On Feb 17, 2006, at 4:26 AM, Steve McKenzie wrote:
> I am embarassed to say I still use the 5th edition.
> Better buy some software.
I still use the 4th edition and I'm glad. One thing you might want to
consider is making yourself an Excel workbook with a library of the
formulas you use often. It's not too difficult to write macro functions
to do the arithmetic, and if you name all the variables all the
equations look like they do in the book, rather than having cell
references. I do this for Section VIII calculations as a sort of
project notebook, and it's a wonderful help.
Visual Basic looks like a great pain in the ass when you start off, but it's not all that bad. The really great thing about using Excel for that is portability. You can write off results as basic ASCII files, use them in Merge documents and link results into MSWord documents if you need something for your client or your file. You have basic charting tools available if you need them and even a fair amount of optimization (Goal seek) and what-if? capability.
Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at chrisw@skypoint.com | this distance" (last words of Gen.
.......................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania1864)
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