Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Analysis and design of buildings using Revit and ETABS software

Ehtisham Uddin Syed ⇑, Khaja Musab Manzoor
Lords Institute of Engineering and Technology, Survey No. 32, Appa Junction, near Police Academy, Himayath sagar, Hyderabad, Telangana 500091

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An increase in population has led more often towards vertical development rather than horizontal devel-
Available online 8 May 2022 opment, because of this the demand for multi-storied buildings has increased and they constitute about
60-70% of the urban infrastructure. In the present time, the design and analysis of civil structures are gen-
Keywords: erally carried out by various design software, amongst them E-Tabs and Revit Structures (BIM) are the
Revit (BIM) widely used and leading ones. Revit is one of the widely used applications in the BIM industry, it uses
Robot structure an external application named - Robot Structures for design purposes, whereas ETABS is an analytical
E-tabs
and design software. This research work mainly deals with the design and analysis of a multi-story rein-
Optimum result
Comparing software
forced concrete structure using ETABS and REVIT Structure software separately and a comparison of the
results obtained. Both these software’s use the Limit State Design principles conforming to the Indian
Standard Code of Practice for the design of structures. In this work a G + 10 structure is considered which
is subjected to static and dynamic loads like seismic and wind loads, the plan layout includes grids of
sizes 3.5 m  3.5 m with 4 in number in both X and Y directions. The main aim of this research work
is to draw an optimum line between the design and cost estimation of RC buildings and to determine
which software gives better results, as these projects(buildings) are of low-medium scale, the major fac-
tor governing them is the cost of construction. The results include a comparison of variations in shear
forces, bending moments values and reinforcement details obtained from both the software. Based on
the design data, cost estimation is carried out for the structural members.
Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Advances in Construction Materials and Structures.

1. Introduction designing of columns, beams, slabs, reinforcement steel, type of

Due to an increase in population, there is an increase in demand
for shelter and homes, which is one of the basic needs of human
beings. To cope with the demand multi-story structures are being
constructed. Manual Analysis and Design of multi-story structures
are very tedious and time-consuming as it might take up about
weeks and even a month. In the modern world, it is essential to
learn and practice the use of software for construction. Software’s
are created to reduce the workload and help achieve better results.
By using software, we are reducing manpower and time, it pro-
vides accurate results, multiple tasks can be achieved at once like
values of shear force, bending moment, reinforcement, deflection,
quantity and cost estimate of the building. The software comes
with built-in code books which help the user to design and analyse
a building according to the required code. Everything from the
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: syedehtishamuddin99@gmail.com (E.U. Syed), khajamusab-
manzoor@lords.ac.in (K.M. Manzoor).
concrete is inbuilt in the software which helps the user to design
a building as per their requirement. Different analytical methods
can be used for analyzing the structures, and various load combi-
nations can also be defined as per the requirements for analysis
and design.
For the construction of a structure, the major criteria which play
an important role are safety and construction cost. These two prin-
ciples are defined and assessed in the pre-construction stage. The
pre-construction stage is divided into the planning phase, design
phase, analysis phase, schedule, and quantity phase. In the plan-
ning phase survey of the site is done to know the SBC of soil, accu-
rately record the length and breadth of the plot. In the design
phase, a typical 2D layout is made with general parameters of a
building in reference to government by-laws. The analysis phase
involves the calculation of bending moment, shear force, reinforce-
ment details are checked manually and by software, all these
parameters need to satisfy the safety parameters laid down by
the government organizations. The schedule and quantity phase
involves the calculation of the time required for construction, total

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2022.04.463
2214-7853/Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Construction Materials and Structures.
Ehtisham Uddin Syed and Khaja Musab Manzoor Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485

material required, cost of construction. Pre-construction should be 3.2. Structure layout

carried out by structural engineers and architects. The software
used during this phase is generally Revit structures, Robot struc- We have considered a simple regular layout of dimension
tures, and E-Tabs. 16 m  16 m of a building, with each panel dimension of
Revit structures is a building information modeling (BIM) tool.
In this software, we can make 4D (planning, analysis, design, and
estimation) model of a building. The analysis of the building is car-
ried out in the extended software of Revit structures which is
Robotic structures. In this software we can design beams, columns,
walls, slabs, which are checked for their safety, reinforcement is
provided, and estimation of the building is also done.
E-Tabs is an engineering software where multi-story building
can be designed, it is an analytical software where it calculates
the shear force, bending moment of the building using the load
combination, in this software the building is designed and checked
with the parameters laid down by the standards, different country
standards are available for cross-referencing. In this the safety of
beams, columns are checked with the guidelines laid down by
the IS code, and reinforcement is provided as per the requirements.

2. Literature review

A recent study carried out by K. Surender Kumar and N.

Lingeshwaran on Analysis of residential building with STAAD. Pro
& ETABS, presented a summarized results of design and analysis
of a G + 8 building. This study concluded that the variation of
results from both the software’s is negligeable. Another research
work titled High Rise Buildings: Design, Analysis, and Safety - An
Overview performed by Imaad Shakir Abood and Mohammed
Fig. 1. Floor plan (Revit).
Ahmed Jasim presented an overview of high-rise buildings their
safety features, design issues, linear and nonlinear analysis proce-
dures for both seismic and wind activities.

3. Methodology

In this work analysis, the design of a residential building is car-

ried out using software like Revit and E-Tabs against all possible
loading conditions as per guidelines given in IS 456 & IS 875.
Work was carried out in the following steps.

 Designing a plan in Auto CAD.

 Calculation of loads according to the IS code.
 Manual analysis.
 Design of G + 10 residential building in Revit and E-Tabs.
 Extracting the results (shear force and bending moment).
 Comparing the results.

3.1. Codes and standards

The following are the codes and standards used to design G + 10

residential building.

 IS 456: 2000 - Code of Practice for Plain and Reinforced

Concrete.
 IS 875 (Part 1) 1987, Code of Practice for Design Loads for build-
ings & structures - Dead loads.
 IS 875 (Part 2) 1987, Code of practice for Design Loads for build-
ings & structures - Imposed Loads.
 IS 875 (Part-3) 2015, Code of practice for Design Loads for build-
ings & structures - Wind loads.
 IS 1893 (Part-1) 2016 Criteria for Earthquake resistant design of
structures: General provisions and buildings.
Fig. 2a. 3D Plan in E-Tabs.

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Fig. 2b. Elevation plan in Revit.

Table 1
Load combination.

S.No Strength Design S.No Serviceability Design

1 1.5 (DL + LL) 1 1.0 (DL + LL)
2 1.2 (DL + LL + EQ/WL) 2 1.0 DL + 0.8 (LL + EQ/WL)
3 1.5 (DL + EQ/WL) 3 1.0 (DL + EQ/WL)
4 0.9 DL + 1.5 EQ/WL

Abbreviations, WL = Wind Load, EQ = Earthquake Load.

4 m  4 m (Fig. 1). The distance between one slab to another slab is

3 m (or the height of each floor is 3 m) as shown in Fig. 2a and
Fig. 2b. All beams and columns are having the dimension of
300 mm  380 mm and 380 mm  380 mm respectively.

3.3. Load combination Fig. 3. Comparison of results in Beam 1.

According to the IS 456 2000 load combination have been con-

sidered, as provided in Table 1. Loads considered are dead load, live 3.4. Seismic load
load, seismic load, wind load, accidental wall load, and floor finish
load. All the load cases and their values are taken from the Indian The loads due to Seismic loads are generated by the response of
standard codebook. the structure to the design spectrum as specified in IS 1893 (Part 1)

Table 2
Results of Beam 1.

Description. MANUAL ETABS % Variation ROBOT STRUCTURE % Variation

Shear Force (KN) 44.27 48.08 8.61% 74.53 68.35%
Bending Moment (KN-m) 33.52 36.55 9.04% 48.88 45.82%
Area of Steel (mm2) 252 173 31.35% 370 46.83%

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Ehtisham Uddin Syed and Khaja Musab Manzoor Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485

Fig. 5. Comparison of results in Beam 2.

Fig. 4. Selection of Beam 1.

2016. The building site is located in seismic Zone Ⅱ and seismic

zone factors corresponding to that zone are adopted in the calcula-
tion of response.

3.5. Wind load

Wind load on a structure is calculated by what amount of speed

the wind is acting on the structure, it is done by taking previously
recorded wind speed near the sitex.
The following are the data that has been used in designing.

 Grade of Concrete: M25.

 Grade of Steel: Fe500.
 Number of stories: 10.
 Floor to floor height: 3 m. Fig. 6. Selection of Beam 2.
 Soil Bearing Capacity: 200 N/mm2.
 Beam Dimension: 300 mm  380 mm.
Table 4
 Column Dimension: 380 mm  380 mm. Results of Beam 3.
 Slab Dimension: 4 m  4 m.
 Live Load (LL): 2 kN/m2. Description. MANUAL ETABS % ROBOT %
Variation STRUCTURE Variation
 Floor Finish: 1 kN/m2.
 Wall Load: 6 kN/m. Shear Force (KN) 57.22 61.98 8.32% 93.38 63.19%
Bending 42.76 47.37 10.78% 56.32 31.71%
 Accidental Wall Load: 1 kN/m2. Moment (KN-
 Seismic Zone: 2. m)
 Zone Factor: 0.10. Area of Steel 332 214 35.54% 434 30.72%
 Importance Factor: 1.2. (mm2)
 Response Reduction Factor: 5.
 Basic Wind Speed: 47 m/s.
 Risk Coefficient, K1: 1.0.  Importance factor for Cyclonic region K4: 1.0.
 Terrain, Height and Structure size factor, K2: As per building  Design life of building: 50 years.
height.  Total Dead Load(DL): Self-weight of the building + Floor fin-
 Topography factor, K3: 1.0. ish + Wall load + Accidental wall load.

Table 3
Results of Beam 2.

Description. MANUAL ETABS % Variation ROBOT STRUCTURE % Variation

Shear Force (KN) 40.36 40.383 0.06% 70.74 75.27%
Bending Moment (KN-m) 24.9 24.92 0.08% 50.53 102.93%
Area of Steel (mm2) 169 173 2.37% 383 126.63%

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Table 5
Results of Column 1.

Description. MANUAL ETABS % ROBOT %

Variation STRUCTURE Variation
Shear Force 948 1017 7.28% 1477 55.80%
(KN)
Bending 30.87 38.746 25.51% 41.85 35.57%
Moment
(KN-m)
Area of Steel 1133 1155 1.94% 1206 6.44%
(mm2)

Fig. 7. Comparison of results of Beam 3.

Fig. 8. Selection of Beam 3.

Fig. 10. Selection of Column 1.

 Beam 2

Results obtained in Revit Robust structures are relatively higher

than manual and Etabs. Reinforcement Steel obtained in Revit is
about 125% higher (see Table 3, Figs. 5 and 6).

 Beam 3

See Table 4, Figs. 7 and 8.

Fig. 9. Comparison of results in Column 1.
 Column 1
4. Results
Results obtained in Revit Robust structures are relatively higher
 Beam 1 than manual and Etabs. Shear Force, Bending Moment and Rein-
Results obtained in Revit Robust structures are relatively higher forcement Steel obtained in Revit is about 55%, 35% and 6% higher
than manual and Etabs. Steel obtained in Revit is about 45% higher (see Table 5, Figs. 9 and 10).
(see Table 2, Figs. 3 and 4).
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Ehtisham Uddin Syed and Khaja Musab Manzoor Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485

Table 6 Table 7
Results of Column 2. Results of Column 3.

Description MANUAL ETABS % ROBOT % Description. MANUAL ETABS % ROBOT %

Variation STRUCTURE Variation Variation STRUCTURE Variation
Shear Force 1503 1601 6.52% 1991 32.47% Shear Force 2104 2432 15.59% 2802 33.17%
(KN) (KN)
Bending Moment 27.58 30.48 10.51% 36.56 32.56% Bending Moment 18.68 27.37 46.52% 37.45 100.48%
(KN-m) (KN-m)
Area of Steel 1313 1155 12.03% 3041 131.61% Area of Steel 3040 1155 62.01% 6434 111.64%
(mm2) (mm2)

Fig. 11. Comparison of results in Column 2.

Fig. 13. Comparison of results in Column 3.

Fig. 12. Selection of Column 2. Fig. 14. Selection of Column 3.

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Ehtisham Uddin Syed and Khaja Musab Manzoor Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485

Fig. 15a. Loading Diagram in REVIT. Fig. 16a. Shear Force Diagram in ROBOT STRUCTURES.

Fig. 15b. Loading Diagram in ETABS. Fig. 16b. Shear Force Diagram in ETABS.

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Ehtisham Uddin Syed and Khaja Musab Manzoor
Fig. 17a. Bending Moment Diagram in ROBOT STRUCTURES.
 Column 2
See Table 6, Figs. 11 and 12.
Column 3
See Table 7 and Figs. 13–17b.
5. Conclusion
5.1. Using software’s reduces the manpower and saves time in
design, analysis of structures with greater accuracy.
5.2. Details of every member and component can be obtained
from both ETABS and Robot Structures.
5.3. Results obtained in Robot Structures are comparatively
more to that obtained in ETABS.
5.4. Results of ETABS and Manual Analysis are approximately
same.
5.5. In spite of opting for non-sway analysis, sections are
designed for sway analysis leading to higher ductility in Robot
Structures.
5.6. Robot Structures stands out in providing estimation of
material quantity obtained after design.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 1478–1485
Fig. 17b. Bending Moment Diagram in ETABS.
Acknowledgement
Khaja Musab Manzoor conceived the idea. Syed Ehtisham Uddin,
Khaja Musab Manzoor has done the analytical part and discussed
the results. The language correction, proper discussion of results,
and manuscript formatting was done by Syed Ehtisham Uddin.
We would also like to thank Dr. Syed Anisuddin, HoD Civil and Prof.
Md Safiuddin for their continuous support, guidance and reviews.
Further reading
[1] K. Surender Kumar, N. Lingeshwaran, S. Hamim Jeelani, Analysis of residential
building with STAAD. Pro & ETABS, Mater. Today: Proc. (2020), https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.matpr.2020.08.329.
[2] N. Lingeshwaran, P. Poluraju, Analytical study on seismic performance of bed
joint reinforced solid brick masonry walls, Mater. Today: Proc. 33 (2020) 136–
141.
[3] V.V.L. Dinesh Sai, N. Lingeshwaran, Experimental Investigation on reinforced
masonry walls under axial load, Int. J. Recent Technol. Eng. 7 (6C2) (2019) 225–
229. https://www.ijrte.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/v7i6c2/
F10430476C219.pdf.
[4] M. Rajesh Reddy, N. Srujana, N. Lingeshwaran, Effect of Base Isolation in
Multistoried Reinforced Concrete Building, Int. J. Civil Eng. Technol. 8 (3) (2017)
878–887. http://iaeme.com/Home/issue/IJCIET?Volume=8&Issue=3.
[5] Rama Krishna Kolli, N. Lingeshwaran, Experimental Investigation and Analysis
of Shear Walls, Int. J. Recent Technol. Eng. 7 (6C2) (2019) 225–229. https://
www.ijrte.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/v7i6c2/F10420476C219.pdf.
[6] I.S. Abbood, M.A. Jasim, S.S. Weli, High Rise Buildings: Design, Analysis, and
Safety -An Overview, Int. J. Archit. Eng. Technol. 8 (2021) 1–13, https://doi.org/
10.15377/2409-9821.2021.08.1.
[7] IS 1893 (Part 1): 2016 ‘‘Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures”.
[8] IS 456-2000 Bureau of Indian Standards (RCC Structures).
[9] IS 875 – Part 1,2,3 Bureau of Indian Standards.