Integrated Excel workbook for Wood Structure Design 3

[AELLC]

I have seen many Excel worksheets that do individual design tasks and I wanted to start a discussion regarding integrating all that into one large workbook to streamline the entire design process.

I have my own workbook that I have improved over about 18 years and wanted to share ideas, etc.

It is Excel 2010 but can be saved as 2003-2007 with minor loss of functionality. It has no macros, UDF, or VBA etc., just basic Excel formulas, and nothing iterative.

I don't want to get into VBA discussions because not everyone is familiar with that.

 

[jeffhed]

When I looked at it it looked like it was plotting a bunch of points and then taking a maximum and minimum of the plotted points.

 

[AELLC]

My problem is, I don't recall the engineering basics. Specifically how to use slope-deflection.

What my guess is, he uses slope deflection method to calculate deflection every 1/50 segment of each span, then use the MIN and MAX functions to pick out the maximum upward and maximum downward deflection, then uses LOOKUP to get the distance to the right of X=0 of the span.

It is probably the most efficient method. But I have found that, if you don't really need the max defl location that accurately - you need the max defl itself accurately.

So if you use only 25 segments, max defl is pretty accurate, while location is off quite a bit. But who cares, we don't need location that accurately.

See attached.

The definition of a structural engineer: overdesign by a factor of 1.999, instead of the usual 2.

 

[AELLC]

So, if I were to modify Beamanal so it calculates values every 1/25 span instead of 1/50 span, and weed out all the other beam design stuff, etc, I could get it down to a smaller file size and make it easier to reverse-engineer.

The definition of a structural engineer: overdesign by a factor of 1.999, instead of the usual 2.

 

[AELLC]

The other extreme would be to reverse engineer my OWN Excel - I had devised a method to approximate deflection of simple support with cantilever one end, that is fairly accurate. Must have been 15 years ago, all I remember is that it compares the approximate area under the uniform loaded moment diagram and compares it to the point-loaded moment diagram. Some sort of ratio, if you had the maximum moment in ft-lbs being equal in both cases, what is the difference in deflection.

Sounds loopy but it works.


The definition of a structural engineer: overdesign by a factor of 1.999, instead of the usual 2.