Welcome to the ADAPT-Builder Help File. Please read this topic and pay particular attention to the License Agreement . If you are a first-time user of ADAPT-Builder you should turn your attention to the Tutorials and RISA videos which are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible while still exposing you to the important features of the software.
After you have gone through the Tutorials, use this Help File for detailed information on any topic.
Developed from the ground up with ADAPT Building Information Modeling (BIM) Technology, the ADAPT-Builder Platform is a collection of fully integrated design and analysis tools for concrete buildings, floor systems, columns and walls, foundations, and beam structures, with or without post-tensioning. The solution's intuitive and easy-to-use 3D component modeling capabilities allow you to quickly model any structure. ADAPT-Builder contains specialized design tools for concrete buildings, one-way or two-way column-supported flat slabs, parking structures, mat foundations, and ground-supported slabs, and includes a modernized and ribbon-based, work-flow oriented interface.
ADAPT-Builder supports operable flexibility in structural model analysis, and for which forces components are designed. Models that are analyzed globally with multiple usage or stiffness modification sets are stored, so that wall and column internal actions can be applied to those components during a single-level analysis. The software provides flexibility in the reaction sets that can be applied to gravity and lateral load cases when a single-level of a multi-story model is run.
ADAPT-Builder includes an integrated design feature for concrete columns and walls, with partner software S-Concrete. Built-in building codes include American (ACI), International (IBC), Canadian (A23), British (BS), European (EC), Australian (AS), Brazilian (NBR), and Indian (IS). The program also includes a native wall design tool, ADAPT Wall Designer, that is fully integrated within the ADAPT GUI and is active when either Floor Pro or Edge is in use. Use of S-Concrete as the selected wall design tool requires a separate product license for this tool.
One of the following operating systems is required:
Microsoft Windows 11 (64 bit only)
Microsoft Windows 10 (64 bit only)
Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64 bit only)
Microsoft Windows 7
The following hardware is required:
1 GHz or faster processor (x86-64)
1024x768 or higher monitor resolution
2 (or more) button mouse, mouse wheel recommended
8 GB of RAM
4 GB of hard disk space
For the full license agreement, please visit: risa.com/eula
An internet connection is required to launch the program. The internet connection must be maintained as long as the program is open, although brief internet outages (a few minutes) do not affect your ability to keep the program open.
ADAPT-Builder does not include a dedicated installer for silent installs or deployments. Instead,you can extract the MSI file from the installation executable and use the MSI file in a deployment using default msi file flags. You may also use the .msi file to run a silent install from a command prompt using default .msi file flags. The user can use one of two methods described below to extract the MSI file.
Method 1:
Launch the install_builder_vXX x.x.x.xxxx.exe file that you want to extract the MSI file from. Where vXX is the main program version number and x.x.x.xxxx is the build number of the installer.
When you see the Welcome to the installation for ADAPT-Builder vXX window, where vXX corresponds to the version of the program you are installing (ie. v20, v21, etc.), do not click anything in this window and do not close it.
Open Windows Explorer, type %temp% in the address bar and press Enter.
Sort the files in the folder by the modification date. The newest file on the list should be the .msi file you are looking for.
Copy the MSI file to a safe location before you close the installer prompt window (see step 2). Be aware that if you close the installer window, the MSI file will be immediately deleted from the temporary files folder.
Method 2:
Log on to a computer where the software (the installer of which you would like to access) is not installed. This is because this method forces the uninstalling process to trigger extraction of the .msi file. If you already have this software installed, this method will remove it, which might not be desired.
Run Windows Command Prompt (cmd) (in Windows 10 or 11: open the Start menu, type cmd and press Enter) and navigate to the folder where your EXE file is located.
Execute the command: <filename.exe> /s /x /b"<target-folder>" /v"/qn"
Replace <filename.exe> with the name of your .exe file and <target-folder> with the path to the folder where you want the .msi file to be extracted (for example C:\Folder).
The switches for the command above do the following:
/s /x - silently (/s) uninstalls (/x) the product from the system;
/b - defines the target path for the .msi file;
/v - passes desired arguments to the installer. In this case, the argument is /qn - it disables GUI and any prompts.
Once the user has extracted the MSI file it can be added to a deployment or run using the command prompt of windows to run a silent install. To run a silent install from the command prompt the user can run the following command:
msiexec /i filename.msi /passive
Replace <filename.msi> with the name of the msi file.