I'm a 5 year mechanical engineer in the power generation industry, using CAESAR II for the last 4 years exclusively for B31.1 pipe stress analysis.

My boss has recently informed me that our company is contemplating making a switch to AutoPIPE from CAESAR II, which doesn't shock me considering how Bentley somehow gotten our company to change over to much of their software over the last few years. I have plenty more to discuss on that topic, but I digress.

I realize that it may be difficult to get an unbiased opinion in a CAESAR II forum, but all of our stress engineers know CAESAR II in and out (i'm talking 6 offices for scale) and this decision to all of a sudden switch everyone over to AutoPIPE seems to be based upon no more than a convincing Bentley sales pitch to the folks higher up (whose eyes typically glaze over at the mention of pipe stress anlaysis).

I'm sure AutoPIPE is capable enough, however I've gone through a few tutorials and modeled/stressed a few lines and I honestly very much prefer using CAESAR II. I'm helping a few other engineers with the same opinion (after giving similar test runs) mount an offensive against this switch.

I'm looking for other opinions from anyone who's used AutoPIPE more than just a simple test run, anyone who's gone through a similar situation, looking for advantages/disadvantages of both programs, anything that can help me gather intel to hopefully keep CAESAR II in our office. I'm also very interested in any information on industry trends in terms of which program is more prevalent, especially if there are a number of major companies who use one vs. the other.

I'm all ears if anyone has any additional suggestions as to how I shoudld approach this uphill battle against upper management who doesn't know any better.

Any advice, help, etc would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

How about this:

clients/clients' consultants have/use Caesar and are pleased to use it with your calculations.

I faced like you, I leave it to client which software to use.
I notice if we calculate pipe stress in Autopipe use the same constraints in CII with support and hanger etc I notice having nonconvergence error or frictional errors. But I usually workout first in CII and then autopipe.

The company I work for uses both.

I've found Autopipe much faster to model things by hand. The modeling interface seems to be more mature than that of Caesar. Merging models is painless, you can automatically renumber nodes, change pipe properties over ranges with ease, the graphics are better, etc.

The stress output on the other hand is very primitive. Caesars output report generator, filtering scheme, and transparency is far superior to that of Autopipe.

Buried pipe, so I'm told, is handled better by Caesar as well.

I've used AutoPIPE for about 6 years and Caesar for about 3 years. Currently using Caesar. Every time I use it, it strikes me how aged its user interface is. It seems to have been designed in early 80's for a DOS system, and never really thoroughly updated to a current computing environment.

AutoPIPE is fluid. You don't have to SLOWLY jump from window to window to see movement, to edit model, to see stresses etc. The computing engine is order of magnitude faster. You make changes, you recalculate in 3 seconds, and you almost instantly see the changes in the stresses, forces and movements. No searching through spreadsheets necessary. You select a point and you have ALL the information necessary right away. And if you have a data spreadsheet open, then it goes to that point right away as well (imagine that!). I think the quickness and simplicity of making changes makes you try many different possible design changes, makes you see their effects easier, and hence, makes you a better stress engineer in the long run.

Speaking of making changes in the model, as you might guess, it is MUCH easier. You don't have to worry about going through a spreadsheet trying to figure out the locations and magnitude of changes. You graphically select and stretch, pull, mirror, copy and paste, etc. Each operation takes seconds instead of minutes. Although I noticed recently Caesar is trying to copy that functionality (graphical stretching/moving), but it is still very cumbersome.

And node numbers? who cares? You don't have to worry about those almost at all in AutoPIPE. And why would you? Why would you be limited by something that should be handled by the software internally? I thought computers were suppose to make our lives easier.

As Tye mentioned, the report output is handled differently. Once you're used to Caesar I suppose, you might find AutoPIPE lacking. However I don't think he is aware of all the output options, including very selective result filtering of AutoPIPE. I find the reports more than satisfactory. Also the way you view your results is more through the graphical representation of stresses and strains of the model. I find that much more intuitive, quicker and more useful than searching through tables of numbers. The graphical representation in Caesar is fairly atrocious. While in Autopipe you can get both visual representation of stresses, strains and exact numbers of any point you wish, in the same window, instantly. MUCH more user friendly.

I haven't done underground in Caesar, but I've done it in Autopipe. It's fine, providing you have the soil properties. Either way it's very much a guessing game because of the ever changing soil properties.


In conclusion, I view Caesar II as having one of the worst and least user friendly user interfaces of any program I've ever used. It is a necessary evil in the career that I've chosen, because of its popularity (it started earlier I believe, and has had very good marketing, while AutoPIPE's advertisement and promotion has been sorely lacking). Hopefully it's something that's changing. Last job (5 to 10 stress engineers) I helped to move over from Caesar to AutoPIPE.

Once you're fluent in AutoPIPE, it is an order of magnitude faster and easier to use. I would suggest you try it and stick with it for a while. Try using the keyboard shortcuts for building and editing models. And of course it would be nice if there was someone on site who could show you the basics in a day or two. Yes of course AutoPIPE is not perfect and has its quirks. But mostly they are easy to handle and nothing major. Caesar's whole user interface on the other hand seems to be one big quirk.

Hopefully I didn't ruffle too many feathers. Of course this is only my opinion, and I realize there are die-hard Caesar fans out there.

Cheers!

@Mpls_CAESAR_Guy

I am new to pipe stress analysis and using Autopipe. But I have to come here to ask people, because when i use Autopipe forum, I can't get my questions answered. Even the answers here have not helped me solve my problems but any how, i got some ideas.