RAM Concept CONNECT Edition v8 introduced grouping of parametric tendons and profile polylines. After trying it out, I was very impressed with this feature as it will help our engineering team reduce the amount of time we spend on designs while reducing the risk of errors when changes need to be made. However, the most time-consuming process on our end is detailing and scheduling of mild steel reinforcement. Currently, we have to gather the program-calculated required area of steel and manually detail/schedule reinforcement before marking up drawings for our BIM technicians since most of our reinforcement is defined in schedules. This part of the process can take longer than setting up and analyzing the model in Concept altogether.
Are there plans in the near future to allow users to group reinforcement similar to tendons? For two-way slabs, we show reinforcement on plans as bar types and list bar sizes and lengths in a schedule, and grouping of reinforcement would speed up this process. It would also be helpful to have the ability to associate reinforcement with beam design strips and define bar lengths as a span ratio if possible since most of our beam reinforcement is also specified in schedules. Ultimately, these functions would allow us to drastically reduce the workload on both our engineers and BIM technicians.
If any of these features are currently available, some more information on how to use them would be helpful as well. Thank you for your time.
Hi Karl, thank you for the quick response. That is good to hear. We'll stay tuned for future program enhancements and will post any other reinforcement grouping/scheduling suggestions here in the meantime.
Thank you for taking the time to post your comments. We are happy to hear that you see value in the tendon grouping feature.
The tendon grouping feature started as a PT Optimization tool. However, during the development, it was clear that it would be useful outside the PT Optimization workflow and for other objects. Although we have had internal discussions about expanding the grouping feature to other objects, those conversations are only preliminary at this point. I will file enhancement requests for the items that you mention and we will consider them in future project plans.
If other RAM Concept users find this post and have the same need for additional grouping features or enhancement requests to aid reinforcement detailing and scheduling, please feel free to share your comments here.
Answer Verified By: Sean Smith