SCIA Engineer 21

AEC Magazine caught up with SCIA to find out more about SCIA Engineer 21 and the future of the Nemetschek-owned structural design and analysis software

Until recently, SCIA Engineer had an image problem. Having sported the same user interface (UI) since 2006 it was starting to look dated and un-appealing to the next generation of structural engineers – university graduates who all grew up using modern software.

“It’s hard to compete if your software looks 20 years old,” admits SCIA’s product marketing manager, Pavel Roun.

But this is set to change. With the release of SCIA Engineer 21, the multi material structural design and analysis tool now has a completely new UI. “The key aim of the project is to simplify learning,” says Roun.

The new UI, which was three years in the making, is much more than just a cosmetic update. It takes a completely fresh look at how engineers interact with the program. “It’s about efficiency, ergonomics and customisation,” says Nele Deckers, director of product and design at SCIA.

In a new move for the Belgian software developer, SCIA hired dedicated UX and UI designers to form a new team to specialise in creating new workflows and user experience. More than 70 customers were consulted along the way, including big firms like AECOM in London.

The new UI

SCIA Engineer 21 centres on a new viewport that provides a nearly 100% increase in the modelling window. “Almost the full screen is your working space,” says Roun. “You can have really small toolbars and the rest of the screen is your working model.”

Space has been reclaimed by completely stripping back the menus, panels, toolbars and tables and making it much easier to customise.

“You can customise almost anything on the screen, and you don’t need to open the ‘customise dialogue’ and define the changes there,” says Roun. “If you want some function in the menu, you simply drag it to the toolbar.” Keyboard shortcuts are similarly easy to define, he adds.

Once the user is happy with the configuration, the setup can be shared with the team, so it’s possible for a company to define a unified layout, or tailor the UI for specific workflows.

SCIA has also made it easier to find less frequently used functions through SCIA Spotlight, a new search bar that sits at the top of the UI. According to Deckers, research done by the firm has shown that it’s now eight times faster for an experienced user to find something, compared with the old interface.

To help get users up to speed quickly with the new version, SCIA drew inspiration from the games industry with an interactive ‘onboarding’ tutorial that launches when you open the software for the first time.

“If you install a new game, the first task that you are given is very simple, but it will show you how to, let’s say, swing your sword,” says Vladimir Príbramský, product manager at SCIA. “So we just basically

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1 By stripping back the menus, panels, toolbars and tables SCIA says the SCIA Engineer 21 modelling window has increased by nearly 100% 2 The software is primarily intended for the analysis and design of multi-storey buildings (office blocks, residential buildings and shopping malls)

took that idea, and on a very simple example, the user can get familiar with the system. It’s not a recorded video or a PDF. It’s an in-built system that allows that.”

“You can really ‘live click’ through the onboarding program and it leads you through all the menus, and it only takes you six minutes to do that,” adds Deckers. “It’s not like you have to learn the software for five hours, something that nobody will do.”

SCIA is sensitive to the needs of existing customers, many of which have used the software for years. So, for SCIA Engineer 21, users will be given the option to launch the software with the new UI or in classic mode. “They might need to finish an important project and they don’t have time to [immediately] spend on the new UI,” explains Deckers.

Workflow enhancements

For SCIA Engineer 21, SCIA paid close attention to how its users worked with previous versions and how that could be improved. “We spent a lot of time with existing customers, interviewing them and watching them how they work,” says Roun.

“We did some thorough investigation of the user workflows, and then the findings were included in enhancing the workflows in the new environment,” adds Deckers.

In previous releases of SCIA Engineer, for example, the software more or less assumed a linear workflow, as Roun explains, “You created the geometrical model, you input your loads, the boundary conditions, supports and how the elements connected together. Then you ran the calculation, looked at the results and performed checks according to specific goals.

“In reality, you often must iterate between these phases. You define the geometry, start inputting supports, then you realise something must be changed. Then you go to analysis, you see the results, something is not good, you go back to the geometry, and so on.

“And the current software – not only ours but others’, our competitors’ – is not, let’s say, designed for this [type of iterative process]. So for example, when you perform the code check you must first close one part of the environment, swap to another one, get another menu with other functions, make the action, close that part of the UI, then open another one.

“With this new user interface we are trying to overcome this problem by introducing two toolbars. And you can even choose two parts of this process, and have both at the same time on the screen. So it’s very, very fast to select functions on these two different parts of the software.”

To assess how successful the new UI is likely to prove, SCIA has already carried out extensive usability testing with customers during the beta testing programme.

“What we observe is that a proficient user, also when getting familiar with the new interface, can be approximately 15% faster overall,” says Príbramský. “It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still like one hour every day.”

or Allplan – and ‘automatically’ convert it into an accurate analysis model. The aim is to save engineers time as they don’t have to remodel everything from scratch. The time savings can be huge. According to Deckers, as much as 150 times faster. “People that use it can really save days, or maybe if it’s a smaller project maybe just one day,” she says. Of course, in an industry where sharing data is still not common, some customers find it hard to build trust in a system that not only reuses third party data, but automates the process. Some people are sceptical in the beginning, admits Deckers. “We have customers that say, ‘this is not feasible, this is just a [demo] project that you made, a perfect example.’” Deckers recalls a recent interaction with one such customer. “My colleague Herman [Oogink] told them, ‘send me your model, and I will transfer it, and I will send it back to you.’ “And he was waiting for that email, and when it came in, within ten minutes he had sent the project back. So it’s really What is SCIA Engineer? working on general projects. SCIA Engineer is an integrated, multimaterial design and analysis software for all kinds of structures, including concrete, “It could be that someone finds an steel, wood and plastic. The software is edge case that primarily intended for the analysis and doesn’t work 100% design of multi-storey buildings (office and you may still blocks, residential buildings and shopping need to change one malls), but is also used for other types of structures such as industrial plants, warehouses, bridges, and power plants. or two things manually, but also that is It features ‘CAD-like modelling’, a being solved at the finite element engine, advanced calcula- moment,” adds tions and code-compliant multi-material Deckers. design. It supports Eurocodes, US codes, Brazilian codes and Swiss codes for con- Scaling Everestcrete and steel. Sharing structural data is one thing, but bringing architectural models into SCIA Engineer presents a whole new set of challenges. SCIA AutoConverter Last year Graphisoft introduced Last year, SCIA launched SCIA Integrated Design [codenamed Everest] a AutoConverter, an application that can new technology designed to make it easitake a structural model from ‘any CAD er for architects to work with engineers system’ – such as Tekla Structures, Revit by putting an integrated structural ana-

For future releases of the software, one of the major plans is to better harness the power of modern hardware including multicore CPUs like Threadripper Pro

lytical model directly within Archicad’s BIM model. As Nemetschek owns both Graphisoft and SCIA, this naturally led to closer integration between Archicad and SCIA Engineer.

It’s still very early days for the technology and uptake has been slow. We asked Deckers why she though this might be.

“With the Integrated Design project you need to combine the workflow of the architect with one of the engineer,” she says. “Graphisoft is very strong in countries where we are not so strong, which means that often that architect is working together with an engineer, who is not using SCIA Engineer, and the other way around. But we also see in general, the biggest part of the market is not really sharing models between architects and engineers yet.”

Harnessing compute power

yet will become multi-threaded as well, ally utilise the power of CUDA with the and you will get a big speed gain.” GeForce GPUs.” But when can customers expect to see With dramatic increases in GPU this? “Implementing a new Solver processing power, we asked Príbramský Manager is a huge work, since this is con- if real time analysis could become a realnected with everything inside the soft- ity in the future, or if he just sees it as a ware. We are creating proof of concepts way of getting better performance across for it in the next weeks, and afterwards the board and freeing up the CPU for we can give an estimation when it will be other tasks. possible to release it,” says Deckers “It depends, I think that the real time A new UI is only the first With modern worksta- results are not unachievable, especially if stage in a broader redevelop- tions typically featuring we take into account the exponential ment of SCIA Engineer. For eight or more CPU cores, growth of the GPU power. I can see in five future releases of the soft- this should bring immedi- years that could be the case,” he says. ware, one of the major plans ate benefits to desktop “But we also have to take into account is to better harness the power users, but SCIA is also that with the exponential rise of the power of modern hardware includ- looking to harness the of the hardware there is also an exponening multicore CPUs, GPUs power of the cloud. “We tial rise in size and complexity of the projand the cloud. already have a prototype, so ect that the users are actually creating.”

SCIA Engineer 21 is cur- we have SCIA Engineer rently multi-threaded in a running in the cloud which few areas. Concrete checks, will send the results back,” for example can make use of says Príbramský. multiple cores, as Príbramský explains. “We are actually utilising fully all ‘‘ It’s about SCIA is also exploring the potential of moving calculations to the GPU, as the power the CPU has to efficiency, Príbramský explains. “Last offer,” he says. “So if you ergonomics and year we had a prototype have 16 cores, it will utilise 16 cores and the engine leaves something for you to customisation Nele Deckers, running finite element analysis on GPU. So we see a great promise there, yet if work on, on your computer director of we are talking about the while the processing of the results takes place.” For its finite element solvproduct and design at SCIA development required for that, that’s even heavier because it changes the archier, SCIA Engineer relies on a third-party solution from FemCo, which has been rewritten to tecture on a very basic level. “There are tasks that are more suitable, like the processing or post ’’ make much better use of CPU resources. processing of the results, rather than the

“FemCo has a newer version of the solv- finite element analysis itself. er, and that’s a completely multi-thread- “Some checks or working with results, ed,” explains Deckers. “We are going to are usually very time-consuming tasks link that new solver with SCIA Engineer, for the CPU,” he adds. “I believe we can and that’s our future plan. And then a lot also create a real-life prototype within of calculations that are not multi-threaded the software in the coming years to actuConclusion

In a mature technology sector, SCIA is not alone in that its core application was starting to look more than a little dated. While this probably didn’t matter too much to its faithful community of users who could probably use the application in their sleep, this is almost certainly not true of the new generation of engineers that have been brought up on modern applications.

SCIA is not only looking to innovate in UI and workflow. It’s great to see it addressing the perennial issue of interoperability with SCIA AutoConverter as well as looking to get more out of modern workstation hardware and the power of the cloud. All of this should put in it good stead as it looks to attract engineers old and new and expand the reach of the software out of its core region of Central and Western Europe, in particular Benelux, Czech and Slovak Republic, where it enjoys most success.