We continued to make small steps forward last year. We were able to record a constant increase in the number of our community members, even if this is not always visible to the outside world, as unfortunately only a few members register their company when they register for the first time.

Companies already known from the last two years were involved in the newly added qualified evaluation examples: in the special examples, the DBV working group Software for Structural Analysis with the members Dlubal Software GmbH (Alexander Meierhofer), RIB Software GmbH (David Krybus Ph.D., Roland Sauer), FRILO Software GmbH (Bert Ziems), SOFiSTiK AG (Ria Tautz) and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Walter Pauli) as well as the regular examples Dlubal Software GmbH (Alexander Meierhofer), RIB Software GmbH (Dr.-Ing. Roland Sauer) and SOFiSTiK AG (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Casimir Katz). We thank you for your unwavering commitment!

The highlight of the past year was our participation in the 15th Conference on Structural Analysis and Construction Practice in Hamburg, where EvaDAT was represented both by a presentation by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Casimir Katz and by a stand, which was very well supported by the members of the Software Working Group who were present and in particular by the Chairman Bert Ziems. EvaDAT was also represented again at the IK-Bau NRW further education seminars.

The low point, however, was certainly the rejection of our funding application to the Ministry of Regional Identity, Local Government, Building and Digitalization of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. After final submission of the application in July, implementation of the planned content was not allowed to begin - as is generally the case - until approval was granted. Just in time for Easter, we received the rejection on Maundy Thursday. Although we had already buried our hopes earlier, as approvals are announced throughout the year with no time limit, we were still clearly slowed down in our workflow. A year later, we now have to pick up speed again in this direction.

The application was intended to help establish the platform and thus ensure its continued existence. As in the previous year, only a very small fraction of the costs could be covered by the advertisements placed. We are therefore all the more grateful to FRILO Software GmbH, which supported us financially throughout last year, and we are delighted that SOFiSTiK AG has also joined us again.

In order to generate another source of income for EvaDAT in the medium term, we launched the “jobsforINGs” job exchange for architects and civil engineers (m/f/d) last year, which is also linked to the EvaDAT platform. At present, job vacancies can still be advertised here free of charge, but in future this will be possible for a small fee. Compared to the big job boards, which offer a lot of extras but also cost a lot of money, we follow the motto “less is more” and place ads like in the good old days, where the job advertisement with the contact details of the company was still in the foreground. Among other things, we are thus generating a digital “university bulletin board”. The aim is to bring business and universities together here as well as on EvaDAT.

We would be very pleased if you would (continue to) support EvaDAT in the coming fourth year so that we don't have to close down any time soon: place an advertisement, work on the creation of examples, register on the platform and enter your company or place job advertisements on jobsforINGs.de.

THANK YOU

It shows how important even supposedly simple examples are as evaluation examples. On the one hand, they serve as a simple check of standard routines, but on the other hand, they also help to learn the basics of modeling (dynamic) load-bearing structures.

Read more about this in the now published chapters Results and Assessment of the example:

- EvaDAT-00-A: Eigenvalue analysis of a plate

               Dr.-Ing. Roland Sauer / RIB Software GmbH / TRIMAS
               Dr.-Ing. Casimir Katz / SOFiSTiK AG/ SOFiSTiK FEA
               Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Aleaxander Meierhofer / Dlubal Software GmbH / RFEM

From March 4 to 5, EvaDAT was represented with a stand at the 15th Conference on Structural Analysis and Construction Practice in Hamburg. It couldn't have been a better environment: the conditions created by the team from the Institute of Structural Analysis at Hamburg University of Technology were excellent! Active support at the stand was provided by the DBV's Software for Structural Analysis working group - in particular by its chairman Bert Ziems.

Many thanks to all those who attended and visited the stand - we were very pleased!

The members of the working group and the representative of EvaDAT:

Bert Ziems / FRILO Software GmbH, Casimir Katz / SOFiSTiK AG, Kirsten Stopp / connectINGs GmbH, Roland Sauer / RIB Software GmbH, David Krybus / RIB Software GmbH

In the very well attended mini-symposium "Software-based structural analysis and parametric design" at the 15th Symposium on Structural Analysis and Construction Practice (15. Fachtagung Baustatik-Baupraxis) in Hamburg, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Casimir Katz explained the necessity of validation and presented the findings of the DBV's Software for Structural Analysis working group, which resulted from the comparison of various software solutions with EvaDAT.

Many thanks for the very interesting presentation, which certainly helped to make EvaDAT even better known!