I want to use an open source and concrete software for future academic works. Please share your opinions about the various free concrete design software.
I agree with Mohsen. If you want something free and open, suitable for research purposes, go with Opensees. You can find it at http://opensees.berkeley.edu/
Version 2.4.6 is the latest stable release
Ansys, SAP and others that were mentioned are also fine, but they are NOT free and NOT open source. They are commercial software that you have to pay for.
Opensees is not the easiest software to use, you need some basic programming skills in order to use it and there is no good GUI (Graphical User Interface). The best things with the program can be done with a text editor (writing code in TCL) and no GUI.
But I don't think that you can do much on design itself with it. Opensees is a good software for structural analysis (linear, non-linear, dynamic, steel/concrete, etc), but I don't think it has ready-to-use features for the design itself. You have to take care of the design requirements yourself - the software will help you only for analysis purposes.
I agree with Mohsen. If you want something free and open, suitable for research purposes, go with Opensees. You can find it at http://opensees.berkeley.edu/
Version 2.4.6 is the latest stable release
Ansys, SAP and others that were mentioned are also fine, but they are NOT free and NOT open source. They are commercial software that you have to pay for.
Opensees is not the easiest software to use, you need some basic programming skills in order to use it and there is no good GUI (Graphical User Interface). The best things with the program can be done with a text editor (writing code in TCL) and no GUI.
But I don't think that you can do much on design itself with it. Opensees is a good software for structural analysis (linear, non-linear, dynamic, steel/concrete, etc), but I don't think it has ready-to-use features for the design itself. You have to take care of the design requirements yourself - the software will help you only for analysis purposes.