Midas Gen and Etabs Pros and Cons

[ASEC]

For the sake of discussion I would like to start a thread talking about the advantages of Midas Gen over Etabs or Etabs over Midas Gen.

The very reason that arises my curiosity is that why a consulting firm like Thornton Tomasetti would use Midas Gen in designing the kingdom tower if they have been using CSI product for more than 30 years. My speculations are the following.

a. Midas Gen has a very strong and thight integration with Midas GTS which is very powerful program for raft piled foundation.
b. Midas Gen has very reliable feature in column shortening analysis which would yield accurate prediction of elastic and long term shortening upon actual monitoring and test by Midas.

I have more to add but would like to hear other users view. When I say users those users that actually use both programs in actual production environment in other words real projects.

[pelon2040]

Hi ASEC,

I think ETABS is a wonderful program, I have never used Midas Gen, I have only read the specs.

In my experience, I have analized building until 35 floor, when for the slab I use Shell elements the computation time is a lot, and you have to correct the mesh of finite elements, takes a lot of time to do that. Sometimes it took me around 3hours the analysis.

I don't know how Midas Gen does that, but I believe it more efficient than ETABS.

I can't imagine to analyze a 200 floors or 1000m of tall in ETABS, it could take over a day.

This is a disadvantage of ETABS in my opinion.

The other you mention, you're right CSI SAFE is not powerful than Midas GTS.

[joker™]

Mr. Arnel,

Are you sure Thornton Tomasetti would use Midas Gen in designing the kingdom tower?

[ASEC]

I have attended a 2-day seminar on Earthquake Resistant Design of Multi-Story Building using Midas Gen and the kingdom tower project was showcased in that seminar.

Here are some images

[pelon2040]

Hi ASEC,

You could share that information about Midas Gen and the design of Kingdon Tower?

Best Regards.

[ASEC]

@pelon2040

I do not have much information about the project, we were just told by the people from Midas IT that the kingdom tower is designed by Thornton Tomassetti engineers using Midas Gen and Midas GTS. We were shown some screen shots of the model in Midas Gen and Midas GTS.


Midas IT people told us that unlike the Bhurj Khalifa, were Midas Gen was only use for the column shortening analysis and as a verification of the model done in ETABS, for the Kingdom Tower project all analyses were done using Midas Gen and Midas GTS.

[joker™]

Mr Arnel,

Could you please share the link of seminar from youtube with us?

Regards,

[ASEC]

@ joker,

It was a hands on seminar no video recording we were given a training manual of actual project 35 stories reinforced concrete building with step by step procedure on how to design the building.

[pelon2040]

Hi @ASEC

I understand. Then can you upload your manual for 35 stories Midas Gen for learning about the use of the program?

Thanks in advance

[ASEC]

I will try what I can do, for now this is what I got from my camera shot. It will take a little time to complete and I cannot assure the quality if it is readable. It was actually 30-Story practical project.