There is a thin line between conventional and exceptional electronic-style calculations. It is the difference between cave painting and impressionism. A matter of techniques and sharing ideas. Even more remarkable is just how much you can achieve with so little knowledge of MS Word and Excel.
In this blog. I look at the traits between the two styles of calculations and invite you to download an example. I show also the first important trick you need to know.
This blog was originally posted here, http://tinyurl.com/y8cb8de.
Continue March 8, 2010
Do engineers know what goes on, on site? Who are the eyes and ears of construction practices? Shimming of baseplate is a common practice in the Oilsands but the one-size fits all strategy of leaving shims in place has implications for columns transferring high moments and durability.
Continue February 3, 2010
I have decided I will roll out a fourth book. This will expand on The Engineer’s Basic. I separated the subject because it is a whole other world and level of thinking. The Engineer’s Basic is concerned with the contribution to the calculations whereas The Engineer’s Database is concerned with the engineer’s role on the project.
Continue January 22, 2010
To continue the Rise of the Machines, this blog shows another eye opener of the CAD world starting to crumble. The engineers crumbled anyway and took solace in Structural analysis detailing and MathCAD rather than face the challenges of the future. We can beat the machines can’t we?
Continue January 21, 2010
Friction is a surprisingly misunderstood concept that lead to expensive overdesigns of the piperack structure. Engineers need to understand the role and purpose of friction in the design. It is local for beam design, not required for the global design.
Temperature loading of piperack, a recent phenomena, has also gotten out of control adding pressure to design time and usually no impact on current design.
Continue January 20, 2010
Someone asked:
Is the Civil Designer/CAD Technician position slowly being phased out of this industry by technology?
Without a doubt. I call this the march of the modellers.
Continue January 13, 2010
At the end of the day – I have heard this so many times as a justification for not changing the calculations to the wishes of the checker. It is my favourite for the top spot of engineering phrases. It is totally meaningless really and tries to convey wisdom. Unfortunately, I do say it a lot myself.
Reasonably Well – this is used for analysis that truly reflect real world behaviour. I once had a soils problems of a double row of connected sheet piles exerting active pressure on the soil to the right but I couldn’t understand the results and we had all sorts of nonsense spewing out from the geotechnical experts. This went on for months with me rejecting study after study. One day in a meeting, we were talking about the results again and I was still not happy to commit to the results. We talked trying to find out what was bugging me. Someone said separation and bingo, that was it! The experts were wondering if their Plaxis analysis could show show separation on the rear pile wall. They went away and I got a call the next day from them with great excitement. The new results made sense straight away! Everybody understood what we were looking at in behaviour and response. I understood what Reasonably Well meant.
Rough and ready – This is the first pass, fast fire estimate of material quantities that remains throughout the project as still the best estimate in spite of the extra hours and effort to chase the percentages.
Good enough – what did the Hardy Cross method do to engineers that they would prefer to do a 3D analysis using STAAD with 242 load combinations and 240 pages? I once had a continuous beam on three supports for a platform, so I did a scribble using the hardy cross method, pleased as punch I still remembered how to do it. An hour later I had an estimate for the beam size and two pages with three load combinations. Same result, good enough for me.
What is your favorite engineering phrase?
January 11, 2010
Everyone who has followed the computer age must be thinking the endless cycle of MS Office upgrading is looking stale now. We can expect a future of it too. The constant revision of MS Office products is straining credibility. Let’s consider this from the selfish perspective of an engineering user, stuck in a time warp.
Continue December 1, 2009
The economic reverberations of the last year are still being felt amongst Oil and Gas operators, engineers and EPC companies. There are subtle changes in the landscape. What are the opportunities and challenges for each of these player? Can engineers compete?
Continue November 29, 2009
How did you become an engineer? I always felt my grandfather played an important role. He mixed up history of Romans, Brunel, coal mining and his life. In daydreaming, I just added computers to the mix.
Continue November 12, 2009
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