We are looking at the possibility of changing the wall build-ups on a job, and I am somewhat surprised how much manual data re-entry is required.
Q: If there are walls modeled in Aecosim (which have the material info attached), can STAAD automatically calculate the dead load for the walls (which have volume info because they are solids) and position them on the slab (FE element?) as loads? I assume that this will need ISM / Structural Synchronizer.
The same should apply for MEP equipment generated in Aecosim. I think AutoPipe already does this for pipe weights and expansion etc?
BIM deliverables are getting more and more detailed, requiring a lot of material properties to be attached to each element in the 3d model. For example, the same wall elements modeled by the architects in Aecosim Building Designer will have conductivity and permeability properties that will drive calculations in Aecosim Energy Simulator which will influence the MEP design. There seems to some tools in ABD/AES that allow this information to be synch'd. I am wondering if there isn't a similar function that links ABD and STAAD.
Would OpenSTAAD macros be needed?