Tekla Software

[Bill Tillman]

Been working on commercial projects doing lots of stair handrails out of aluminum. A colleague told me she uses Tekla not AutoCAD. The 3D work she did was very impressive. Particularly how she could do a 3D model of stairs winding their way up a stairwell. The walls were cut away to show details. The details with the pickets, grip rails, etc... was really cool.

 

So anyone got some pointers on how to get into 3D stair models in Tekla. For example can I import a file created in AutoCAD? I had her save the file she created with Tekla to a dwg file. AutoCAD opened it fine and that beautiful 3D work she did was there but it was all broken up into lines, which makes it difficult to edit or make changes.

 

It appears that one could do the same stuff with AutoCAD although it would be primitive. Revit seems to be the equal of Tekla, maybe less the structural analysis stuff. My first thought is to attack the learning curve with Revit as opposed to Tekla.

Edited March 16, 2021 by Bill Tillman

[Cad64]

1 hour ago, Bill Tillman said:

It appears that one could do the same stuff with AutoCAD although it would be primitive. Revit seems to be the equal of Tekla, maybe less the structural analysis stuff. My first thought is to attack the learning curve with Revit as opposed to Tekla.

 

I don't know much about Tekla, but if you want to be able to work back and forth with Autocad, Revit would probably be a better option. You might also want to look at Fusion360 or maybe Rhino if you want to do more organic modeling. Autocad 3D, in my opinion, is very basic and primitive when compared to other programs.

[SLW210]

AutoCAD Architecture comes with AutoCAD now as part of the toolset. Practice doing stairs, railings etc. with that.