Structural Analysis Links to Revit Structure

I thought it was time to share with you the list of Structural Analysis applications that link to Revit - aka Analysis Links. This is a topic that is near and dear to me for a number of reasons. I used to be a structural engineer who specialized in advanced building analysis and design and I used to be the Revit API product Manager. But probably the most important reason is that Structural Analysis links were the original business driver for the Revit API so in some ways we all owe some gratitude to this workflow.

So what do these product do? Basically they take the structural analytical model in Revit Structure and they send that data to structural analysis applications to perform gravity, lateral and seismic analysis on the building. Most of these applications also perform design (code checking) which can result in changed member sizes among other changes in the model and they can send some or all of those changes back into Revit Structure.  The info that can be passes to and from the analysis application includes member sizes, locations, materials, loads, boundary locations, load cases and load combinations.

Each analysis application has its own way of defining the analytical model so each link is deferent when it comes to the data and workflows it supports. So you will want to check on the product page to learn what data is passes to the analysis application and what data is used to update the Revit model. Some of these companies have been linking to Revit Structure since the first release of the product. They all try to create the best link that they can and user feedback can help them improve the link to meet your needs.

If you are interested in all the gory details of how to create an Analysis Link you can find a lot of details at The Building Coder. The info is a bit dated but still very valuable.... And Jeremy just updated his post May 1st 2011 with the latest info here.

In closing, I can't resist a joke (which I think I am safe in sharing given that I am an engineer). How do you know when you are talking to an extroverted engineer? They stare at your shoes when they talk to you.

Comments welcome. Also please tell me if I missed any structural analysis links.

May 4th 2011 - I updated the Structural Analysis Link Article to include the companies who are members of the Prefered Industry Partner Program (PIPP). You can find more info on the program and the partners at this link. I did not include partners if I could not readily find info on the Revit Analysis Link on their website.

April 21st 2011 - I updated the data for Dlubal with an AVI link and the correct product page.

 

Structural Analysis Product	Link	Supported Version	AVI Link	Personal Comments
Robot Structural Analysis	Link	RST 2011	AVI	This is the Autodesk structural analysis and design product
RAM Structural System	Link	RST 2011		RAM is where I worked before coming to Autodesk.
ADAPT-Builder  (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011		ADAPT has an interesting take on the link.
PROKON® Structural Analysis and Design (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011		I met one of the owners of PROKON within months of starting at Autodesk. They are doing some interesting things with Revit beyond the Analysis Link.
RISA 3D And RISAFLoor (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011	AVI	One of my close friends who met his future wife at my wedding used to work at RISA. Check the AVI it is very detailed.
ETABS	Link	RST 2011		CSi was the company that helped me get into the software business (Thank you)
STAAD	Link	RST 2011	AVI	Liz - the person who developed this link worked with me at RAM. She has worked on a number of Revit API projects and knows the API well.
IES – Visual Analysis v8.0	Link	RST 2011
CSC Fastrak and CSC Orion (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011		One of the first UK companies to link to Revit
SOFiSTiK Structural Desktop (SSD) And SOFiPLUS (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011	More Up to Date German Site   Link to Download	I met one of the owners at the same time that I meet the people from PROKON. Great person and he is a competitive hot air balloonist - how cool is that? Alos doing some interesting things with Revit beyond the Analysis Link.
Dlubal	Link	RST 2012	AVI
Graitec	Link	RST 2011	Additional Link
Space Gass - Revit® Structure Interface	Link	RST 2009
Inducta - REVIT Structure 2010 - INDUCTA Software Link	Link	RST 2010
Oasys Structural Software  (PIPP)	Link	RST 2011		Also one of the first UK products that linked to Revit

Comments

[Mike Jones]

Great summary. I'm only now trying out the latest RAM to Revit 2011 link. So far so good, going from Revit to RAM. Have yet to try going back the other direction.

[Ben Osborne]

RAM Structural Synchronizer can link Revit to RAM Elements and RAM Concept.

The RAM SS link works very well bi-directionally. Ive been using it since they first came out with it in 2009. The only major issue i've had is with walls. (You have to split up walls that intersect in Revit before sending them to RAM). And don't forget to put a moment connection on both ends of a cantilever backspan.

[Djnelson75]

So do you know Raoul Karp? I worked with him, quite a bit to help solve some of linking issues we where having with Ram steel on a large hospital I was working on back in 2008. This was when the link was still you young quite a few bugs in it. It didn't help that we were trying to link 14,000 elements into Ram from Revit. Although at the end of the day, with quite a bit of work, were were able to keep the Revit and Ram model linked together, and actually did an size update the day before the drawings went out due to some design changes.

[Emile Kfouri (Blog Author)]

Oh ya - I know Raoul quite well. We did not work together on the first project I did at RAM (RAM Foundation) but we worked very closely together on RAM Concrete and DataAccess. Great guy!
Quite impressive what you accomplished so early on in the analysis link days. I can't say things are perfect now but they sure are a lot better.

[Djnelson75]

Yeah it was quite a project, 3 million square feet, and there was no way we could have been able to do it without the help from the guys at Ram Raoul, Steve, Greg, and Justas. They were extremely helpful and would actually fix problems/bugs as we found them, then would send us new builds just to keep us going.

One of main obstacles that we had to over come was that not everything was going to be analyzed in Ram and how to separate those items out. To make matters worse there were some beams that need some properties from Ram, but other properties were coming from other analysis. For instance the size, and reactions would come from Ram but we would need to override the camber, or the stud count. So that turned into a book keeping chore that we didn't mess it up when we updated the model.

[Peter Žalman]

You are missing link with Scia Engineer,might be interesting software for you to know about
http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2010/SciaEngineer.html
http://www.scia-online.com/en/revit.html

[Emile Kfouri (Blog Author)]

Ben and Peter thank you for giving me a few more structural analysis links that I did not know about before. I will do an updated round up some time in the summer and will add the new ones to the table. In the mean time these are the links to the two products:

Scia Engineering: http://www.scia-online.com/en/revit.html

Structural Synchronizer: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Structural+Analysis+and+Design/ISM/Download.htm

[John Zani]

also missed the masterseries link