Did you Upgrade? Don’t!

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.

Changing Landscape in Alberta

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?

What would Brunel say?

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.

The 7 most deadly sins of MS Word in Engineering Calculations

If you want to more than double productivity from your engineering team, you must avoid these sins at all costs”

By Robert Mote PhD PEng, Motagg Solutions Inc.

Kirkus Review for The Engineer’s Tables

The professional review is in for The Engineer's Tables. This review is used by libraries and publishers to find opinions from critcal editors and determine their selection criterion of ideas, clarity and purpose.

http://wp.me/pu3p4-2k

I agree with their main thrust. Next year, I plan to expand into audiovisual examples using Adobe Captivate, or Camtasia. This will ensure the message gets over faster.

The Mark of Zorro

We know of writer’s block but have you heard of engineer’s block? You might encounter it as ‘not rocking the boat’ or changing the way things get done because you cannot do it. Sometimes it is difficult to find enthusiasm for the work when it is the same grind, you’re still broke and apathy creeps in. In your mind you want something else and you wave the magic sword of Zorro against impossible odds.

A Structural Engineer’s Pop Quiz!

Engineers’ career go through a lifecycle of changes in roles but I believe we have a responsibility to future generations of engineers and we start this through our calculations. Try this pop quiz…

Quirks of Excel

My first article reaches a bigger audience this week. It is titled A Structured Mess, you can find it at http://tiny.cc/2kmyS

I posted it to a group of process engineers to see if it resonated with them and I have to say I really like this group of inquisitive and bright engineers. They actively use the internet to find and share information. I will be spending more time with them! Very illuminating comments.

Did you know? As Michael Caine would say:

Your comments are absolutely correct. I also have seen the “dumbing down” of our calculations, but I think one of the most interesting is how you can use EXCEL to demonstrate that 1/0 = 1319.07

In cell B2, enter the value 1
In cell B3, enter the equation =1/B2
Then, using goal seek, set the value of cell B3 to zero by adjusting the value in cell B2. Always converges to 1319.07

Keith mentions the effect of changing the starting point of a calculation to change convergence. In EXCEL, if you begin with “2″ in cell B2 instead of “1″, it changes the convergence … it changes to 1/0 = 1007.68

Very repeatable

What is frightening is the fact that millions of calculations have been done using goal seek in EXCEL, and people do not understand how it actually works.

This came from John Westover and I didn’t know this. I had, for the longest time, limited myself to only 10% of Excel and avoided learning such possibilities but goodness me, what they don’t tell you!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Ay long last my excel database project has been rolled out and demonstrated. It works very well and now starting on the top level reports.

As a result of all of that effort, I am staying on Firebag for the foreseeable future.

Seminars have been posted for end July. In-house corporate work is going to be the focus for the next few months. Articles will start being released in August and continue monthly until December.

Now as the dust settles, I will finish the third book.

At the end of the day

I was told the other day that I kept breaking rules. Well, rules are fine, I make plenty, so I know they are also for breaking.

 

Some engineers are strong enough to make rules for all of us to follow but it does get blurry when we lose common sense.

 

For example; I have worked with wind loads to many international codes. I was taught by an engineer to use 1 kN/m2 and I will be fine. So if I have a piperack with a total projected area of 6 m x 30 m and 20% solidity I am looking at about  220 kN. A nice one-liner to get the design rolling along for the braces, connections and foundation designs.

 

The checker is horrified that I have not used the required 7-page MathCAD calculation  for calculating the wind load, in which he calculates 232 kN. I am happy to modify number but say we do not need to replicate the MathCAD for every piperack as they are similar.  Goodness, I was called a rulebreaker as though that was a slur. It was not acceptable that a design could be started without a structural analysis program.

 

I showed 15 years of examples of piperack design that summarised the primary loads for all my designs and his figures nor mine were unreasonable. Can we move on? Have you heard of  “At the end of the day?” Ours is not an exact science.  We are supposed to determine reasonable numbers and be in agreement.

To me there was reasonable agreement between 232 kN and 220 kN.

 

I remember I used to hear that all the time, when checking calculations: ‘At the end of the day, you’re right but it makes no difference to the final design’. Now here I was quoting the wisdom of my hallowed peers.

 

As much as I believe there are major differences in technocultural issues in different drawing offices there are also generational  issues related to experiences. In one office I asked many engineers to tell me what the total wind load on the piperack was and was told, they didn’t know; it was taken care of by the program as they applied a uniformly distributed load on a detailed 3D model of beams, columns, braces etc. Now that is crazy. Was it 230 kN or 540 kN?

 

At the end of the day I used my numbers and checked whether the design was adequate. Shrugged my shoulders and accepted the microscopic examination was, for the most part,  conservative. The question of whether it took a day or three months was never asked.