Tekla Structures Precast Concrete - Pushing the boulder over the hill?
Arvin Eugenio, Sales & Marketing

About 12 years ago, in a quest to maintain Dowco Consultants as a premier steel detailing company, Hugh Dobbie Sr. sought to find other means to produce shop drawings with speed and accuracy. The company had already been 100% automated with the use of CAD, so it made sense to move towards 3D Modeling & Detailing systems. Three software platforms were battling each other at that time but after an investigative trip to the UK, Dowco became one of Tekla’s earliest and major users of Tekla Structures, the 3D structural modeling system formerly known as Xsteel.

Dowco at this stage also became the distributor for Canada and the US. Since the product was European, Dowco worked hand in hand with Tekla’s developers to customize the software to meet the demands of the North American Steel Detailing market. With this in place, Ewen Dobbie, then Sales & Marketing Manager for Dowco, along with his merry band of Tech/Sales staff Sanjay Prasad and Tom Knight, travelled near and far, east to west and north to south to convey the message to engineers, fabricators and detailers that Tekla Structures was ‘Today’s system with a Guaranteed Future’ and to encourage the industry players to make the giant leap from 2D drafting to 3D modeling. Ewen Dobbie describes those days as ‘pushing the boulder over the hill’. After countless hours of demos, presentations, meetings and time spent on the phone we can state Tekla Structures Steel Detailing is now the most widely used 3D structural building information modeling (BIM) system in North America.

By 2007, Dowco was awarded reseller status for Tekla’s new product configuration – Tekla Structures for Precast Concrete. As we embrace this new product, the question is, are we again going to push the boulder over the hill? With a flourishing concrete industry in Canada, acceptance of a 3D modeling package makes perfect sense to a 2D oriented market. There is however, another player in this market, bent on promoting cheaper costs for their software package. In this case, why should Precast players make an investment in Tekla? To answer this question, let’s take a look back again at the reasons Dowco invested in Tekla years ago. At that time, all the platforms available had negligible differential advantages from each other, the only major one being cost. The rationale behind Dowco’s investment in Tekla Structures had to do with Tekla Oy as a company. Aside from having the most experience in the industry (more than 40 years now), it was the only company among the three that invested 30% of their annual profits in Research & Development.

However, there are other advantages to choosing Tekla Structures for Precast Concrete. First of all, Tekla Structures is the only software recommended and chosen by the Precast Concrete Software Consortium (PCSC), a group of major precast concrete producers in Canada and the USA. Secondly, Tekla Structures is the only Structural Building Information Modeling (BIM) system that covers the entire structural design process from Conceptual Design to Detailing, Fabrication and Construction. And without getting into the features and functionalities of the program, Tekla Structures has proven technology, evident by the hundreds of licenses being used in production worldwide, not to mention the numerous projects ongoing and completed globally.

As we endeavor to make Tekla Structures the top choice for Precast Concrete designers and fabricators, we remember the visionaries and innovators that made Tekla Structures Steel Detailing what it is today. We look forward to the future with anticipation that we will all soon be coasting down the hill.

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