It’s a good time to be a Structural Engineer! Featured

Read our interview with Joshua Taylor, PE (CA, WA), Senior Director of Product Management and Jana Miller, Senior Manager, Structural Analysis Product Marketing from Bentley Systems discussing about exciting developments in 2023 and their expectations for the upcoming year.

Could you discuss what transpired in 2023 and share your anticipations for the upcoming year?

ADINA is one of the things that we are really excited about. It was April 2022 when we closed the acquisition and we've been studying it in more detail. The exciting issue is between our existing products and ADINA. We have exports to ADINA from STAAD.Pro, RAM Structural System and SACS Offshore Structure. And this is step one.

See how to send a STAAD.Pro model to ADINA for further analysis.

Step 1 was the 2023 release version of ADINA.

Yes, this was the first year. We’ve been naming convention of products since 2020, with a support policy that goes along with that is now very clear how far back we support the resolution. There is a major release each year, that includes new features, security updates, identified vulnerabilities and patches. This provides clarity and consistency across our products. Our users can easily recognize their version and our commitment to announcing major releases on an annual basis.

What are the problems you are expecting to solve with ADINA and the connection with other Bentley software?

There's a lot of problems we could solve, since ADINA provides us with the ability to model, to simulate what happens once something becomes damaged. Deformations can become extreme, which generally has been outside the scope of the rest of Bentley Structural software. We are in the process of prioritizing and making sure we solve the right problems first. There has been and continues to be a lot of talking with our users about how they use the links between our software. This is our next phase.

We always make sure to respond to requests from our users. For example, in 2023, through RAM Connection, for the first time we released all the tests that our developers used internally prior to the release of the software and our users can use them themselves. When they get a new version, they can now hit a button, which runs all those tests, and they can see the reports that say how far off their answers are to the benchmark. They can test themselves to make sure that the release is qualified. Instead of manual testing that may take weeks, now engineering companies can quickly test and certify the release. This was a direct request from our users.

This link between different Bentley software families is something that we also noticed on your Going Digital Awards in Infrastructure finalists in the past years. Any comments on the projects presented?

Before engineers preferred to use the desktop, where now there is shift towards cloud-based software, which makes the integration between different software and platforms like iTwin easier. We're continuing to push the link, and I really like the fact over the past couple of years we really simplified how that works. In each one of our products now, whether it's RAM, STAAD or SACS, they all have a dialog that looks the exact same product, and it says push and pull. So, we have a great bidirectional link between them.

2023 was a STAAD year, and that is interesting because we hadn’t had a STAAD winner since 2018. 2023, was also the first time in a few years that we didn't have a building as one of the finalists. It was unique in that respect. It was very diverse from the product standpoint.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) by Hyundai Engineering stood out.  They used STAAD and they architected their own solution. They had Bentley’s technical and programming support all the way, on specific requests during the execution of the project.

Furthermore, the way L&T Construction approached the design of the new wastewater treatment plant in New Delhi. They excelled in the 3D model element analysis of the project, where in the past simple approaches were used instead. They were really interested in understanding the roof of the structure and identifying the hot spots. We expect more facilities in the future to be designed using a 3D model analysis, as engineers seem to understand the significant benefits and information they receive, and they are willing to get out the most of their 3D models. This was a showcase project on how to work on similar projects more effectively.

There is also high concern in minimizing the amount of carbon high materials. Structural engineers are willing to go into more depth detail in their analysis and move to greater lengths. We saw this with the Unity project in 2022, where they made some great observations and had some great results with the help of Bentley software. Now with RAM Concept engineers can utilize the cloud to optimize material design through genetic algorithms. In the past engineers would need to specify by hand their design, which requires many variables and space. Our new approach saves a significant amount of material and 10% on what the engineer would have designed by hand.

How is sustainability and the green energy initiative affecting structural engineers?

The green energy initiative is a catalyst of new categories of structures emerging that you don't have a lot of history for yet. If you look at a building, you know you've had steel and concrete buildings going up for decades. We know how they behave. There's an inherent safety. On the other hand, we’re still trying to figure out how exactly offshore wind turbines or solar farm structures are behaving. To that respect the focus is on structural engineering because there's going to be a whole new hardware involved in these structures. It's a good time to be a Structural Engineer!