I have been working in construction and engineering field for many years. But I have not done any structural design or analysis extensively for at least 10 years although I would analyze structures very roughly or on concept level occasionally. When I was doing structural design many years ago, my manager didn't want to buy computers and software to complete designs. So I had to do everything manually. Fortunately, the company had a small library contained various standards, codes, engineering manuals, etc. I could always found the design data of various loads (wind load, live load for various structures, etc.), property for common material (weight, strength, elongation rate, proportion, etc.) and common structural calculation formulas. But I know that software are so powerful now. They can do almost all structural calculation for us and are much faster. Do we still need to master manual structural calculation skills?
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Is manual calculation still needed nowadays in structural design? 5
- Thread starter ccpe
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IDS said:
cliff234 said:
As someone who has only been a structural engineer for 12 years I can admit to having fallen into both these categories on occasion, some early in my career some later. I've reached a point now where I have enough experience that I can approach things trying to have any idea of what the results should be, not necessarily always by the numbers I start simple with shapes of shear, moment, and deflection diagrams which I've found to be the quickest indicators of an incorrect analysis or assumption in the model, or at times my own misunderstanding of the behavior. If it is an analysis type I'm not fully grasping I run it in multiple software packages, try to find multiple text references, discuss my hang up or misunderstanding with my seniors, and when I'm really stuck I post here.
IDS said:
cliff234 said:
I think this is some great combined advice, it's not always about the computer not checking something perhaps you knew it did not check something but you did not know that it was a required check for calculation. It's the garbage in garbage out saying.
I would add onto IDS' list with "Do I know what this check is for?","Should I ask for help interpreting these results?"
I've found throughout my career that asking for help for fear of feeling like an idiot is a hurdle everyone has trouble jumping over.
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From the original post
It still seems to me the question is can we solely rely on a computer that has some powerful structural analysis software? My answer is no we cannot and most likely will never be able to. Too many factors involved for the project to go off without a hitch. We all need to question computer output to some degree, not blindly accept it.
[ul]
[li]Program has glitch no one ever noticed[/li]
[li]Program is correct but my input is wrong (face it, we all make that mistake at least once a month)[/li]
[li]The less skilled you are at the classical methods, the more prone you are to accept erroneous output[/li]
[li]The less experienced you are, the more prone you are to miss that the output looks erroneous[/li]
[li]Other[/li]
[/ul]
The way we "question" the output can be done in multiple ways, we can do hand calcs, use a spreadsheet, use Mathcad etc. but as already stated, we need to take a breather and review any output regardless of how powerful software can be. The talents and tools we use to review it are going to be different for all of us.
ccpe said:
It still seems to me the question is can we solely rely on a computer that has some powerful structural analysis software? My answer is no we cannot and most likely will never be able to. Too many factors involved for the project to go off without a hitch. We all need to question computer output to some degree, not blindly accept it.
[ul]
[li]Program has glitch no one ever noticed[/li]
[li]Program is correct but my input is wrong (face it, we all make that mistake at least once a month)[/li]
[li]The less skilled you are at the classical methods, the more prone you are to accept erroneous output[/li]
[li]The less experienced you are, the more prone you are to miss that the output looks erroneous[/li]
[li]Other[/li]
[/ul]
The way we "question" the output can be done in multiple ways, we can do hand calcs, use a spreadsheet, use Mathcad etc. but as already stated, we need to take a breather and review any output regardless of how powerful software can be. The talents and tools we use to review it are going to be different for all of us.
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