Looking for Guidance for online codes

[brubakerj]

I am a feelance structural engineer. I put a few samples of calculations on my website at

http://www.novanumeric.com/samples.php

and was looking for direction.

What types of codes/calculations should I target?

Ultimately, I'd like to sell it as a service to develop these calcs for certain industries/codes.

 

[Ron]

You indicate that you are a structural engineer, but your category is mechanical. Your calculations seem to have more to do with piping and mechanical than building structural.

Building code requirements are not that amenable to cookie-cutter calcs. Application is both site specific and structure specific. Yes, some computations can be automated for convenience, but they still require understanding and judgment applied to the code provisions.

I guess I'm just a bit unclear as to your goal.

 

[brubakerj]

Ron,
Thanks for the reply. My masters is in Engineering Mechanics, which was through the civil engineering department while my undergraduate coursework and any job experience has been Mechanical.
I always assumed strength calculations (like Wind, beam sizing, integrity calculation etc), to be considered structural. Maybe I've been mistaken.

The point of my post though is I am trying to identify sections of design codes that are cooker-cutteresque in nature that can be programmed.

Regards,
Jeff

 

[Ron]

Jeff...you're right on the strength calcs. They are indeed part of the structural engineer's purview.

Some of the wind and seismic "set-up" calcs can be done as you considered. Most of use develop our own "pre-processing" and "post-processing" spreadsheets for computer generated analysis.

For most simple analysis (simple beams, portal frames), I usually do manually, but still use my "set-up" spreadsheets.

Ron

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Check out Engineering International - they seem to have a pretty good handle on this??

 

[csd72]

brubakerj,

I would suggest you do a google on this as this type of thing is already well covered and I dont expect that there is much profit in it.

 

[FixedEarth]

You are onto something. You can take what you have and provide online subscription, say $50/year for any 2 modules or $99/year for all modules. You can take online payments and then provide them with login password to the online software.

Or you can convert it to a desktop application and sell it online by putting a demo version on your website. Once they purchase, send them a key by email and thay are good to go.

You can also go farther, by going through Roark's formulas and Structural engineering hanbooks and keep creating useful calculation modules.

Now how do they find you online?. You can optimize your website by putting descriptive paragraphs about your calculation software, you can contribute to forums and put your website handle and you can also advertize on Google adwords. Good luck.

http://www.FoundEng.com