colincaprani.com

Over the years I’ve been i very interested in applying computers to structural engineering. The commercial programs in this area are very advanced and an individual programmer can hardly hope to match their completeness. In spite of that, I do think there is still a place for structural engineers to develop their own programs to suit specific needs, or even just to further their knowledge in the area. Without doing this users of commercial programs run the risk of not fully understanding the calculations performed in the ‘black box’ in front of them. It is only by trying your own hand at it that a fuller understanding of the bugs and quirks that are possible in even a very simple algorithm can be realized.

Anyway, philosophizing aside, below is a collection of the programs (and spreadsheets to follow) I’ve developed. I’d appreciate any feedback and let me know if you find them of any use or if there are obvious improvements to be made – though my time is extremely limited.

• Matlab
• Visual Basic 6
• C++ (Visual C++ 6)
• To follow: MS Excel

TrussMaster v2.0 (Visual Basic 6)                               Prestressed Concrete Design (Matlab)