A Decade of Making the Right Connections
Reduce your connection design time from weeks to hours
1/ Speed
Reduce your connection design time from weeks to hours
IDEA StatiCa enables you to shorten your connection design time by up to 80%.
Still clinging to your Excel templates and books because they cover most of your connection design needs? IDEA StatiCa enables you to design connections of any type or complexity in seconds or minutes.
Design your simple connections using parametric templates, intuitive wizards, and pre-design features.
Dealing with moderate to complex connections?
- Autodesign bolts, welds, or end plates
- Import connections from your FEA or CAD in seconds (supporting 20+ software integrations)
- Choose from 1,000,000 already-designed templates in the Connection Library
- Re-use connection designs in shared libraries from your own projects, colleagues, or other engineers from all around the world
Enjoy incredibly fast computation times thanks to optimized meshing and the CBFEM solvers, which let you update and change your designs whenever you need.
Seamlessly connect with BIM and eliminate manual data re-entry
3/ Integration
Seamlessly connect with BIM and eliminate manual data re-entry
IDEA StatiCa lets you seamlessly integrate with 20+ of the world's most used FEA and CAD software, giving you the freedom to use your favorite software to design, assess, and model structures. Designing in IDEA StatiCa enables you to go beyond the limitations of these global solutions, both in modeling speed and calculation complexity.
By streamlining your structural steel design workflow, you can save time, minimize errors, optimize, and make the design data available to your colleagues or subcontractors doing detailing and fabrication.
Using IDEA StatiCa Checkbot as your BIM link manager, you can:
- Export and synchronize connections and members easily
- Have complete control over all of your imported connections and members
- See a clear list of all imported items, including status checked/not-checked
- Create a 3D visualization of imported members
- See a conversion table for materials and cross-sections
- Manage all load combinations
Share your designs with other project participants without them needing a paid IDEA StatiCa license.
Master the tool quickly and apply efficient connection design to all your projects
5/ Usability
Master the tool quickly and apply efficient connection design to all your projects
IDEA StatiCa is intuitive, instructional, and easy to use, meaning you can be up and running fast.
Using the simple navigation structure, clear and customizable workflows, views, results, and reports, plus the connectivity between the properties list and 3D graphical scene, you can immediately see what is going on with your model.
As the loading applied to the model is also visualized, you always have clear overview of what situation you are inspecting.
If you still need help, you can rely on our robust safety net of support team professionals standing by to assist you and the vast array of educational materials tailored to address any questions or concerns you may have.
Provide your clients with clearly provable and efficient connection designs
7/ Cost efficiency
Provide your clients with clearly provable and efficient connection designs
It could be argued that it often does not make sense to optimize your steel structural connections when dealing with small structures built of light members joined by simple and standardized connections. But what about when at least one of the following situations is the case in your projects?
- The structure is large or has complex geometry
- The number of connections is high
- The client’s or contractor’s requirements are specific
- You need to quickly adjust the designs to the possibilities of the fabricator's workshop
In these situations, it is essential for you to process all the adjustments quickly, safely, and as efficiently as possible.
To help you with this, IDEA StatiCa not only enables you to swiftly change and experiment with design optimization but also supports you with the immediate financial impact of each of your designs.
Thanks to this, you can control your costs early in the design process and provide your customers with the most efficient connection designs.
Get support when you need it from our dedicated team of engineers
9/ Support
Get support when you need it from our dedicated team of engineers
Do you need urgent support and cannot afford to wait? Don't worry, our dedicated team of structural engineers is standing by with the professional help you need to get your issue solved fast.
With IDEA StatiCa support, you get free access to:
- A wide network of technical support partners able to advise and assist in your local region
- Self-learning content in our Support Center with 1,000+ articles, tutorials, and videos
- Guided studying through Campus courses in our self-paced e-learning platform
- Tailor-made training sessions
With all this support at your disposal, you can rest assured that we can resolve all your queries and problems quickly.
Deliver error-free designs in all your connection projects
2/ Accuracy
Deliver error-free designs in all your connection projects
By using the advanced and verified calculation models driving our software, you can deliver error-free connection design projects and sleep peacefully at night.
The component-based finite element method (CBFEM) behind IDEA StatiCa's steel applications is a method developed and used by IDEA StatiCa software to design and code-check steel joints, anchors, and steel members. CBFEM is a synergy of the Component Method and Finite Element analysis, reinforcing the weak areas of the generally accepted Component Method with finite element analysis.
CBFEM is currently utilized globally by over 110,000 users of IDEA StatiCa and also by users of Hilti Profis Engineering.
The method is extensively detailed in the Theoretical Background, offering users a comprehensive understanding of both its principles and applications. Moreover, the CBFEM method is the subject of several verification books, further solidifying and endorsing its credibility and reliability.
Notably, connection design employing CBFEM has undergone rigorous verification by a number of leading engineering universities in Europe and the US, affirming its efficacy, reliability, and suitability for practical engineering tasks.
Re-discover the joy in your structural engineering tasks
4/ Joy of work
Re-discover the joy in your structural engineering tasks
Tackle any connection challenge with ease with our comprehensive solution and enjoy the creative freedom it brings you.
IDEA StatiCa brings delight to even the most repetitive structural engineering tasks. Thanks to this, you can rediscover the explorer in you by seeing how your design behaves when you change any of the thousands of conditions or details of the structure you're working on.
Plus, there is no need to worry about ever placing your project's tight deadlines at risk. Instead, by using IDEA StatiCa, you can be certain that the solution you propose is the best and most appropriate one, and not just for you, but also for the fabrication shop, detailers, erectors, and general contractor.
Listen to our users from all over the world about their day-to-day experience of working with IDEA StatiCa and see the happiness it brings them.
Achieve easier project buy-in with detailed 3D connection visuals
6/ Visualization
Achieve easier project buy-in with detailed 3D connection visuals
It is often easy to predict the behavior of a simple connection arrangement, however, when several structural members meet in the same node, and all of them have a different set of internal forces from hundreds of different load combinations, the situation starts to get tricky.
Using the Connection app, you can clearly visualize the deformed shape of the model with stresses on plates and welds, and the forces in all involved bolts.
Plus, because you can see these results in a 3D scene, you can clearly observe what’s happening, eliminating any need for guesswork.
Confidently design compliant connections for any local code
8/ Compliance
Ensure automatic code compliance with global standards for every connection
Not only can you take advantage of an application that combines sophisticated and advanced FEA with an easy-to-use and intuitive UI, you can also automatically compare the results with the requirements of your regional design code (we cover eight global design codes, in fact).
So, unlike robust FEA solutions such as Abaqus or Ansys, IDEA StatiCa directly compares your calculations with your desired code directly in our software, making the endless flipping through thousands of pages of standards, codes, annexes, tables, and formulas a thing of the past.
Stay innovative with our roadmap defined by customer needs
10/ Driven by engineers
Stay at the cutting edge of connection design with our innovative approach
IDEA StatiCa's two major releases per year are driven by your, our customers', feedback, enabling us to deliver innovation based entirely on users' needs. This means you can stay at the cutting edge of innovation by always having the latest and most powerful tools at hand.
But it doesn't stop there. In between major releases, you get:
- regular patches to ensure our products deliver you the most bug-free and reliable experience possible
- updated BIM links within three months of major releases to prevent any workflow issues
- constantly updated Cloud applications
Although it is true that the physics and mathematics behind structural mechanics remain the same, our ability to simulate real material behavior has advanced significantly. This is where the Component-Based Finite Element Method (CBFEM) has made a positive impact on your ability to deliver accurate, fast, and safe connection design projects.
At IDEA StatiCa, we consistently enhance our software with innovations in analysis precision, mesh generation, solver speed, and user interface, ensuring you get the most accurate and efficient results possible.
And if you are looking for the first integration of machine learning in connection design, you can find it in our Connection app's autodesign capabilities – already setting the standard for automated and intelligent design solutions.
Timeline of innovation
Take IDEA StatiCa for a test drive for 14 days today with our fully functional free version or have our support team give you a personalized walkthrough in a live DEMO call.