I just came out of a week of training on Tekla, and I feel like talking about it. As you might expect, Tekla Structure is a BIM application mainly oriented toward structural modeling and detailing. Originally designed for modeling steel structures, it now also covers concrete structures, execution drawings extraction, and model reviewing features.
Far away from code-driven geometry and other parametrical modeling stuff, Tekla is practical. Ok, you cannot generate thousands of roof panels with a nice piece of .NET, but a least, you don’t spend fifteen minutes to draw a wall. This pragmatic approach combined with powerful drawings generation features, made Tekla a real construction-oriented BIM software.
Since its acquisition by Trimble, a company mostly knows for its GPS, lasers and other positioning hardware, Tekla had developed a great deal of applications for the construction site. Fully integrated with the Trimble hardware, it allows adding topographic points to a model, generate new coordinates for the layout, and export them in a Trimble tablet to implant them directly on site.
But what impresses me most is the execution drawing generation. Once you have drawn the few beams of your future greenhouse (for example), liked them together with the automatic assembly tools, you are just a click away from generating all the drawings you need. Basic templates include general arrangement drawings, single-part drawing or assembly drawings, but you can also fully customize your production regarding the needs of your design office.
But being pragmatic does not in any way prevent Tekla from being smart, and it comes with a large set of parametric components allowing designing quickly every details of our structure. And if these components are not enough, you can also design your own, with an interface looking like the family editor of Revit.
Nowadays, Tekla is broadly integrated into design offices for steel detailing (even in France …), and since its acquisition by Trimble, it seems to becoming the most site-oriented of BIM software.