What's new in Robot 2025

[Romanich]

It seems that the Robot still alive and new version is almost released! 

What's new: 

https://help.autodesk.com/view/RSAPRO/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-CDBFEAA4-0FFB-41AC-AB8A-79F5C413C221

Release notes:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/RSAPRO/2025/ENU/?guid=Robot_ReleaseNotes_2025_release_notes_html

Many thanks to Robot team!

[Muhammed.OPERA]

Really we all don't know what to say! 

Thanks for the Robot team for using 5 instead of 4, almost identical.

[umut.akparlar]

We are not getting EC RC wall provided reinforcement module 😔

[filipe_ribeiro]

One more year, zero NEW features. RSA is an 

amazing software but it's time to evolve. It's almost the same software for more than a decade. 

[tanel]

Maybe its an April Fool's joke?

[eng_leandromartins]

Nothing new on the front! 

[Mohammed_Ata]

WoW! 

Really it is frustrated. Where is the desire to develop or to dd features for users! 

 Really it is frustrated

[AnthonyMcTigue]

It really is the forgotten child of the Autodesk product lineup.  Please either develop it or kill it Autodesk.  This perpetual do nothing approach is becoming tiresome.  This software is all but identical to when I started using it nearly 8 years ago now.  This 'software as a service' approach from a user perspective can be more accurately interpreted as 'it's the same software that you used to be able to purchase once and use until you chose to upgrade only now we charge you every year for the same 1980's finite element solver that you have always had and provide nothing that even vaguely resembles the service part'

[Romanich]

Very nice webinar by Stephane Balmain:

[romanAV48J]

Volumetric elements appear to have been removed from Robot 2025. What has replaced those? 

[AnthonyMcTigue]

@romanAV48J,

These are actually still available and I used them only last month to model the interaction between a P-T tendon and epoxy grout anchor block (see screenshot below).

You need to set your structure type to Volumetric to be able to access them (see screenshot below).

Anthony

[romanAV48J]

Many thanks. 

[rokas_varanauskas]

Can someone please confirm what is the latest Robot 2025 version? 

Above is what we have, and I do have Access installed but I have a feeling I'm not getting all Autodesk updates due to IT restricting user access to products. 

[Simau]

Yes,

that' what i have

[romanAV48J]

Hi Anthony, 

The screen shot of the model you have is very interesting. What is the way to model a 3D FE model in RSA with the pipes you have inside. 

I am new to RSA and have not used the volumetric module yet, but have structures which will require 3D (brick/volumetric) elements). 

Thanks, 

Roman

[AnthonyMcTigue]

Roman,

To answer your question, yes it is possible to do very basic 3D volumetric models in RSA but it's not it's strongest feature.  With that model, it took several attempts over a number of days to get it to work, most notably because I wanted to model the actual profile of the tendon wires which have the sort of daisy leaf profile.  It's worth highlighting that as with any steel cable, these should actually have a spiral pattern to represent the twists in the cable but that would have been far beyond Robot's volumetric geometry capabilities, at least not without an awful lot more work with little benefit to show for it so I deemed this to be a reasonable compromise for what I wanted to achieve.

Essentially, the steps involved were as follows:

1. Changed all units in Robot to mm and set decimal precision to 0.123456789 because being a small object relative to the scale of structure Robot is deigned to deal with meant that it initially kept trying to merge nodes together.
2. Drew the tendon profile in Civil 3D with a closed polyline.
3. Converted the profile to a series of points in Dynamo and exported the coordiantes to Excel.
4. Generated the profile of the surrounding block in Dynamo and perimeter points exported the coordiantes to Excel.
5. Wrote a VBA script to generate the corresponding nodes, profiles and panels in Robot using Robot's API.  This produced two panels, one which was the profile of the tendon and the second was the profile of the block containing a hole with the exact shape of the tendon.
6. Extruded the profiles to genererate the block and tendon using the 3D geometry tools in Robot.  I am sure this could be done with the API but I didn't have time nor did I deem it necessary to do this.
7. Applied boundary conditions, meshed and solved the same as with any other structure.

Anthony

[romanAV48J]

Hi Anthony,

This is much appreciated. Thank you very much .

However, I am now thinking if other FEA software may be more efficient to use for 3D elements. 

All the best, 

Roman

[AnthonyMcTigue]

@romanAV48J 

The answer to that question is, if you only very occasionally need to use 3D volumetric elements for very basic problems involving simple geometric forms and do not require advanced, non-linear material properties, then you can get by with Robot.  You can perhaps get a bit more elaborate if you learn to use the API as was the case with my example posted above.  ChatGPT is a useful learning tool for using the API but it takes a degree of persistance as it often hallucinates and comes up with methods and techniques that don't exist but persistence will eventually pay off. 

You can also achieve a lot in Robot with some creative use of plate elements and Dynamo.  For example, the curved, trapezzoidal, box girder bridge in the screenshot below consists solely of plate elements created from a Revit solid model using Dynamo.

If you want anything more than that, it would be better to look into something line ANSYS, ABAQAS, Strand7, ADINA or SAP2000.

Anthony

[romanAV48J]

Thank you Anthony. Much appreciated. Will bear your advise in mind. 

[umut.akparlar]

@AnthonyMcTigue 

That looks great, do you know any tutorials/guidance for designing P-T tendons or any practical uses for volumetric / 3D solid design with RSA ? 

Regards