I use Excel for nearly all my eng calcs. Used Lotus123 before that and
Visicalc on a Commodore (8"floppies - woohoo) which my eployer got so I
could design FRP tanks using custom developed software, strangely
enough.
Purchased mathcad when it first came out but never found the time to
become proficient. However electrical engineers seemed to love it.
Lotus was the best piece of software I had ever seen, and Excel was a
solid if not somewhat bullying improvement.
If I was restricted to one application it would be Excel - no contest.
Geoff, I was within a whisker of joining IEAust when I lived in Sydney - forms completed, referees signatures all done. Unfortunately circumstances dictated I return to NZ , and I found IPENZ or whatever they were called then did not have much to offer me.
So its Excel 2 , Mathcad 1
Cheers
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com [mailto:PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Geoff Stone DD&D Australia
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 6:59 PM
To: PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [PipingDesign] Stress Analysis Spreadsheet Software -
Opinions
Christopher,
Its smart sods like you that make me look bad.
Geoff
Christopher Wright <chrisw@skypoint.com> wrote:
On Feb 17, 2006, at 8:54 PM, Geoff Stone DD&D Australia wrote:
> I dont use Excel that often. I leave it to the Beanies to use. Have
> seen too many mistakes made in Excel.
I've seen too many mistakes make with every damn piece of software I
ever used. You can do some pretty elegant things with it. Hell, I've
done some pretty elegant things with it. All the optimization, linear
algebra, special functions and matrix arithmetic I can make use of.
I admit, I'll probably spring for Mathematica one of these days, the Mathematica Lite version, probably. I've been using Excel since 1987, when it was a Mac-only app, and I've found it's more versatile than any other calculation package I've ever used.
Actually, the first spreadsheet I ever used was a Visi-calc workalike that came with a Franklin Ace computer I bought in 1985. I came within an inch of erasing the floppy disk it was on, when I discovered it would generate the lengthwise stress distribution in an edge-loaded cylindrical shell, just as fast as dammit. That's damn hard work even with an HP-67. The I worked out an automated version of a floatinghead analysis, that saved enough calculator tape, let alone time, to seem like a miracle. I've been using spreadsheets ever since. 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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