How pathw.ai and STAAD.Pro Bridge the Data Gap in Steel Construction
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How pathw.ai and STAAD.Pro Help Structural Engineers Save Time with Automated Steel Detailing
Ebrahim Lamkanfi, co-founder of pathw.ai, shares how pathw.ai’s integration with Bentley’s STAAD.Pro helps structural engineers save hours by reducing data fragmentation and automating steel detailing workflows.
In the fast-paced world of steel construction and structural engineering, highly skilled professionals often find themselves bogged down by a surprisingly tedious task: moving data.
When project stakeholders operate in different software ecosystems, transferring structural analysis data to steel detailing tools usually means manual transcription, spreadsheets, and endless PDF reviews. Ebrahim Lamkanfi, a civil structural engineer with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, experienced this bottleneck firsthand. Teaming up with his co-founder, he launched Pathw.ai to tackle what he calls “data fragmentation” in the industry.
Today, as a featured solution in the Bentley Ecosystem Catalog, pathw.ai is serving as the ultimate connective tissue for engineering data.
The core issue in the industry is that different project stakeholders, from EPC contractors to local fabricators, often live on different “software islands.”
“The industry typically struggles with the tedious task of manual transcription from one tool to another,” Ebrahim explains.
Engineering Efficiency
To close the interoperability gap, pathw.ai developed a seamless integration for Bentley’s STAAD.Pro. Functioning natively within the STAAD.Pro interface, the Pathw.ai plugin automates the extraction of essential structural data—including member forces, geometry, and load combinations, organizing it into a highly structured format.
“You could look at us as a kind of data shipping layer,” says Ebrahim. “It ensures that complex engineering data is not just moved, but intelligently processed and formatted between different stakeholders living in different ecosystems. It becomes a single source of truth across the project.”
By adopting pathw.ai alongside Bentley’s robust design tools, engineering teams are experiencing a profound shift in their daily operations. Ebrahim highlights four key outcomes:
- Faster workflow handoffs: Automating data extraction eliminates hours of manual searching through PDFs, getting detailers up and running faster with intelligent grouping and critical load combinations.
- Greater accuracy: “By eliminating manual entry, we drastically reduce the risk of rework and transcription errors,” Ebrahim notes.
- Faster, more informed design decisions: Transforming complex, raw data into clear, visual formats allows for much faster design evaluation.
- Knowledge retention at scale: The platform creates a digital record of detailing work, allowing companies to build a reusable knowledge base and company standards for future projects.
This interoperability doesn’t just move data; it drives business growth. Ebrahim shared the example of TCS, a Belgian steel fabricator. TCS frequently receives project data from large EPC contractors who design within the Bentley ecosystem.
By utilizing pathw.ai’s plugin, TCS was able to seamlessly receive and process this data without friction. The integration was so successful and the workflow so efficient that it ultimately led TCS to invest directly in STAAD.Pro licenses, fully aligning themselves with the Bentley ecosystem.
For Pathw.ai, being listed in the Bentley Ecosystem Catalog is about more than just visibility; it’s about validating their solution and championing an open, collaborative industry.
“Bentley is a huge ecosystem, especially in sectors like energy, where tools like STAAD.Pro are standard,” Ebrahim concludes. “We don’t want to force users into a single software silo. Being on the Bentley catalog validates that a STAAD.Pro user can align with the Bentley vision while still collaborating flawlessly with others. We are complementing Bentley’s already rich ecosystem with specialized plugins that move the whole industry forward.”
