I batted this one around a few years ago. I do work occasionally
for a few steel fabricators and have built a few Excel spreadsheets
which I use, mostly in metric. I looked at Descon and thought it
comprehensive but too expensive if you bought both the connections and
bracing connections packages and at that time it was available only in
ASD. There were both English and Australian programs which offered
connection design capabilities ( and to AISC specs) but they were part
of the bigger software packages, although I think one of the English
ones may have been a separate connection proram.
The only connection design software I have seen that stood alone
outside of Descon was offered by Tedds. This was several years ago, it
didn't do shear connections (they felt the steel manual handled shear
connections adequately) and was only $400 US, because it was still being
developed. I don't know its status now and if it is any larger.
I think it best to use the AISC Connections manual and build your
own spreadsheets and maybe compare the results against the Descon output
and the steel manual. Please feel free to contact me if you have any
questions.
Gary
Bill Polhemus wrote:
> Been awhile since we batted this around.
>
> We've been using Descon. To be honest, I'm not thrilled with the
> price/performance and their support has been less than stellar. Most
> of our problems have been related to installation and licensing issues
> - it almost seems as though we're going back to the "bad old days" of
> copy-protection schemes that make the software a real pain in the arse
> to use.
>
> I also don't like the fact that you can select EITHER LRFD OR ASD and
> not both (unless you pay double, at least). Seems to me that with the
> present code provisions it's not that big a deal to swing both ways.
>
> On the plus side, it does seem to be fully-featured, it does go by the
> latest AISC code provisions, and the sketches it puts out are really
> almost detailer-quality.
>
> Is there any sort of alternative out there that anyone would
> recommend? Would love it if IES would do a program like this; I still
> consider there stuff the best bang-for-the-buck of anything out there,
> including their entire line of products.
>
> Regards to all.
>
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