AEC TECH NEWS: SCIA releases SCIA Engineer 16 for structural design

Herk-de-Stad, Belgium — SCIA, a global provider of structural design software that supports the BIM process, released SCIA Engineer 16. With a focus on usability, the release includes more than 350 updates and new features, including important enhancements in concrete and steel design. The result is an improved structural design program that provides engineers with an easier and faster way to deliver quality results, the company said.

“This release comes with a long list of enhancements that streamline the entire engineering workflow,” said Hilde Sevens, CEO at SCIA. “Some of the new developments are aimed at solving specific problems for specialty projects; others will impact the day-to-day practice of every engineer. Most of these upgrades were made as a direct result of customer requests.”

In fact, over 70 percent of version 16’s updates and features were born from customer feedback. Some of the tools and features in this release include:

Concrete

• New workflows and improved design of concrete beams and columns (Eurocode 2)
• A new concrete shear wall and frame module that includes Pushover (ACI 318-14, ASCI/SEI 7-10 and FEMA 356)
• Improved concrete slab and shell design (NBR 6118:2014)

Steel

• Composite floor members improvements (AISC 360-10, EN 1994)
• New cold-formed steel design (NBR 14762)
• New bi-axial steel connection design (EN 1993)

Analysis and Results

• New extensions to 3D Results and General Plasticity including: output of total and plastic strains, additional yield criterion Drucker-Prager and Mohr-Coulomb
• Triangular finite elements during meshing for membrane elements
• Automatic mesh refinement supports multiple load cases

BIM and Usability

• Export to Tekla v21.1
• IFC support for Allplan
• Import of PDF files into Engineering Report

“SCIA Engineer 16 comes on heels of 15.3,” said Dr. Johan Vanwelkenhuysen, CTO, SCIA. “The technological and organizational changes we’ve put in place are allowing us to react more quickly to the needs of our customers and the larger engineering community. SCIA Engineer 16 is a major step forward in terms of quality and usability, which are the development themes we’ve set for upcoming releases of SCIA Engineer.”

For more information on SCIA Engineer 16, or to download a fress trial, visit https://www.scia.net/SE16.