Hi. I was recently introduced to your website and software. Impressive! I’m a practicing structural engineer who works with Revit for physical modeling and RAM/Bentley products (and etabs) for analysis modeling. The proprietary link between Revit and RAM is very unreliable. I see you’ve recently released an alpha version link of Revit to etabs (and back). Do you have a link developed or in development for back and forth data transfer between Revit and RAM Structural Systems?
There is a product from konstru, developed by TT. But I’m not sure the product is being kept up to date and there doesn’t seem to be any costumer service assistance.
Thanks!!
-Alan
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Hi Alan,
Thank you for your question and welcome to the forum; feel free to introduce yourself if you’d like.
When I was a structural engineer, I would use RAM SS quite a bit so I’m very familiar with the unreliability that you are referring to. I would absolutely love to develop a connector for that one, but at the moment, we are focusing primarily on improving the stability of the connectors that we do have, so I can’t give you a timeline for when that might happen.
Would you mind sharing a little more about which other potential connectors would be most helpful to you? You mentioned SS specifically, but you also mentioned the RAM suite. Do you use Concept or others a lot? We’ve also put some thought into making a STAAD connector. Do you use STAAD or know many people who do?
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Hi Connor,
Thanks for the quick response!
We use RAM SS, RAM Concept and RAM Elements the most. With RAM SS leading the way – steel framing and concrete framing. We don’t use STAAD, and not sure how many engineers that are our competitors use it. We do use etabs and recently acquired a form that uses SAP as well. But RAM SS would be the biggest help to us. And a lot of other engineering firms of our size – 100-125 employees.
What have you heard from the engineers who are using your etabs-Revit link?
Have you heard of or used Konstru? It sounds great, and I downloaded a trial version of it. But I haven’t seen much postings about it in the last several years, so I’m shying away from it.
Thanks,
Alan
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Alan,
Thanks for your feedback on the software you use. It definitely helps us when deciding new connectors to develop.
I’ve tried to check out Konstru in the past, but I was unable to get the ETABS plugin to work. I came to a similar conclusion that it must not be maintained and not working anymore. But I haven’t tried using it for RAM so that might not be the case there.
In terms of our ETABS and SAP connectors, they both work using the same CSI api so you can expect pretty much identical experiences using either one. You pointed out that those connector are still in alpha which is true, but we’ve made huge strides since releasing those alphas. We recently implemented updating functionality that, in my personal and completely biased opinion, is far superior to what I’ve experienced using csiXrevit. We actually have a tutorial video coming out tomorrow on how to apply changes that you’ve made in Revit to your ETABS model (and vice versa). I’ll send another message here with the link when it comes out.
If you give it a shot, please let me know if you run into any difficulties. It really helps us to make our platform, and your experience using it, better.
But I am sorry to say that a RAM connector is not anywhere on our roadmap. Speckle and all of its connectors are open source so sometimes if somebody wants a connector enough, they will develop it themselves. And we are very happy to help anyone who is doing that. I will ping you here if we or anyone else creates one in the future.
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Thanks Connor. How would we go about developing a connector for RAM-REVIT? and how would Speckle community assist?
The principle of Speckle Connectors is that one would create a RAM<>Speckle connector. The Revit workflow may be a priority for which object types are prioritised, but all connectors work that way.
I have had several conversations this year with similar questions to yours. My advice is consistently to start with a simple proof of concept around converting one Geometry type from RAM to a custom Speckle Base object and use the SDK helpers to push that to a Speckle Project Stream.
The great news is that all our connectors and the .NET and Python SDKs are available. GitHub - specklesystems/speckle-sharp: .NET SDK, Schema and Connectors: Revit, Rhino, Grasshopper, Dynamo, ETABS, AutoCAD, Civil3D & more. & GitHub - specklesystems/specklepy: Python SDK 🐍
The good news is that while I am unfamiliar with the RAM suite first-hand, a class by Marcello Sgambelluri at AU was wrapping the API for RAM Structural Systems into a Dynamo node. This suggests it is either C++ or C# or one wrapping the other.
The less good news is I have no idea if RAM supports the concept of plugins or scripting. While accessing the RSS files from a scripting environment is possible, there is no better way to interact with the RAM model than directly in the software.
If plugins aren’t possible, the next best thing is if there is a scripting option. This could be python based on my 5 minutes cursory google trawl. Specklepy can help here as it will handle the (de)serialization and send/receive for you directly from that environment.
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RAM does have an API (that is step one for making a Speckle connector to a program). However the API access in RAM is strange. I found this post on the Bentley forums that speaks of a third party module that hypothetically has existed at one time but there wasn’t any follow up how it works or how to create one yourself. Most other posts on the bently forum go more like this one which support that RAM doesn’t support plugins necessarily, but more like scripts like Jonathan mentioned.
A Speckle RAM connector could still work within these limitations, but it would have to operate outside of the software itself which means that you wouldn’t be able to see what your connector did to your model until you start up RAM (which would get annoying). It would probably also mean there is no ablity to undo these operations so it would likely have to make a backup copy of your file everytime it did an operation (also annoying).
If you’re wondering why Speckle has to use the API and can’t use the .ism file import/export that the RAM-Revit plugin uses, it because that is a proprietary format, and nobody except for Bentley has any knowledge of how to create or consume that type of file.
Have you found any videos or posts about how the Konstru plugin works (or worked?) in RAM? I would be very curious to know
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Thanks Jonathan and Connor! Unfortunately you’re speaking over my head! My expertise stops at structural engineering, but trying to learn new tricks (as an old dog!). I think i get the gist of what you’re saying. The konstru plugin is located on the konstru website. If you go there, watch some videos and download the free trial, you may get the answers you’re looking for. https://konstru.com/
Thanks!
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Please, create a conector for Staad.Pro, Ram Connection and StaadFoundation
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Welcome to the Speckle Community @eddyvc !
I’ll merge this with the existing call for RAM / STAAD connectors.
We don’t hear this request often, so we would love you to add more detail on how you anticipate this would fit in your workflows. What would it help you achieve?
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Hi, I use Staad and Ram Connection principally in oil & gas and industrial projects and for model in 3D I use Revit and Advanced Steel, but we don’t have a proper tool for export the design information for design analysis software to 3D model software, so we model twice the estructure once in design face and another in 3D model, then we must track manually any changes between models so it is a great effort to maintain update the information, additionally we don’t have a tool to track changes.
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That’s good context. From memory, these are Bentley products, yes? My recollection may be fuzzy.
Yes, they are Bentley, they have a complete set of structural softwares.
Bentley use a software call iTwin Analytical Synchronizer where you can export and import between software creating a kind of ifc file, but the workflow it is complex and to be honest not useful.