if you're interested I can give you a thorough rundown and comparison.
Yes, please.
Probably the biggest difference is that the drawings are 'live' with the model, if changes are made to the model all drgs that are affected are flagged in the drawing list. Drawings can be 'frozen' as well if you don't want the changes to be made for what ever reasons.
With modelling I guess it's similar to prosteel to add the in built connections. While Prosteel does let you save templates of your favourite connection set ups, Tekla has a very powerful 'custom component' building utility. While this is not for the average user (the inbuilt library is quite extensive), with a bit of training/study you can build practically any connection from scratch. You can also explode an inbuilt connection, change it how you want and then create a custom component to use in your project very quickly.
Instead of having view classes and part families etc, you have filters of which you can build as many as you want in any combination, sort of like saving layer states I guess.
The UI takes a bit of getting used to at first, it's definitely not AutoCAD but I find it quite good now and in a lot of ways a lot more intuitive to how you work when steel detailing. It's more of a 'state machine' that having heaps of commands and setting values each time. These 'states' are easily saved as templates/styles to be used job wide or put to use in you company standards.
Speaking of standards, there is one thing that really annoys me with Tekla, in Prosteel you could set up your text styles, layers etc in one cfg file, not so with Tekla, you have to change it in all styles/templates etc then save that as a template model. It's more of an inconvenience I guess as you only ever need to do this once. You can also create your own parametric sections, material grades etc etc.
Having said that, once you set up your company drg borders, model and detailing templates it is a very fast and reliable way top produce drawings and reports etc. Far more effective than Prosteel IMO.
Numbering/positioning is also very stable and a lot easier to use.
2d drawings:
This is where Tekla does a much better job, the drgs are live to the model and the update 'flagging' is a lot more reliable than what I found with Prosteel. There are no drawings files as such (there is but you they are more of a settings file, you can't open them), every thing is handled in the drawing list. All revisions, printing and any style changes can be made to multiple drawings at a time, very handy!
Again, the UI is a bit different but in some ways better. You can grab a single dimension and it will move the whole dimesion line, you can delete/add dims to dim lines by picking points and there are more than enough settings to set them up how you like.
Generally the 2d output is a lot better than Prosteel and it adheres to a more logical dimensioning process that a detailer would use rather than the simple ordinate style that Prosteel uses.
The biggest plus with Tekla is updates to drgs, any changes such as drawing clean up and added notes and balloons etc remain unless there is a major change to the layout or member. A lot of the time the drgs are pretty good and require very little clean up, depends on how fussy you want to be or what your client expects, it's all very configurable though. Another great feature is the ability to 'clone' drgs, you can grab your most complicated beam, set up all your dim's (manual and auto), add balloons, sections and details etc in the exact arrangement you want then select other members and detail them by cloning the base drg, a little clean up may be needed but this is a very effective and fast way to detail like members.
GA's and MP's can be created at any time for checking set outs etc. From these and in detail drgs you can create 'live' sections and details, set up line types and colours for different job phases (lighter lines for existing structures etc), change scales and view sizes and add part balloons and notes and whatever.
Basically you can produce drgs that look the way you like with changes to the model having a much lesser effect, there is no reproducing details and clean up from scratch.
There are heaps of reports for BOM's , drg lists etc with a built in template editor to build you own as you like, this is also a very powerful tool not for the average user but like with model templates and company standards, the cad manager can set these up once and away you go.
All your project data is entered at the model level and flows through all documents etc like you would expect and saves a lot of work with drg borders and checking.
Above all I lost confidence in Prosteel, if you're not on the ball it will bite you! You had to know it's little tricks and fudges and be very aware of the status of different parts and changes you make to the model and be sure that this gets reflected in the 2d drgs. For a small office this is fine but with a larger office I wouldn't be too comfortable unless all drafters were switched on to how Prosteel works.
Tekla on the other hand is driven from the model, if it is wrong your drgs will be wrong. You can't 'easily' fudge drgs and (why would you... unless the model changes trash your cleaned up details
). You 'can' make mistakes with dimensioning etc but that is more from bad drafting practices and is usually picked up in checking anyway. Overall is a safer package I think, I'd have no confidence problems with a very large job with Tekla, in fact the bigger the better!
That's just scratching the surface really, there are a lot of powerful tools I haven't mentioned such as direct links to analysis software, project management etc.
I don't know about over the pond but here in Australia they are now doing 'Tekla test drive' days where they introduce you to the software and get you started modelling and producing drgs with as much q and a as you like, you also get a demo version for 14-28 days to take home and play with. It's free, they provide lunch and it's well worth a look
