Tekla Steel Detailing Software

When it comes to age Tekla can certainly be considered the granddaddy of the three main steel detailing software companies as Tekla was a software developer back in the days before the desktop Pc era even began.

The company was originally founded in Helsinki in 1966 and has undergone constant development to become one of the leading global construction software companies it is today.

After a relative short period of two years the company shifted its focus to concentrate on the development of civil engineering software principally in the markets of engineering, road and earth movement software technologies. Working with its own proprietary technology by 1986 the company had developed a virtual database technology that gave rapid increases in speed when using relational databases. This enabled it to further develop its software technologies for a commercial market.

In the steel engineering and detailing arena Tekla was the second of the big three to develop a commercially available specialised software package when it launched it Unix based offering to the market in 1993. The Unix platform was a relatively expensive one to work on and out of the reach of many smaller companies which is probably what lead the company to start porting its software on to a windows based environment after only a period of 3 years.

By the late 90's Tekla started a period of growth which would see it become an established global player in the market and a technology leader and in 2003 Tekla adopted the Microsoft.net platform for development going forward.

Tekla technology was based on a data model approach originally but driving market forces and the emergence 3D modelling for construction led the company to further develop a model based technology. This approach also allowed for greater collaboration and 2004 saw the launch of Tekla structures which was based on the successful Xsteel Steel design and detailing software.

Similar to Graitec, Tekla has an holistic approach to it's market place by providing BIM software that is not simply restricted to Steel as is the case with Strucad but extends to concrete detailing and other infrastructure areas also.

As a Steel detailing package Tekla Steel detailing has an excellent pedigree and a well established and loyal client base many of whom have been using the software for many years.

Whilst there is no denying the capability of Tekla software it is regarded as probably the hardest of the Steel detailing software packages to learn as well as very expensive to maintain and a number of smaller fabrication companies have in the past abandoned use of the software as they simply did not have the time to accommodate the learning curve so fell back to using AutoCAD or other 2D detailing packages.

Larger companies however that have had the capital to invest and time to accommodate the steep learning curve have seen excellent returns on investment in what is seen as the Ferrari of the steel detailing world.

Improvements in interoperability have also held Tekla in good stead but just like the engineering software giants Tekla steel detailing software growth could be sharply eroded by the growth of the much more affordable and equally as functional Autocad based steel detailing software from Graitec.

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