What do you use ETABS for specifically?

[Skicat]

I am a new ETABS user and I recently attended an ADAPT seminar talking about the integration of ETABS and ADAPT floor pro. I know ETABS doesn't do PT. We use ADAPT floor & PT8 for our slab & beam design. We don't use ETABS to design concrete floors or beams. We only use it for gravity and lateral analysis of the concrete frame. We do very little steel design compared to concrete, so I guess it is more suited for steel design than concrete. I was just curious what others are using it for and if I can get more out of ETABS than I currently am. Thank you.

 

[TtheD]

We use ETABS primarily for concrete shearwall design. It gives the boundary zone lengths in the output.

 

[masomenos]

steel and concrete blgs, parking garages and small stuff too like trusses and single column and beam designs. If you already have ETABS and are using it for concrete, you can use ETABS column and shear wall design even if you're using Adapt for the slabs. Just keep in mind that ETABS is a general purpose structural analysis and design package with frame and shell/membrane finite elements, albeit with features oriented toward design of bldg structures (story concept). I heard that ETABS was used on the Boston tunnel big dig design, so it's versatile if you know the modeling techniques.

 

[sreichwein]

Generally, we just use ETABS for the analysis of concrete shear walls and concrete moment frames. Once we are able to limit the drift, we can output the forces from ETABS into a spreadsheet for design. We design the piers of the shears walls for flexure and axial loads using PCA Column. We design the moment frames using PCA Slab. For the gravity design of the concrete floor system, we use RAM Advanse and SAFE. ETABS is also very useful in designing complex steel braced frame and moment frame lateral systems. It is especially useful in seismic applications. However, RAM is more suitable for the gravity design of steel floor systems, in my opinion. Often we have two models; a RAM gravity model and an ETABS lateral model.