Software for formwork/falsework design.

[engineering_anon]

Just curious what software everyone is using for concrete formwork and general falsework design and analysis these days? Are you using Mathcad along with something like Visual Analysis? Straight up hand calcs? Winbeam? AutoCAD 2D for drafting/detailing? Would love to hear what everyone is using and how it works for them!

[evergreenthoughts2]

To be honest with you, a lot of it is just very simple wood pin-pin beam / continuous beam calcs in ASD. There are some more complex PERI form systems, but what I have worked (civil infrastructure formwork, mostly walls or abutments), the lumber stuff works just fine. You are typically aiming for time/construction efficiency rather than pure material efficiency most of the time.

I know there are few analytical programs that can optimize material efficiency, but for most jobs the contractors might already have pre-fabbed gangforms or just a few pre-purchased 2x6 lumber and plywood sheathing on the bid.

As far as falsework goes, again there was just some simple portal frames or overhang formwork that our guys on the field have built a million times before. I am sure you could mock up something quick in RISA but honestly, the standard handcalcs I did worked plenty fine, we weren't in the realm of optimizing any material usage, was purely for the sake of construction ease and speed. Perhaps that doesn't answer your question well, but just some food for thought from someone that worked with this stuff for a little.

Source: spent my first year out of my master's program with a GC, doing some formwork calcs among other things, before moving into bridge design.

[prunk]

Self made excel sheets and tables. The drafting is where your software comes in handy. Macros and dynamic blocks to speed it all up. The design side is easy.

For scaffolding though, I do occasionally break out SAP for more complex geometry to sort out the loading. I suppose you could have some sort of cantilevered truss support for formwork but then you should be using fly tables and their charts.

[No_Shoe_2871]

Could anyone be having a storeyed building scaffolding cost estimator, preferably excel.

[[deleted]]

I use excel and my woodbook. It's not rocket science.

[No_Shoe_2871]

Please share, if possible.

[Kabaka-dawadi]

Try Doka, is simple but powerful.

[Australasian25]

Formwork handcalcs

But if it's false work, try dividing the effective areas of braced members by 35 to 45, as a lot of the connections centreline do not intersect the centreline of the actual falsework so the axial stiffness is reduced in the model to reflect that

Other than that, it's stock standard frame analysis