Advance Steel 2020?

[pinnacledrafting]

I'm expecting it late April, early may....but I wonder, is it actually going to be an improvement over the previous version or is it just a re-badged 2019 with all the hot fixes and a minor tweak or two (like the "upgrades" have been of late). The most notable thing I can think of lately is the  'create callout view' of 2018.... well Strucad was doing that back in 1998 (yes, I know Tekla acquired AceCad(Strucad). As I talk with my competitors/friends who are using Tekla, SDS/2 and Prosteel ( I almost went with Prosteel 12 years ago, it was really close), I get the feeling that AS is being left in the dust, wallowing in the mire, swimming without a life jacket... you get the point. Considering the advances made in Advance Steel the first 5 years I had it (2006-2011) it was looking very promising and seemed to be making up ground on the competition then suddenly everything stopped. Upgrades went from "ooo, look, new features and improvements!" to "we fixed some bugs, and changed some icons". I'm left wondering if I made a mistake all those years ago. Just as a side point I am/was fully trained and fluent in StruCAD, Tekla, and SDS/2 through my various places of employment before I started my own business, so I do know what they can/can't do and what AS can/can't.

What should AS be able to do? Go look at the Ideas Forum.

What are your thoughts?

[acbsdesign]

NDA until April, but this is what I see:

1. Advance Steel HAS the safety jacket

2. It will be developed simultaneously with Revit, with a bigger part of the man-hours spent for Revit due to the fact the same is not a steel detailing software until it becomes such

About the future-I am 51% optimistic, it is a little bit cloudy with a chance of rain in December 2020.

[Anonymous]

THERE ARE SOME MAJOR CHANGES COMING WITH ADVANCE STEEL TESTED A BETA

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[acbsdesign]

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@Anonymous wrote:

THERE ARE SOME MAJOR CHANGES COMING WITH ADVANCE STEEL TESTED A BETA

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Tested it too, glad to see the labels for holes done they way they have to be, section views moving less and detail view titles stay during an update, it's a huge improvement. Labels alignment to reference object or label.

[bukko]

           IMO It's very depressing..... 2020 is rebadged.... with just a few new features.... just like the last service pack

The Document manager is still extremely LAME.....the same ol' limited tool. (The Achilles Heel of Advanced Steel) … hey that rhymes 😉

          We need a way to freeze issued drawings without having to resort to the lame workaround of exploding or deregistering the drawing because guess what....? The drawing no longer appears in the doc manager which defeats the purpose of having a doc manager don't ya think?

             We also need to be able to create folders in the doc manager, to organize our drawings ....and yes I've come up with some clever ways to do this with processes but the drawing list is about a mile long on a large project. 

      Let's not forget about one of my favorites... that relic from the past.... the great Unknown Folder. 

The catch all where many drawings wind  up if you chose not to update a released drawing etc......

You could of shut off the automatic check attribute for the doc manager but then guess where the drawings wind up?? The great Unknow Folder!    Whoever set this up was definitely into Chinese Water Torture.....

            Anyway.... I still press on because Advance Steel is a cad jockey's dream  and if you enjoy getting lost in the rabbit hole (drawing style manager) and love to tinker until your legs loose circulation from sitting too long then you've come to the right place.  "It's gonna take a while"... that's what I told the coworkers  that I'm training  to use the program.... 

The Camera/Model view symbols in drawings are non standard, extremely limited as far as automatic positioning/alignment and token availabilty.

           Managing the cameras/model view cameras is a real time eater when setting up a midsize  to large roof plan  based on the many cameras that a good AST detailer would preposition in the model for an automated process or suite.

         Let's face it folks...… most of the manual work for an entire structural project is in the erection drawings on mid size and larger struc jobs. 

We have such a great camera/model view system in Advance steel but Autodesk crew just can't seem to find the resources to put this workflow over the goal line...… Tekla even tried to copy it somewhat with their half baked "detail manager"  With Advance Steel EVERY THING IS THERE AND IN PLACE! The Devs just need to connect the dots and finish the job with some focused resources and coding to tie it all together. 

Autodesk management...… please focus on these issues.

A world class automated workflow will be the end result!!

Rant over

Regards

Craig

[bukko]

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@Anonymous wrote:

THERE ARE SOME MAJOR CHANGES COMING WITH ADVANCE STEEL TESTED A BETA

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No offense here but I gotta ask...…. which beta did you test??

It surely wasn't the 2020 beta. No major changes there.

[iwafb]

Unfortunately, i tend to agree.

Propagation tool: Not sure anyone requested it? No control as to where the joints are implemented. IMO, it's simply too dangerous to use commercially. Also, if you have to check all connections after they're propagated, then there's no saving.

Label tools: Some good stuff, but again, lots of requests in ideas station in relation to labels ignored.

On the other hand, some good stability fixes by the looks of it. But:

- Doc manager still the same.

- Camera workflow clunky.

- Label symbols, terrible to adjust.

- Cloning (or at least the ability to copy and paste labels/dimensions)... Non existent.

- Scribing still buggy

- Purlin lap macro, still has bugs reported 4+ years ago. Apparently we just ask the fabricators to deal with it...

- ACIS export??? Shouldn't have to double my subscription fees for Graitec add on. If Autodesk don't want to offend, then they should just do a deal with Graitec to provide as part of subscription.

- Pipe to pipe profiling tool (accurate for curved members, like Graitec's...)

- 3D grid?

Just a small sample...

Whilst it's good to see some additional development, compared to what's been offered in the last few years. I wish Autodesk had implemented more from Ideas station...

[Tomislav.Golubovic]

With the ACIS Export, type ASTOREXPLODETOACIS and it drops the model down to ACIS and then you can export that? Is that what you're after?

[iwafb]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for replying.

What I'm after is a tool similar (or exactly like) the Graitec export to Acis. It should be able to export single parts and assemblies to individual files as an ACIS object. Should have control over file naming convention. Should have the option to export assemblies as a single solid object or lots of individual solids. For good measure, there should be an option to export as ACIS or CIS/2

This is extremely important when exporting elements out of AS to be profile cut (think CHS with profile end wrapping around another CHS) or for robotic welding

Asked on the following thread and knocked back by previous DM...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/advance-steel-ideas/explode-to-acis-enhancement/idi-p/6707930

[Adrian.Mangan]

Agreed, propagation tool seems weird

[Anonymous]

THERE ARE SOME MAJOR CHANGES COMING WITH ADVANCE STEEL TESTED A BETA

[markhubrich]

LOL Did you try AS2019? 

I only had 2020 installed for a couple hours and already uninstalling. I managed to hose my install in record time.

[bukko]

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@Anonymous wrote:

THERE ARE SOME MAJOR CHANGES COMING WITH ADVANCE STEEL TESTED A BETA

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Let me introduce you to my wife........…. Morgan Fairchild...…. yeah that's the ticket ….yeah...yeah.....that's the ticket....

She's an Advance Steel Ace!

[bukko]

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@markhubrich wrote:

LOL Did you try AS2019? 

I only had 2020 installed for a couple hours and already uninstalling. I managed to hose my install in record time.

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We are leaning that way too...... The wallrail macro is currently hosed!!..... I foolishly started an struc. project in 2020.... after tinkering a bit with it......the problem is that I'm doing the stairs and rails too... and I don't want to deal with that wallrail maco not placing brackets correctly...…. I have a very slick workflow in 2019  for railing and I will not go backwards.....

I hope the Devs hotfix it fast.....

Regards

Craig

[markhubrich]

I'm going to create a forum signature that says,"and fix kiss file problems please" that way Autodesk wont forget. 

[pinnacledrafting]

Other than a few missing shapes, I haven't had problems with the .kiss files. What problems are you haveing?

[bukko]

I guess the only thing we can do is stay on  them and be public about it.  

It's a shame that Autodesk management doesn't go all in with Advance Steel.

We are talking about the biggest cad software company in the world with very deep resources......

with apparently no passion or desire to be a leader in the Steel Detailing world......

[markhubrich]

I am at the point where I will pay a programmer for a few plugins that handle things correctly. Starting with complete and compliant .kss files. I decompiled the astofabtrol.dll with a software called dotPeek to see how things were done. Yes times are desperate!!

If Autodesk opened up a little and made some of their source code public on GitHub things would probably get fixed by the community!! I don't have the time to devote to this though. I went back to 2019 until a service pack comes out. These exports mean everything to those of us that utilize Fabtrol or Fabsuite!!!! 

[markhubrich]

Oh well this is for Export SFR function not the kiss export.