Vectorworks Works with German Beta Testers to Roll Out Braceworksstatico Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH is a team of experienced engineers that offers services in the field of static design and the construction of temporary stages, grandstands, LED structures, trade show booths, PA towers, scaffolding constructions, advertising structures, and related special constructions. The company specializes in truss structures as well as temporary constructions made from scaffolding systems or wood. For statico, novel thinking and innovation are at the top of the list when it comes to working methods and tools. In the last decade, Vectorworks has become the most widely used CAD software for technical design in the field of event technology. It is only logical that statico would be the first engineering firm in the industry to invest in Vectorworks to ensure loss-free information exchange. The collaboration between statico and Vectorworks focused on the testing of Braceworks, the company's new entertainment rigging analysis add-on module for Vectorworks Spotlight and Designer. statico was selected as one of the companies that were heavily involved in the beta testing phase as an advisor and made comparative calculations between the established calculation systems and the results from Braceworks. "It was really interesting to get Braceworks tested by civil engineers," says Moritz Staffel, general manager of DeerSoft GmbH and the main developer of Braceworks. He worked with 50 beta testers from eight different companies in Germany and says it was a "pleasure to work with them." Based on the feedback given by statico and the other beta testers, it quickly became clear that the combination of technical planning with Vectorworks Spotlight and evaluation with Braceworks leads to ultimate gains in efficiency. Even during the design stages, parameters such as truss utilization and suspension-point loading can be checked continuously. "The designer also needs to monitor preliminary results and change," says Stephan Schewe, managing director and partner at statico. "By means of the controlled data transfer, the final structural verification can then be provided in an uncomplicated way by experienced structural engineers. Time-consuming and risky intermediate steps are now a thing of the past." The use of Braceworks with statico set a milestone in technical planning at the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. A complex system consisting of 735 rigging points, 3,300m of trusses, 1,816 lighting fixtures, 212 tons of hanging material, 112 CyberHoist chain hoists, and over 30m of freeform textiles was used for the stage. "By using the DSTV data export of Braceworks the exchange was quite easy and saved lots of time," says Schewe. "Of course, it's difficult to calculate or measure the total time, but we can say it saved around 40-percent of the usual work progress and definitely saved on cost for the structural pre-analysis formerly done by structural engineers." "One thing that statico loved about Braceworks is the easy way to do documentation. During the past few months, they generated reports that were proved and stamped," says Staffel. "It was a personal success to see the calculation results; that Braceworks was working and that the exchange format was working. We are really giving a benefit to the users." Braceworks debuted with the company's release of Vectorworks 2018. 
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