Better IES Support

Get faster, better technical support from IES

You may have questions about IES software that were already answered by IES technical support staff in one way or another.  The following information will help keep you productive if you run into roadblocks while using our tools. 

Really Accessible FAQ

We have collected our email support questions and answers from the past six or eight months and greatly expanded our FAQ Answers site, increasing the breadth and depth of answers by about 800%.  We have also removed obsolete questions and made the system much friendlier for searching.  You may browse the system by product or search for specific answers.  Best of all it is available 24/7/365, with no waiting!  Some recently answered questions:

• Do IES products work in Windows 7 64-bit?
• Can I enter loads with more than one decimal place?
• How can I improve cold-formed design performance?
• How do I get custom shapes from SB 4.0 into VA 7.0?

Other Fast Answers

If you need help for IES software products there are a number of resources available.  Be sure you avail yourself of these options before you contact us:

• User's Guides (Help) have feature explanations, limitations, terminology and more.  You can search and bookmark!
• Quick Start Tutorials (may be in the help file) contain step-by-step instructions for typical tasks.
• Product Demo/Tutorial Movies (online)
  e.g. www.iesweb.com/products/visualanalysis/demo.htm
  See short, free demonstrations of key features.
• Supplementary VA Tutorials (online)
  www.iesweb.com/downloads/supplementary.htm
  Here are nearly 60 tutorials for VisualAnalysis that are not installed with the product!
• New! Free Training Videos
  www.iesweb.com/training, see article in this newsletter for more.

Get Better Email Support

If you have explored the above and cannot find the answers to your questions, we encourage you to let us know!  (This is one of the ways we use to improve our products and services.) Before you write, though, be sure you know these things and can communicate them to us:

• Which Product & Version are you using?
• What is the specific question or problem?
• If possible, attach a project file and/or pdf document to explain problems or issues.

Armed with the above details, our support staff will usually answer questions within a couple hours for almost all types of questions!  We regularly patch our software to deal with confusion, typos, or other bad-behavior.

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VA 8.0: October 2010

Working for Your Success

October may seem like a long ways off, but at IES it is approaching very fast as we work to bring you version 8.0 of VisualAnalysis.  We have some major improvements in the works to help you get your work done quickly, easily, accurately, even beautifully.  Here is a glimpse into the future of VA:

Design Software Overhaul

Way back in the Windows 3.x days we architected VisualAnalysis to allow 'add-on' design software.  The idea was that 3rd parties, even engineers might write their own design checks for various specifications.  That turned out to be a fairly limiting decision, and one that has taken us 12 years to restructure.  In VA 8.0 we are re-architecting the software to integrate design checks into the 'core' of the system, which will have dramatic benefits for everyone, while still functioning almost identically in the user-interface.  We are still in the early stages but we have already seen file I/O improvements, stability and performance increases, and simplified design input.  This change will also allow us to implement new building codes much more easily.

The first immediate design addition will be (long awaited) support for aluminum design according to the ADM 2010!

Reporting Overhaul

In VisualAnalysis 7.0 we started on a reporting overhaul and have made some of the reporting features much more accessible and easier to use, but we still have a long ways to go to make reporting in VisualAnalysis truly fantastic.  We have already made some changes toward this goal and have some great ideas (mostly from you!) that we will be implementing over the next month or so, but what we really need from customers is help.

Wrapping Issues Solved

One of the most frustrating aspects of VA 7 and prior reporting has been table 'wrapping', where text does not fit the width of the page and is wrapped around to the next line making reports very difficult to read.  A related issue is where columns are too narrow and values are truncated making the reports incomplete or to actually appear incorrect.  Both of these issues have already been addressed in VA 8.0!

Design Reports Are Different?

Design Reports will be significantly better.  Part of the design rewrite has been motivated to solve some serious discrepancies between "analysis" reports and "design" reports in VisualAnalysis.  You will see some major simplifications and performance improvements in this area, where reporting will be more uniform.

VisualAnalysis is used for so many different kinds of projects, in different materials and countries that it is difficult to create a "one size fits all" reporting system.  The kind of reports you might want for a single wood beam could be dramatically different than what you want for a 2500 member steel industrial facility, or a concrete containment tank. 

Single-Member Report

One type of report we will add in VisualAnalysis 8.0 is a single-page report to completely document the design of a member in any project.  This report would detail the critical information for plan checkers for any member in your project showing: geometry, boundary conditions, materials, loading, analysis results, and design check details.

 

Customer Reports Wanted!

Please help us to "nail" the reporting of a single-member by creating or finding a "perfect" one-page report using any means at your disposal.   We are interested both in the CONTENT of the report as well as the PRESENTATION!

Mail or email a copy your ideas to.  A PDF document via email is preferred, but you may send a hard-copy if that is easier: 519 E Babcock St, Bozeman, MT 59718.  We would like example reports for all material types (steel, wood, concrete, cold-formed, aluminum).  Dream big, so we can too!

Please send us your "best" one-member report (even just a sketch) to support@iesweb.com.   If you don't, you will be saying, "I could have had a V8..my way!".

 

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Weekly Webinars!

Free Training for Popular Subjects

We are still experimenting with web-based training and have tried a number of different formats.  There was not much demand for longer, paid training classes with PDH credits, but we may try to offer this type of training with new product releases, or once a year.

Free Demonstrations!

 Currently we are offering weekly training (or demonstration) classes that are short (1/2 hour) and free.  Everyone is welcome to attend the live training every Thursday at 11 AM (Mountain Time).  Attending lets you watch the 15-20 minute presentation and then participate in a Q&A session at the end.  If you miss the training, you may watch the recorded version (just the presentation) from our web site.

The topics will vary based on customer demand and technical support questions we get.  If you have topics to suggest, email your ideas to training@iesweb.com.

Upcoming Training

• [June 17] Finding Information in VA

• [June 24] Rigid vs. Flexible Diaphragms in VA

• [July 8] Creating Model Objects in VA

• [July 15] Understanding Stress Analysis in SB

• [July 22] Selecting Items in VA

To watch any free training that you might have missed, visit www.iesweb.com/training and start learning.  We will also post upcoming training topics and dates on this page as they become available.

 

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Lower-Cost Licenses

Economic Stimulus Pricing

We have noticed a trend in our business that is surely due to the economy: new customer sales are down.  We understand that software is something of a luxury commodity in the structural engineering world, especially if you already have software as most companies do.  We want to make sure that even with a very tight budget our customers have access to premium quality tools.  After all, better tools will help you squeeze more profit out of the jobs that do come your way.

Reducing Up-Front Cost

When you buy a new IES product the initial investment can be fairly large and hard to justify with a single project.  With our existing maintenance plan, you must first own the product to get the low annual fee to stay current. 

Changes July 1, 2010

In order to lower the initial cost, we are restructuring the maintenance plan starting July 1st, to distribute the new-purchase price over the five year plan time frame, reducing your initial investment about 30%, and then locking-in Today's lower costs for the next five years with annual payments.  It is like zero-interest leasing of a product, but better because you get all of the annual upgrades, unlimited support, and at the end of the five years you still own the product-version that you have and may continue to use it indefinitely.

Won't Affect Existing Plans.

This change will not alter any existing maintenance plans you have in place, which will run their terms.  When your maintenance expires, you will be presented with renewal options, so you can decide whether to continue or not.

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VA.Edu Update

New version of VA for Schools

IES VisualAnalysis was our very first product back in 1994, and right from the start we offered it free of charge to Universities and schools.  We have maintained this outreach program that helps to train students using some of the best technology available in the industry. 

VA7 For Schools in 2010

With the 2010-2011 school year we are introducing a new educational version based on VisualAnalysis 7.0.  This streamlined product will help professors demonstrate structural behavior, introduce students to analysis and design techniques, and will also help with more advanced research.  Our goal is to provide students with a great first experience with structural software, and we think VisualAnalysis is the best choice in the industry for this task as it is extremely easy to learn and use--we designed it for students originally!
If you are involved in teaching at a North American college or university, or know someone who is, please check out the Educational Outreach pages at:

 www.iesweb.com/edu

Learning how to do structural analysis requires understanding the math, the theories, and a ton of hard work, but it can still be fun, especially if you can check your work in a professional-level product like VisualAnalysis.

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