Lisp add on to do structural beam calcs

[MikeKovacik4928]

Hi there all you lisp gurus

The company I am employed by has a drawing office with 8 autocad users.

We all use a program called beampal for our structural calculations, but sometimes

beampal is difficult to use to enter in information of non standard shapes.

We do calculations for supportwork that holds up the formwork for pouring concrete.

Mainly shear, deflection and bending moment on beams.

We do our drawings in Autocad 2d.

Is there anybody out there that is willing to, or can direct us to someone, who can write a program

that does all these type of calculations from info on the drawing? ie bending moment, shear force, deflection.

The company is willing to pay someone to do this.

Do any of you, who do a similar type of work, have an existing add on that does this. If so how and where can we get hold of it.

Michael Kovacik
2d & 3d Autocad and Inventor designer/draughtsman
.
Johannesburg, South Africa
.
(Impossible only means you haven't
found the solution yet)

[ronjonp]

Not sure how busy Lee is but he's one of the best lisp programmers out there.

[MikeKovacik4928]

Thanks

Will pass this on to the person running our drawing office

Mike

[Sea-Haven]

You really need to be a structural engineer before writing programs of this type, need a good back ground and experience. It has pretty severe implications if you get it wrong. Is the problem just in working out beam properties Ixx Iyy Z etc so they can be put into the software calc ?

[CodeDing]

@MikeKovacik4928 ,

While what you're asking for can probably be accomplished (not with my current skill set), one of the large issues that I see fore coming from this will be the task of interpreting your 2D data.

To elaborate, since you are asking that the program use your existing 2D data to help with calculations, there are 2 ways for the program to gather this data: Manual & Programmatic

Manual selection opens the door for user error and if this user were to miss a line or object while selecting then that will be a problem. While this may not happen every time, it may become more commonplace after users get complacent with using the program.

Programmatic selection is a blessing and a curse. While it will clearly be consistent in its rules, that can also be its limitation. Rules normally cannot account for any "one-off" type instances where a specific item needs to be included or excluded for "just this one time". Also, programmatic selection is only as good as the data provided to it, so if your drawing happens to be incorrectly drawn (even a single point on a line) or if somebody forgot to place an item on the correct layer.. these problems may ultimately go unnoticed since they are minor drafting errors, but your calculations are now incorrect also. And once again, the complacency that users may ultimately place on the program will get the best of them.

I may not know whether what you're asking can be accomplished or not, but this is just one limitation that I suggest you be wary of on your task to find a better solution. If you have more specific questions, I'll be glad to help where I can. Best,

~DD

[MikeKovacik4928]

Codeing

Thanks for your reply and your advice.

We could actually use stress analysis in 3d in inventor but I am the only one in a drawing office of 10 people that

can and does use inventor, everybody else uses autocad 2d, therefore I think that is the reason the person in charge of the drawing office wants to go that way.

I will pass on your advice to the person in charge

Mike

[MikeKovacik4928]

 Sea Haven                                                        

You really need to be a structural engineer before writing programs of this type, need a good back ground and experience

The person in charge of the drawing office is an engineer, civil I think, and would dictate the variables and formulae needed for the programming.

Is the problem just in working out beam properties Ixx Iyy Z etc so they can be put into the software calc ?

As far as I can gather, yes, I would have to delve into this deeper to find out exactly.

We do have Inventor with stress analysis, but all of the drawing office staff except me work in autocad 2d.

I do the occasional project in Inventor 3d, but still do the majority in autocad 2d, so that everybody else can work on it

Mike

[MikeKovacik4928]

You really need to be a structural engineer before writing programs of this type, need a good back ground and experience

The person in charge of the drawing office is an engineer, civil I think, and would dictate the variables and formulae needed for the programming.

Is the problem just in working out beam properties Ixx Iyy Z etc so they can be put into the software calc ?

As far as I can gather, yes, I would have to delve into this deeper to find out exactly.

We do have Inventor with stress analysis, but all of the drawing office staff except me work in autocad 2d.

I do the occasional project in Inventor 3d, but still do the majority in autocad 2d, so that everybody else can work on it

Mike