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Discover all about the rebranding of Scia!

Corporate News: A new name for Scia and its flagship software SCIA.ESA PT

Today Nemetschek AG has made a clear statement to the market concerning its future direction. Being the holding company of world software producers for the AEC (Architecture - Engineering- Construction) Market, Nemetschek is stepping up its brand appearance. Nemetschek brings a major benefit with its software brands: the freedom to implement visions.

Among the software products from Nemetschek are:  Allplan (an integrated CAD platform for architectural & engineering & fabrication drawings), Archicad (the virtual architectural CAD software), Vectorworks (a user friendly powerful CAD environment for design purposes) and Cinema4D by Maxon (a multimedia presentation & creation tool). Scia is the leading supplier of advanced engineering design software. Scia is also leading the Nemetschek Engineering Software Group with other products coming from Frilo, Glaser and Nemetschek Precast. Nemetschek also has software companies for cost management, facilities management … The multi-colour logo proves the variety of companies that belong to Nemetschek AG.

The pluralism in solutions from Nemetschek gives the closest representation of the real construction world where many partners cooperate to realize construction projects. The experience of bundling a variety of solutions towards one diversified construction market results in professional software offerings; versatile, innovative and future-oriented. This is what Nemetschek stands for: professional software for the AEC market. The pluralism of the product offering leads to a change in how professionals execute the design, build or management work. Nemetschek is ‘moving minds’.

Scia is part of the worldwide branding of Nemetschek. As of today Scia takes on a new name ‘Nemetschek Scia’, yet keeping its distinctive character of ‘Inspiring People to move Limits’. Its contribution consists in ‘Enabling Innovation in Construction’.  Nemetschek Scia clarifies that it belongs to a strong family, together with Nemetschek Allplan, Nemetschek Graphisoft, Nemetschek VectorWorks and the others.

We have decided to rename at the same time our flagship product SCIA•ESA PT (Engineering Structural Applications Professional Technology). A more easily pronounceable name will be welcomed by many. The new name has been chosen to have a close identification of the software users with their preferred product:  Scia Engineer.  Scia (Scientific Applications) keeps its roots, yet moves on to convince engineers worldwide that it is THE software to be used for modelling, analysis, design and detailing by structural engineers. Together with the launch of the release 2008 the new name Scia Engineer is introduced.

A new product logo was conceived which represents one of the many features of the product: designing bridges. It fits well in the product companies of Nemetschek AG, as the Allplan BIM 2008 logo shown to the right.

The Nemetschek brand communication is worked out in several media: websites, brochures, leaflets, house style, etc.   Each product company of Nemetschek will be recognizable through some strong images illustrating the use of the software. For Nemetschek Scia one of the chosen projects was built by our clients Alfa 04 and Dopravoprojekt in Bratislava: the Apollo Bridge. It illustrates the art of designing remarkable structures with remarkable software.

Product News: Scia Engineer - Version 2008: Improvements and new features

As introduced in the company news section of this eNews, our flag product SCIA•ESA PT has been renamed to Scia Engineer. The brand new version 2008 contains a vast number of smaller or larger improvements and a set of completely new features. Let us start with the improvement that will definitely be welcomed by everyone. Speed: this single word says it all. Version 2008 offers significantly faster response in many fundamental operations such as regeneration of graphical windows, geometrical manipulations, document management, code checks of concrete members, optimisation of steel members, etc. Another improvement is that you are now able to run several instances of Scia Engineer on a single computer, a detail that may sometimes prove invaluable.

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A great deal of work has been done to extend the modelling capabilities of Scia Engineer. Version 2008 enables you to effectively handle general solids that may be either imported from third-party programs or input directly in Scia Engineer. You are now able to freely modify the shape of the solids and, what is even more important, you can simply, i.e. automatically, convert general solids to Scia Engineer native entities: 1D members and 2D members (image 1).

Considerable attention has been paid to the module for the design of concrete members. In addition to the above-mentioned speed improvements, you can design reinforcement in 1D members of an arbitrary (i.e. varying) cross-section and even in 1D members with openings (image 2 and 3).

Also the next new feature will be probably used mainly for concrete structures, even though it is not limited to them. Imagine a slab composed of prefabricated beams. Version 2008 enables you to perform a two-step detailed analysis of such a slab. The first step represents the analysis of the complete structure with the slab considered to be a single (either isotropic or orthotropic) component. In the second step, you can easily export one beam of the slab into a separate Scia Engineer project where you may evaluate in detail its behaviour without having to perform the laborious task of determining the load the beam is subjected to, because the load (together with some other parameters) is read from the results of the first analysis (image 4). Another improvement concerns the document in Scia Engineer. Images included in the document can now be exported to PDF as 3D images. This means that the PDF file is all you need to make a breathtaking presentation of your project. Directly in the PDF file (using the standard Adobe Reader) you can rotate, zoom and move the structure or its detail and you can select the appropriate display style (from simple black-and-white illustration to transparent rendering) to get the best impression from the adjusted view(image 5). And last, but not least, a completely new module is being presented. Scia Engineer is now capable of performing the design and assessment of aluminium structures according to EN 1999-1-1 (image 6).
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