tgjang Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 (edited) Hi When designing IronCAD steel structure, is there any way to make it easy for users to design like the attached video? Personally, I have used several 3D CAD and I find IronCAD's structured design the most difficult. End-users prefer easy and quick design and easy modification. Steel Structure Design.mp4 Edited March 17 by tgjang Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trialanderror Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Solidsteel is an addon that was also made for Inventor. Looks like the most advanced structure addon to any cad package that I also noticed. Inventor is very good without the Solidsteel addon. I tried using the Structured Frame also and I think it is half thought out and needs a lot of work. ZW3D is fairly complete with their Structure Module except they only have profiles in metric and it don't look easy to make profiles for Imperial system. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bertrand Kim Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Take my money Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan_S Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 We have a license of SolidSteel in our company that we can run with SolidWorks. I think you can't compare solidsteel to Structured Frame because foremost one license of Solidsteel (SaaS, five years) costs as much as a perpetual license of IronCad. Then you have to keep in mind that when you are done with your designed structure, you have to press a button called "finalize assembly" which breaks all references and replaces all geometraclly same parts with one. Solidsteel uses special internal references because other way it would not work in the fully parametric world of Solidworks. Solidsteel works only in assemblies. Structured mode is more like weldments in Solidworks. In my opion most bang for your buck you get with using IC Mechanical in Innovative mode combining some elements in structured mode as Malcolm has shown in some posts. Solidsteel is not a bad addon but considering the cost i think you get 80% of the features of it in IC at 20% of the cost. If you design much complex steelwork with weldment preparation and drawings for the individual parts and have a machine or supplier that uses DSTV file format, then Solidsteel might be a choice. Stefan 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSIMMONS Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 I use the steel catalog and build reliefs and bolt pattern manually from standard ASCE profiles. It sounds slow, but I knock out an entire structure in a day sometimes (the geometry, not the analysis). Then usually the next day I will rebuild in a software called RAM elements by a company called Bentley and run all my codes and Civil Engineering loads etc. to make sure it passes all modern (ASCE 7-16 in ASD, not LFRD because I make large support structures for bays of machinery mostly and not sky scrapers etc.) codes based on geographic location (historical winds, snow if applicable, historical earthquake data, etc.) and I can honestly say I have zero complaints about the speed or anything. I am a Mechanical Engineer so I know those of you that actually took Civil Engineering should find it easy after a bit of practice. Side Note: if you are doing the design AND civil parts use this website, it is a real time saver. I used to use textbook maps until I eventually double checked a million times and they always matched. https://ascehazardtool.org/ -Spencer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgjang Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 (edited) Thank you very much. Ttialanderror, Stefan, Simmons, Kim. My main objective is to make sure that IronCAD has a high ROI for the companies that adopt it, so that they sell it to users. Many people say that IronCAD has a low barrier to entry but a very steep learning curve, and it is criticized for its lack of feature extensibility, steel structure features (Structure, Weldment, 3D Curve creation...) and convenience when using Structured Mode. It would be nice to see more development in Structured Modeling and CAXA than ICD in the future. I am grateful to several members of the IronCAD Community for giving me informative information and especially to Malcolm. Despite being very busy with his work, Malcolm is grateful to have generously informed him of the many alternatives and the knowledge he has accumulated. In Korea, there are especially many plant, heavy industry, and shipbuilding companies, and I think IronCAD should be provided to them as an alternative CAD to AutoCAD. Thanks. Edited March 24 by tgjang Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.