Structural Engineering Software

[Scott Hopkins]

Is anyone currently using any the available structural engineering software packages? If so, which ones have you found to be the best? I am seriously considering relearning all of the structural design that I promptly forgot after architecture school. I would like to get to point where I am competent enough to do most of my own design and calculations. When I asked an engineer that I worked with in the past about software packages his response simply was “Software? - Garbage in – garbage out”

[gregcashen]

What kind of software...FEA, matrix analysis, lateral for timber, calc sheet? I use:

Multiframe - for steel and other metal building analysis, though, it really only has codes for steel...gotta fudge it for aluminum, as the stress design methods are totally different. But it is really easy to use and has an open API so data manipulation is easy if you are inclined to setup custom tools to parse the output. The standard output is pretty decent, though it tends to produce a lot of pages.

Woodworks - timber design, including lateral A&D of shearwall structures.

Enercalc - for calc sheet stuff...highly recommended. Makes my life easier everyday.

I would probably look at ETABS, STAAD, and ROBOT Milleneum. I would also talk to Nicolas Mangon, structural product manager for autodesk, as he has insight on what tools may work best with Revit in the future and also worked for several of the bigger structural engineering software companies, so he knows what is good and what is not. He likes 2 of those I mentioned above...dislikes 1. I'll let him tell you which are which and why. His wife works for ROBOT...so don't let him fool you there though! ;)

I also use the TJ-Beam program and the Simpson Connector Selector program regularly. I rely on the simpson pricing tool to help me decide which connections are worth spec'ing.