today I'll be going through the main software used in the structural engineering field
if you stick around to the end i'll give my top five softwares that'll help improve your design
workflow improve your design efficiencies and just make engineering plan enjoyable these are not the
standard softwares you've heard before so please stick around at the end to find out what they are
my name is Brendan your engineer based in australia and i produce videos that help grow
your career both technically and professionally so if you do like that please subscribe
there's a variety of software's out there and not every software is made best for its task so it's
worth knowing what they are and what's the best way to try and utilise these software and these
are generally breakdown into a number of different categories these are either lateral design
slab design frame design or elemental design there is other softwares out there but these are
more replacing hand computations and not really imparting the benefit of computational analysis
so how about lateral design there's a software called etabs that is the main software used
in the industry today this is an FE analysis that allows you to model a whole building
so you can design the slabs the columns and the walls etabs is relatively simple
to use and all i use it for is exporting the lateral forces outside that structure
i use other softwares to design the other element inside that structure all i'm really using this
software for is to get the lateral forces out it's really where it shines another software that i
use day in day out is wrapped in ram concept now what is wrapped rapt is really a simplified slab
designs module that makes designing of concrete structures really simple it does both RC and
PT design with a simple interface you quickly oversee where your stresses are where you need
your reinforcement and how to play with tendons so through this i'm able to quickly iterate where my
drapes should be by pulling them up or down and seeing how it's imparting inside the structure i
generally do a couple of wrap runs before applying it to a more complicated software like ram concept
ram concept is a program developed by bentley that allows for the 3d analysis of flat plate slabs
he does both similar to wrap both post tensioning and rc design but it allows you to work
inside that 3d space as you can see here we're spinning around a 3d model of side of structure
so we're able to model steps and folds so we're able to drape drape our tendons through inside
our structure it's really simple to use and really where you spend most of your time is both modeling
the reinforcement and the post-tensioning inside your structure and setting up your design strips
hence i said you first start off with wraps so you can have your first guess of what
post-tensioning you need and by starting off with the simplified program like wrap you're able to
check whether your model is behaving correctly as well where you listen to spending most of
your time with a program like ramp concept you're setting up your design strips so if your design
strips are not set up correctly you can really produce garbage results so where your column
strips and middle strip should be is where you should be setting for design strips frame design
there's a number of different softwares that can be utilised there's a microstrand stad spacegas
or skyciv I'll be mentioning this glossier later in this episode the one I'm currently going to
mention now is space gas this is currently what I use quite a lot space case allows you to easily
frame up a steel frame structure modeling all the portal frames sway frames and still
still design so generally where do i use this type of software is in a side a still frame structure
where your concrete structures which are relying on shear walls, I generally use a program like
etabs where these big steel frame structures which is where etabs doesn't model so well
i'm generally using a program like this to model the behavior inside that structure
this will not only allow you to design the members but also their connections as well when you need
to draw more detail than else of a single element or the vibrational assessment of a side structure
this is where strand 7 or sap comes into play sap is a program offered by csi and is really specific
for that more detailed assessment oversized that he tabs which is general building modelling
sap allows you to model individual elements and really drill down on that inside the assessment
similar to strand seven strand seven allows you to really drill down on how internal
stress inside that structure so if you need to look at the stress inside an element or joint
that's where strand seven really comes into play another program that is more elemental design is safe
safe is more designing for your raft slabs it allows you to link up to the forces coming out
of etabs to design that raft this is really where it comes into play is designing the rough supports
as it allows for spring actions and liftoff loads with the move to a paperless design no list would
be complete without mentioning bluebeam so where does bluebeam is a major pdf editor adopted by the
industry today there's a number of cover features where you can utilize it to calculate areas
you can do it to do counts on products you can also manipulate drawings to get our drawings
sometimes you'll be doing editing in pdf to modify drawing that's already been released
just so you've got comments on it you can modify that drawing to get answers back quickly
now as promised i'm going to give my top five engineering softwares
now number five is Skyciv this is a software I've just started playing around with so what
is Skyciv it really replaces my space gas that i was talking about earlier so why do I replace this
over spacegas it allows you to have a cloud-based analysis of frame elements so if you know this
critical answer inside a meeting you're able to utilize scholarship to get those answers quickly
and through making an API call is you can automate this through say in excel or other
programs to call those API's get the answers that you need Skyciv allows you to design not
only steel sections but also concrete sections as well and will also do basic wind design as well
to a number of different codes another benefit of Skyciv is that it's not really a black box
like many other softwares are it allows you to drill down on the computations of every design
as you can see here it's got full working examples of how they've got to the answers they've got to
so what factors they've used out of the code and what type types of codes they've also used
skyscraper also has the broad range of designs as I said earlier so you can do either timber design
concrete design even steel design so that's some of the benefits you have from using this software
and some of the big aspects as I was saying is really that API and this not being the black
blocks like many other softwares are number four now this is mathcad so where do I utilize
mathcad this really replaces hand computations and where we should be doing a bulkier design
mathcad should be getting more and more popular with the push to go paperless
and as it is invaluable it is allows you to produce a dynamic spreadsheet
that that you can see all the working out so as you can see here you've got every variable
working across you so it's exactly like a hand computation in the way it's laid out
so this is where I really receive any of those single calculations that you're doing so if you're
just calculating a wall a column or floor is a singular element something like mathcad is better
is that you need to work out what the answers are you work through by hand if you're displaying to
someone they can actually work out the process you went through to get to that answer now a couple of
things you need to know when you're starting to use mathcad that will help you out so if you need
a greek symbol the command control g will change that letter into the equivalent greek symbol
if you needed your subscript that's just control minus that will give you a subscript
or forward slash that will be square root at the moment you can only do subscripts when
you're defining a variable it doesn't allow you to do superscripts just something to watch out
for when you're defining your variables when you need to design that variable you need to use colon
you can not just as equal as that will equal the function that you're trying to equate to
so to define that variable you write the variable four then use colon to define it
so this program basically replaces a lot of different softwares that are out there
that just do these single standalone answers but as it's not a black box as you've had to write
it from scratch and laid it out efficiently you know exactly what's happening what the answers
are and how you got there and it's really easy for someone else to check as well so if you're also
trying to show off to your managers it also looks impressive because there's a very neat example of
a computation so you can spend a little bit of time to make it look neat and impressive
and then you can use it multiple times as it is a dynamic in nature number three now this is excel
i feel that most people use excel incorrectly as i generally use it like as what i was mentioning
that I use Mathcad for as excel has cells in there they can be hidden you don't necessarily
know what each cell is calculating so they can be errors inside your spreadsheet that
is easily missed over so where should i utilise excel utilize excel for its big database so it
allows you to pull data in from other areas and process that to other into other elements as well
so where I utilize excel is both processing data in and out so using it as a database transfer
but also for using it to prototype design workflows which I'll talk about later
so people are using excel incorrectly so you can also, benefit from utilizing the VBA script through
utilizing the VBA script you can really unlock more of the power of computing through doing
that mass calculations you're able to increase your design efficiencies through processing
from from a design analysis software into excel so where do I see the bigger benefits in using excel
it's from pulling the answers out of a design analysis software post-processing and designing
inside excel then pushing it out to a rivet type software now this is where the biggest problem is
happening as you'll soon find out eventually you will break excel as you'll be going through that
design workflow you pull so much data into excel you'll make it take so long to run for example I
had one software where he ran and it took hours to run it came up with the right answer but if
I've got to walk through a computer from for hours it's really the incorrect software to be used here
so as I said earlier I use this to prototype my designs as if I see a design workflow that
works really efficiently i can really drill down and build the interface out
before spending a lot of time developing any other programs which I'll mention it later
number two now this is Rhino with Grasshopper this is really where the joy of engineering occurs
it's also a light way to move into programming as well so where's the benefit of rhino
as you can see with rhino it's very much a way of transferring geometries between elements what it
also allows you to do is also link up different element software so if you have a geometry coming
out of one area, you're able to post it post process through a program like Rhino Rrasshopper
there's also an edition that's coming out soon released by Rhino which is called rhino inside
what this allows you to do is link directly up to your ribbit model for those who don't know Revit
this is the main engineering software that we use for drafting purposes especially in the 3D space
so you're able to grab that model that you've got from the architect and post all the geometries
straight out of that model to get you your analysis to your analysis of as quick as possible
what also allows you to do is link up a number of different software so if you're pulling answers
out of one software into another because it's got different modules that people are built on you can
grab these from this location one tip when you're using grasshopper with rhino he's going to a place
called food for rhino now what this is it's this it's a forum where people have released either
paid or free free to use modules that help you utilize the power of grasshopper more efficiently
so it's a place to go you can get these modules you have to install and they have little elements
in there as you can see it's really a soft way to generate into programming language as well as you
got these little batteries as they call them which are these little modules that have inputs and
outputs and you have the strings going from them so you can see the flow of data through the system
and and again as it's not as it's not a single-use sometimes it would be but a lot of time you can
write scripts that would be used multiple times over and over again
to get you better answers so you can spend a bit of time to make something a bit more
user-friendly and make it more variable across other projects because you can utilize it over and
over again so as you can see here you can really pull out the geometries outside of a structure
passing geometry in from from a program called Revit and passing it out to a design where
it really benefits here as well is when you need to show off your design to an architect
or someone that's not engineering-based as you're able to use that graphic interface to explain the
problems that you're having with inside your structure there's really a powerful tool for
both displaying design problems analyzing it and passing geometries in and out number one now this
is python it's a programming language this is really a game changer for structural engineers
most people come across this is when they break excel they try to pull too much data through that
excel software it hasn't crashed but it's taken way too long to run and say there's
got to be efficient way so most people come across trying to do a programming language
such as python because of the way that they're trying to process data from one example I had
a program that took hours and hours to run i parted ported it to python over a weekend
and that one process that was taking hours to run was now seconds this is really a benefit
from where python is driven from it's a big data processing system so it not only allows you to
overcome the bottlenecks of excel you can also automate those repetitive tasks so you've got
something that's going over and over again to check something especially in iterative design
you can port that into a program like python python is also a software that you're able
to strap onto programs like etabs as there is an API call that you can program into python
to get out those repetitive tasks you can pull the forces all the way out from from your etabs
port them into your design and even port them straight out to a rivet type software
ram content is also about to come up with an API that can be programmed through python
so what this will allow us to do in the future is do our load run downs more efficiently through
porting it through that api and programming it out to the other situation now i'll go back to
my my design so there was one design where I had an etabs design that we had critical load cases
so what i did it what i used python 4 was to find the most efficient design i i needed on one tower
I had 72 win cases so if I had to calculate more think about all the processing power I needed
so in python, I was able to filter out all these critical cases design it up into the critical
loads and just really drill it down to the critical cases for my design there thus reducing
the amount of computing power that I actually needed now some of my tips for trying to learn
learn a program like python firstly try and build standalone modules so just for that element just
to do one thing so whether it's just calculating the moment capacity of something it's working out
where your reinforcement is build standalone modules so they can build on top of each other
what this also allows you to do if you're building out these modules you can pull these out and use
them in other areas as well there's a really good form out there called stack overflow as well
what this allows you to do is to ask questions out there it's an amazing community that will try and
help you out most time you may be able to find your answer without even asking it so if you get
stuck if you're searching on for stack overflow to find those answers if the answer is not out there
you can always ask inside that forum you'll find someone that will really there to help you
out it's really a great community of open source software and people are always willing to help and
when you're starting out as well there's another program called Colabs this is offered by google
it's a free cloud based python interface for both writing and running scripts as this cloud-based if
you're out and about you can still run it if need be if you've written it efficiently and Collabs
also allows to have multiple people working on the same script at the same time so you can
collaborate more easily especially across space which is even more important in today's society
another area which I strongly recommend if you're getting into a cider programming language
is looking at version control there are services out there like github that allows you to do this
I'm sure if you've written a lot of excel design sheets you've always come across this
where's where you've updated the excel sheet but you potentially haven't updated it somewhere so
you're always coming back to try and find that updated spreadsheet and sometimes when you do that
update you have broken something so thus you need to revert back and you have that bane of saving
over that one design spreadsheet and instead of versioning it properly where github allows you to
roll back that change so really look at version and control so when you're just starting out
yes I would focus you towards excel so you can get a feel of how you play and manipulate data
but I would encourage you to try and learn more like a programming language like python
as it really will unlock the pro processing capacities of your computer now as I said I
use excel to try and prototype those design workflows to manipulate and play around so i
can throw it to other people quite easily through like a beta type situation or an alpha as you as
you might like to call it where they play around with it see whether it breaks or whether whether
I like it where they don't before I spend the time to programming it in a program like python
and python is really where all the efficiencies happen in excel as it reduces those repetitive
tasks it allows you to pull those designs and process data allows you to copy from one area
and process out the other it's really where you can start to enjoy engineering as it reduces
those repetitive tasks you can spend more time on the things you like spending more time on those
critical design elements such as shear walls or or outriggers or mega column designs focusing
where you should be spending your time instead of those tasks that are just time-consuming
so what do you think about the software i mentioned in the top five that i have do you
have any do you think should also be in the top five please comment below and if you did like this
video please like comment subscribe look forward to seeing you next week that's number three
number three