DaveVikingPE
Structural
I have been using several, well-established structural (and other) engineering computer programs for quite a while. One thing that I've never been fully satisfied about is the presentation of the final results.
Example: STAAD provides the user with final output in a pretty good report. The user may customize these reports with features like inclusion of the firm's logo, time and date stamps, project names, etc., etc. (OT: only in my own calculation sets have I even seen anyone use anything other than STADD's initial 3D graphiic of the structure - I've included front, side and 3D views). There are also plenty of software out there that's not much more than legacy mainframe/DOS-based (if it works, there's no problem with that).
In my experience, these legacy programs dump a "report" of the output that often times, when printed on 8-1/2 X 11 or A4 paper, looks terrible. Examples: tables that span over a couple of pages, with heading sin the middle of a page, etc.
Question: should I simply accept the default, raw report format, print it out and add it to my paper calcs or should I format the output report such that readability and presentation are to my satisfaction?
Example: STAAD provides the user with final output in a pretty good report. The user may customize these reports with features like inclusion of the firm's logo, time and date stamps, project names, etc., etc. (OT: only in my own calculation sets have I even seen anyone use anything other than STADD's initial 3D graphiic of the structure - I've included front, side and 3D views). There are also plenty of software out there that's not much more than legacy mainframe/DOS-based (if it works, there's no problem with that).
In my experience, these legacy programs dump a "report" of the output that often times, when printed on 8-1/2 X 11 or A4 paper, looks terrible. Examples: tables that span over a couple of pages, with heading sin the middle of a page, etc.
Question: should I simply accept the default, raw report format, print it out and add it to my paper calcs or should I format the output report such that readability and presentation are to my satisfaction?