Dear STAAD.pro Users,
As you know we at Bentley Systems are in the process of developing our next generation STAAD products named STAAD.X. The new software would have a new state of the art graphic user interface (GUI ). However we know that many of you are fond of the input editor in STAAD.Pro and hence we are trying to see how important it is for you to have this editor facility in STAAD.X in addition to the GUI. Please share your opinion on this forum as to whether you would like to see the editor in STAAD.X or not.
[poll]
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Sye
The editor comes in very hand for some things like search and replace. For instance, say you've got a bunch of loads in the FX direction and for whatever reason you want to change them to FZ. Just search and replace. Another thing I do a lot is comment out portions of the code to do what-if scenarios or just save run time for things I'm not currently interested in or whatever.
And then there is developing spreadsheets or programs that compute loads on members. All you have to do is have it write in a format that STAAD understands then copy and paste it into the text editor.
I understand that taking something as old fashioned as a text editor and marrying to a slick new interface can have it's problems, but there are many advantages to the editor. If you are not going to retain it I hope you can figure out a way to keep the advantages I've mentioned here.
Does it concern anyone other than me that one the most used structural analysis programs in the world only has 15 people answering this rather important question?
I think every user would like to keep this functionality in new version STAAD for many reasons: speed, annotations, and so on. It's probably one of the most discussed option for years and wish to include in STAAD(X).
Tank, do you have any experience with the SAP2000 database editor? It has much the same functionality as the STAAD input editor, but it frees the developers from an antiquated input system.
You can manipulate node locations, loads, members, etc. all through excel sheets.
Gumpmaster, I do, but 2005 was the last time I used SAP2000 so I really don't remember much about it. Sorry for the delayed response but I'm so disillusioned with the whole STAAD community for not weighing in on this very important question I'm about ready to just give up. I haven't been checking in this forum much anymore.
The input editor is undergoing a significant improvement and is expected to be ready in time for the next version of STAAD.Pro due in the first half of next year.
Good to know Kris. My recommendation would be to use a database type editor rather than a plain text editor. If you haven't used SAP2000's editor I would recommend trying it out. The inputs are edited in database tables rather than plain text. It's probably more similar to RAM Elements behind the scenes.