rebar and AECOsim

Hi,

This is more of a general question.

Does anyone have any experience dealing with rebar in ABD? I know that using STAAD it’s possible to draw the rebar in ABD, but I’m using FEM programs outside of bentley. So far I didn’t find any way of drawing the rebar in ABD, is this possible? I've also looked at Power Rebar, but it doesn’t work very good with the Dynamic Views so I have to drop them to a normal drawing and lose the interactive part of it. 

Any ideas?

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  • What do you want to do? Simple 2D rebar drawings, or 3D?
  • Whatever can be considered best practice.

    I'm not entirely sure, but from what I've seen from programs like power rebar or autocad structural detailing, they are simple when it comes to drawing the 2D and have some tools to extract quantities and produce rebar reports. If that's the case the only advantage I see in having 3D is being able to use clash detection, which is only really useful in some more complicated detailing situations.

    I'm not sure about the update of the rebar if there is any geometry change to the concrete elements doe. From my experience, power rebar and DV don't go very well together. PR needs simple elements to work - the concrete faces have to be lines, arcs, etc. The DV's produce cells (or something like that) and I have to merge all the attaches and drop the geometry to simpler elements to be able to work with PR. This makes the drawing dumb and any update to geometry means repeating the process and making PR also dumb.
    If 3D would improve on this problems would be good, but I think that may be a little bit of a stretch to the ABD capacities. At least for now.
  • We are in the beginning of a process of switching from 2D to 3D modelling of reinforcement. We have tested both Revit and Tekla, and have did also a couple of meetings with other companies in the same situation as we are. We went Tekla, as it seems to be the most mature 3D software for reinforcement drawings. Revit doesn't have anything useful yet - or as the Revit guys I have talked to are saying: "The latest releases are not as hopeless as they used to be".

    My personal opinion right now I can't really say that 3D reinforcement is a big gain.

    It is very good when it comes to simple, geometric objects like beams, columns, foundations and so on. For those purposes there are predefined, parametric objects which are extremely fast to use.

    The story is different for non standard objects like slabs with a difficult geometry. Here you end up doing very much manually.

    Another thing is that in 3D you more or less have to do the job twice. First modelling everything in 3D, and then do the layout in a 2D drawing.

    When doing 2D reinforcement drawings, you do the job just once.

    As for the moment, I'd assume that we use 20-40% more time doing 3D reinforcement drawings as we were doing 2D. But of course we are just at the very beginning of the implementation.
  • Hi Pedro,

    ABD (and Structural Modeler before it) were not designed with Rebar as a requirement.   And to be honest, in the years I've been at Bentley, actual 3D modeling of Rebar has pretty much been a non-factor.  That's why it was designated as a detailing feature instead when originally introduced a few years back.   However, it will read Rebar data when importing from analysis packages where it is a requirement. 

    FWIW, the Structural side of ABD goes beyond being an expansion of Architecture: Structural data properties, analysis and design parameters, shared MDB section databases (from STAAD.Pro), ISM, non-analysis translations such as CIS/2 and SDNF, Spreadsheet reporting, Structural Drawing Rules, etc.   All of these have no real counterpart on the Architectural side, nor should they!    :)



  • Ahaha. Ok Steve, fair enough. But I have to say, working in the structural field, particularly with concrete, I want a part of the action in AECOsim. Detailing takes a very big part in the whole process and I think it would be nice to see AECOsim going that way. By this I mean to have some sort of manual input like ProConcrete. The results of the analysis programs are ok but in the end, we want more control over the detailing.
  • Hopefully, whatever app you use will have the mods to deal with the local code / drawing standard and will not require the users or volunteer groups to 'localise' the package.

    On London Bridge Station, one of our subcontractors are using tekla for the main columns and pile cap. They seem pretty happy with going 3d.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8X-v0R3oXk

    In fact, our main steelwork and precast façade contractor are also Tekla users.

    Productivity:

    Probably very difficult to quantify. Here is Bentley's tentative estimates of the gains... to tempt existing 2d users to switch.

    http://louisianacivilengineeringconference.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Alex_Mabrich_Advantages_of_Using_3D_Models.26885427.pdf

    A lot of large engineering firms have outsourced rebar detailing to their offshore offices in India et al. I see a lot of small and medium sized firms having to go 3d in the hopes of reducing costs long term.

    I think that as the rest of the BIM model goes 3d, I can't see rebar being left behind. https://youtu.be/9phajBQp_-U?t=270 At some point, installers will want to coordinate inserts, cast in ducts/pipes with the reinforcement.... even for small to medium sized jobs.

    Allplan's take on the advantages:

    https://youtu.be/iTPBV7BvHYI?t=1690

    Surely, one of the biggest factors affecting productivity will be the analysis <> design connection. How would you transfer the load/stress information? It seems that something like ISM will be needed whether you use Tekla or whatever. I suppose Allplan has its connection to SCIA.

    IFC: does IFC transfer load\stress information?

    The other aspect that users will be worried about is transferring and using their detail libraries. Not sure but I don't get the impression that there are many available libraries online but this will change.

    Automated drawing extraction. yea, I think this would be a big worry. A lot of switchers will take a lot of time finding out how to get what they want out of the system you adopt. Localisation will be key.

Reply
  • Hopefully, whatever app you use will have the mods to deal with the local code / drawing standard and will not require the users or volunteer groups to 'localise' the package.

    On London Bridge Station, one of our subcontractors are using tekla for the main columns and pile cap. They seem pretty happy with going 3d.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8X-v0R3oXk

    In fact, our main steelwork and precast façade contractor are also Tekla users.

    Productivity:

    Probably very difficult to quantify. Here is Bentley's tentative estimates of the gains... to tempt existing 2d users to switch.

    http://louisianacivilengineeringconference.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Alex_Mabrich_Advantages_of_Using_3D_Models.26885427.pdf

    A lot of large engineering firms have outsourced rebar detailing to their offshore offices in India et al. I see a lot of small and medium sized firms having to go 3d in the hopes of reducing costs long term.

    I think that as the rest of the BIM model goes 3d, I can't see rebar being left behind. https://youtu.be/9phajBQp_-U?t=270 At some point, installers will want to coordinate inserts, cast in ducts/pipes with the reinforcement.... even for small to medium sized jobs.

    Allplan's take on the advantages:

    https://youtu.be/iTPBV7BvHYI?t=1690

    Surely, one of the biggest factors affecting productivity will be the analysis <> design connection. How would you transfer the load/stress information? It seems that something like ISM will be needed whether you use Tekla or whatever. I suppose Allplan has its connection to SCIA.

    IFC: does IFC transfer load\stress information?

    The other aspect that users will be worried about is transferring and using their detail libraries. Not sure but I don't get the impression that there are many available libraries online but this will change.

    Automated drawing extraction. yea, I think this would be a big worry. A lot of switchers will take a lot of time finding out how to get what they want out of the system you adopt. Localisation will be key.

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