Tekla Oyj : Tekla News for Building & Construction, autumn 2013

This autumn is full of novelties. Tekla Structures 19.1 has just arrived, and so has Tekla BIMsight 1.8 too. To improve students' understanding on Building Information Modeling and with it the industry workflow, we have recently opened an online academy, Tekla Campus. And when it comes to our customers, in Denmark Moe A/S creates a truly fresh concept at Amager Bakke, combining waste incineration and energy recovery with a skiing slope and climbing wall.

Enjoy it all! Tekla News for Building & Construction editors

Tekla Structures 19.1 has just arrived and is especially well endowed with improvements on welds, and for those who do not model welds, there are several other features like import and export functionality for Trimble SketchUp models and the new reinforcement modeling tool.

The Modify tool makes modeling reinforcement more efficient as you see the modify result immediately and make changes without having to enter any properties. You can use the tool to modify single reinforcing bars, reinforcing bar groups, and reinforcement meshes. When it comest to the latter, also cutting bent ones has been improved.

To name a few welding improvements, Tekla Structures 19.1 includes new weld commands, new solid weld objects,  improvements in weld dialog box and double-sided and fillet welds, and  an own context-sensitive pop-up menu containing weld-specific and some common commands.

And in case something does not work the way you wanted, you can contact Tekla Support with the new Help menu command Contact Tekla Support.

With Tekla Structures 19.1 you can create intermittent welds and convert old stitch welds to new intermittent ones.

See the release notes

The new Tekla BIMsight 1.8 is a construction and design coordination tool with emphasis on three Cs: Combining models, Checking for conflicts and Communicating. Tekla BIMsight 1.8 concentrates mostly on Communication tasks, with new features including live sharing and support for IFC grids.

Sharing the notes made in Tekla BIMsight using email is now easier, faster and more automated as through the Project folder, notes can be shared real-time. This means fewer emails sent and lost, just public notes that others will receive in no time.

The Project folder can be used as a project bank: It stores all models and notes about the project, and can reside on a cloud service or on a network drive. When users are connect to the shared Project folder, new public notes and replies automatically appear to them in Tekla BIMsight. They receive notifications about new or updated models and can update these themselves - everyone in a project team can access the same, updated information.

For the new version, the shared notes have been improved as all data, including color coding and multiple snapshots are now shared through the Project folder.

Support for IFC grids is another major new feature. Users can now snap to gridlines, measure structures using them and of course hide them and show only relevant grid elevations. Grids make positioning and combining models much easier.

Download Tekla BIMsight 1.8.1 now for free at www teklabimsight.com. See the release notes for more information and check also the video tutorials and an online community to get started.

At Tekla, we think that knowing BIM is highly important for engineering and construction students, so we now give them an opportunity to learn it with our software. At the start of the autumn term, we opened Tekla Campus, an online academy for engineering and construction students who wish to learn Tekla's BIM tools.

Tekla now offers students an opportunity to download Tekla Structures Learning edition, a free student license for self-learning, school projects and course work. In addition, Tekla Campus offers learning material, video tutorials, and a discussion forum for peer support and sharing thoughts.

When a student enters today's tough job market, the skills learned on Tekla Campus may prove very valuable.

"Students who know BIM can get better jobs, and are more proficient with the tools that industry uses now and in the future. I would learn BIM if I were a student today," says Michael Evans, Director of Engineering & Key Accounts at Tekla.

Visit Tekla Campus

A gigantic project, 80 meters (262 ft) high and covering an area of seven football fields, is under construction in Copenhagen, Denmark. Amager Bakke is a new plant combining waste incineration and energy recovery, and it has a skiing slope and climbing wall too.  When functional in 2017, the plant will convert domestic waste into heat in a new, environmentally friendly way.

Danish engineering firm Moe A/S plans the structures and steers the architecturally diverse and structurally challenging project. Amager Bakke is truly heavyweight construction: The foundations consist of 2,400 reinforced concrete piles driven into the earth, covered in 35,000 cubic meters (1,236,000 cu ft) of concrete while 5,000 tons of steel is used elsewhere in the building.

Moe uses Tekla software to model the tiniest detail and utilize project information: The model includes both rivets and bolts, quantity specifications, tendering lists, order catalogs and construction oversight.

"We are using 'BIM thinking' throughout this project. Tekla is used on various areas of the project, including detailing for reinforced concrete, steel detailing, 4D scheduling, and quantity analysis," says Moe A/S Head Planner and Tekla Superuser Anders Bilgaard and continues:

"It is very important to ensure effective collaboration and exchange of information between the various stakeholders in a project such as this. The Tekla model enables information to flow openly."

According to Bilgaard, the team spends less time for manual tasks thanks to BIM.

"When everything is modeled, we are better able to control the number of reinforcing bars our contractors use. Previously, we would have prepared drafts and measurements would have been taken from them by hand. It was a very time-consuming process. Now we can extract drafts and measurements directly from the model, which is beneficial for the client because the information is always correct. In the future, contractors will be able to get even more out of the model."

Tekla's international website at www.tekla.com and the US, UK, Middle East, India and Southeast Asia local sites have been renewed recently. The other Tekla areas offices will follow with fresh content and interfaces during this autumn. Our goal has been to make the information easier to find and make the look and feel more inspiring and pleasant.

To ensure the fair competition for Tekla's licensed customers, we are continuing the active fight against software pirates and investing more resources in license compliance.  With this investment we can ensure the rights of our customers even more efficiently.

We want the industry to know about risks of piracy and responsibilities in license compliance, and to achieve this we collaborate with industry associations worldwide. Lately, Tekla has been actively working with the American Institute of Steel Construction, AISC, to spread the word about the risks and consequences of software piracy in the USA and areas working for the US market.  

What kind of consequences piracy may then have? For instance statutory damages can range from $750 to $30,000, but if the court finds the infringement willful, the penalty can be increased to $150,000 plus attorney and court costs.

In addition to statutory damages, discovery of the use of illegal software may slow down the completion of a project - but the pirated software itself may  at worst lead to construction errors, in addition to viruses on computers,  as no one quarantees its quality.

New license compliance team in Tekla

From the beginning of April 2013, Tekla has had an own dedicated team working on license compliance. The team investigates new tools and ways of working in the fight against piracy, collaborating with attorneys and partners. As the result of the work on license compliance, the number of former pirate licenses turned into legitimate ones is growing.

October: Discover the Real Value of Tekla Maintenance

Keeping the software you use updated and having full support is the way to get the most out of it. Having your Tekla software in maintenance, you secure increased productivity with high quality support, customer-driven improvements and additional tool. You can improve your business with increased efficiency and improved quality in engineering, detailing, fabrication and construction. The webinar takes place on October 2nd and you can watch it any time afterwards.

November: The Concrete Contractors Success Story - Wayne Brothers Adopt Tekla

The concrete construction contractors Wayne Brothers know what is required to win work and pour concrete efficiently on sites throughout Southeast USA. They use Tekla software for building information modeling (BIM) and now manage projects in a more efficient and cost effective way, and offer their clients increased from project conception to completion. Hear on November 6th what Wayne Brothers tell about embracing the change and the value concrete contractors get from Tekla.

December: Tekla BIMsight Developments

On December 4th, we will talk about new seamless communication opportunities between the Tekla BIM tools.