Critical Comparative Feature Analysis of Structural Software (Sap2000 And Staad.Pro) and the Nature of their Pirated Counterparts
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Date
2009-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Being in the mist of the computer era, it’s hard even to imagine the challenges faced in the
structural world when such software did not exist. In this ‘time is money’ world reducing the time
for analysis and design of a certain structure from months to seconds is a miraculous achievement.
This thesis is believed to make us even more appreciative of the technological era we’re in
witnessing the evolution of structural software.
Although extremely useful in tackling routine and tiresome analysis activities in engineering,
software by no means shall be taken as replacement for engineers. The basic engineering inputs of
formulating models and applying engineering concepts and judgment at every step of the whole
analysis and design process remain largely of the engineer’s task. In contrary to the overgrowing
‘software worship’ practice in our country, engineers are to check software result validity.
Engineers should also spend enough time in exploring features of engineering software with
proper assistance from their respective manuals. Instead of wrong software adaptation habit of one
engineering firm from another, the software features have to be thoroughly investigated so as to
prefer one software over another for a specific task.
The other important issue which needs to be addressed regarding engineering software practice is
the widespread use of pirated software products. The result reliability of pirated versions is put to
the test by running four different types of structural models on a licensed SAP2000 V-12 and a
pirated SAP2000 V-12 version. The results obtained showed small percentage differences which
might suggest good “crack” quality for this particular package used. But this by no means shall
justify the use of pirated products for a number of reasons to be discussed in this thesis.
The above implementations are set to narrow the gap and building trust between the seemingly
rival so called “academic engineers” and “practicing engineers” by providing tangible
functionalities and limitations of the structural software and evaluating the questionable validity of
using pirated products.
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Civil engineering