but remains plain if you don't use any plugins which may simplify the drawing because drawing all of details such as reinforcement bending length, hook length etcc., stirrups and all this details again in elevation and cross sections is bit of mundane task and requires to some extent an automation. If you don't use that automation I think that it really may waste all of your manhours or may require you to hire CAD operator crew to handle the job.

Based on the facts above, I personally prefer slightly modified version of AutoCAD which is named Autocad Structural Detailing, it really is very powerfull and almost one-man-army for formwork, reinforcement and steel drawings but its quite unstable, crashes unreasonably and I'm afraid that Autodesk has stopped developping it.

So I wonder what other collegues are using all over the world for detailing, your comments will be appreciated,

Regards,

 

[JAE]

I would say that in the building design arena in the US, Autocadd and Revit are probably the most used products.

Some firms augment that with Tekla, SDS/2, or other detailing programs as well.



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[HermanJordaan]

We use Autocad Structural Detailing for rebar. It's a pretty versatile and easy-to-use program.

 

[JoeH78]

Thank You both JAE and Herman Jordan,

@HermanJordan: In some cases it is required to draw 1:20 scale column application, on 1:50 scale axis grid and dimension the column offset appropriately, how do you achieve that in AutoCAD Structural DEtailing ? Because AFAIK there is not any automated way of doing it.

Regards,

 

[jayrod12]

You draw everything 1:1 and then use layouts and viewports to scale things accordingly.

If you use annotative text and dimensioning properly each viewport will only show the text that you specify for that scale. It's rather slick.