Once ISM-linked, Tekla Structures will interoperate with all other ISM-enabled software including, to date, Bentley’s STAAD, RAM Concept, RAM Elements, Structural Modeler, ProSteel, and ProConcrete. Tekla Structures links with various other systems through the
Tekla Open API™application programming interface that is implemented using Microsoft
® .NET technology.
With ISM, structural practitioners are able to choose the software they need for each project task while benefiting from the efficiencies of data reuse as they participate in multidisciplinary, integrated project workflows. This lets them take full advantage of BIM best practices to reap significant business benefits, and results in intelligent structural designs, more successful projects, and better-performing buildings and structures of all types.
Risto Räty, Executive Vice President of Tekla Corporation, said about the joint development effort, “We are excited about this new collaboration with Bentley. It will enable us to provide a better open BIM experience for our shared Tekla and Bentley software users, whilst supporting other open standards, too.”
Santanu Das, Bentley Vice President, Integrated Engineering Group, said, “Having Tekla embrace ISM puts our common structural software users on the road to substantial, game-changing productivity improvements. By providing the ability to track, control, visualize, and easily share changes, our two companies are greatly improving the data fidelity and software interoperability experience of these practitioners.”
Das continued, “Upcoming enhancements to ISM will include connections and concrete reinforcing. These will further meet users’ interoperability needs and reduce the data re-entry and repetitive cross-checking among products that continue to be a mainstay process in far too many of today’s structural projects.”
ISM provides the structural practitioner with:
- interoperability among all ISM-enabled software;
- a shared repository of common structural model data among the enabled products for most structural project types and common materials;
- the ability to track revisions and compare differences among versions of this common model;
- robust round-tripping of information with unique filter methodology to avoid false changes;
- the ability to visually and textually see and control model changes;
- i-model and PDF publishing capabilities to enable collaboration and downstream value-adds such as clash detection and enhanced scheduling;
- a no-cost visualization tool for data interrogation and i-model sharing;
- open API to ensure data fidelity.
