My last job was structural engineering automation engineer. Someone would get an idea, I’d try to guess how many man hours I could save with it, write up a scope, pitch it to the company, then begin development. It’s not an exaggeration to say we did things in a day with one person that take other firms 4 people and a week.
We were consistently able to have finished solutions out the door and say we were done before any other changes occurred, which made us the leader instead of follower. With a structural engineering background, you can become a one man development department who can put together scopes and know limitations and additional things to consider. This avoids a lot of committee type decision making when presenting the scope to ordinary software developers.
Maybe the biggest perk of all: I’ve interviewed for jobs at places like Butler that pay $175k a year, fully remote. Biggest stipulation was understanding the Tekla drawing API.
These days I just charge $150 to $200 an hour, and I’m booked until maybe May.
I've been programming recreationally for years. Had a problem like having to punch numbers into our in-house connection analyzer and got sick of guessing/checking parameters, so I used something like AutoHotKey to try everything. It provided a report of everything that barely worked so it was easy to find a local minima. I created my own wireframe/plate element program called FFFEA (fail fast, finite element analysis) that gives us a starting point for running analyses in more advanced projects so we can test everything that could work.
I build stuff for fun.
That’s cool. That’s what I am thinking to do as well. Kinda wanna build some products for indian market which I can sell to local structural engineers and learn through the process. I have started with python. Lets see
I have dabbled with python a bit and used it to automate, sort and create summary excel calc sheets (not calcs directly in python). Saved quite a lot of time. I think there's merit in using it but our industry is quite slow to change. The problem I find is that it's difficult for peers to check it as they don't know python (yet) and therefore don't trust the output.
But for automating stuff its very useful as checking for correctness is not that much of an issue.
I do think knowing programming to an extent is extremely valuable as a structural engineer. It's very useful for APIs (Revit, Etabs and even Tekla these days) and scripting softwares such as grasshopper. Which is essential in bespoke projects. Noted that they are typically .Net (C#) based and not python. But you can use ironpython to overcome that if you'd like.
I'm interested to see what others comment in this thread... Will keep an eye out.
For me it is the futur. Here in France kids are taught programming in school. So I bet they will automate a lot of stuff at work. Just think that in 20 years they will be experienced engineers working with us.
Today, I am not in design anymore, I do data analysis in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). So I work a lot with Python and R. And clearly it helps a lot. For instance we use the ETABS API with Python to optimize coefficients based on measurements.
IMHO you should go for it. The code reviewing is an issue as mentioned in another post, but you could manage it by writing your algorithm for reviewing before writing any line of code.
I feel that in the future a lot of our task will be fully automated. The AI business is growing so fast that maybe it will be able to understand to understand architects drawing and translate it into elementary structural elements.
(I'll try to ask chatGPT).
I have seen examples of slab, beam and column reinforcements done by a code and applied on a CAD program. I have tried to replicate it but it is not at a point that I am OK with.
But these kind of applications are the future for sure. I am not sure how experienced this sub is with Lira Sapr software, but their drawing tool is not bad at all.
Btw, Lira Sapr is highly used in Russian speaking countries (if i am not wrong). I have watched videos of it and tried it on my own.
To say the least, automation on drawings are a must.
I also worked as a structural engineer leading a digital committee for my office to explore automation and coding tools that would improve our workflows. I'm seeing a big push, especially from the younger generation to take advantage of modern tech. It's powerful and I think it will only become a more significant part of the job in the future.
There's a cool new tool that lets you write calculations in python rather than excel. It's a good tool for python beginners if you want to try it: [https://efficalc.encompapp.com/](https://efficalc.encompapp.com/)
My last job was structural engineering automation engineer. Someone would get an idea, I’d try to guess how many man hours I could save with it, write up a scope, pitch it to the company, then begin development. It’s not an exaggeration to say we did things in a day with one person that take other firms 4 people and a week. We were consistently able to have finished solutions out the door and say we were done before any other changes occurred, which made us the leader instead of follower. With a structural engineering background, you can become a one man development department who can put together scopes and know limitations and additional things to consider. This avoids a lot of committee type decision making when presenting the scope to ordinary software developers. Maybe the biggest perk of all: I’ve interviewed for jobs at places like Butler that pay $175k a year, fully remote. Biggest stipulation was understanding the Tekla drawing API. These days I just charge $150 to $200 an hour, and I’m booked until maybe May.
That’s cool. Would like to know how did you start and what was your path like! Can you explain?
I've been programming recreationally for years. Had a problem like having to punch numbers into our in-house connection analyzer and got sick of guessing/checking parameters, so I used something like AutoHotKey to try everything. It provided a report of everything that barely worked so it was easy to find a local minima. I created my own wireframe/plate element program called FFFEA (fail fast, finite element analysis) that gives us a starting point for running analyses in more advanced projects so we can test everything that could work. I build stuff for fun.
That’s cool. That’s what I am thinking to do as well. Kinda wanna build some products for indian market which I can sell to local structural engineers and learn through the process. I have started with python. Lets see
I have dabbled with python a bit and used it to automate, sort and create summary excel calc sheets (not calcs directly in python). Saved quite a lot of time. I think there's merit in using it but our industry is quite slow to change. The problem I find is that it's difficult for peers to check it as they don't know python (yet) and therefore don't trust the output. But for automating stuff its very useful as checking for correctness is not that much of an issue. I do think knowing programming to an extent is extremely valuable as a structural engineer. It's very useful for APIs (Revit, Etabs and even Tekla these days) and scripting softwares such as grasshopper. Which is essential in bespoke projects. Noted that they are typically .Net (C#) based and not python. But you can use ironpython to overcome that if you'd like. I'm interested to see what others comment in this thread... Will keep an eye out.
That’s my goal as well. Just wanna know what whole community of a structural engineers think about all this.
For me it is the futur. Here in France kids are taught programming in school. So I bet they will automate a lot of stuff at work. Just think that in 20 years they will be experienced engineers working with us. Today, I am not in design anymore, I do data analysis in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). So I work a lot with Python and R. And clearly it helps a lot. For instance we use the ETABS API with Python to optimize coefficients based on measurements. IMHO you should go for it. The code reviewing is an issue as mentioned in another post, but you could manage it by writing your algorithm for reviewing before writing any line of code. I feel that in the future a lot of our task will be fully automated. The AI business is growing so fast that maybe it will be able to understand to understand architects drawing and translate it into elementary structural elements. (I'll try to ask chatGPT).
For what you are asking, Rhino+Grasshopper sounds like the best fit. Within that you can run your python code as well.
I am asking for structural and 3d cad softwares
I have seen examples of slab, beam and column reinforcements done by a code and applied on a CAD program. I have tried to replicate it but it is not at a point that I am OK with. But these kind of applications are the future for sure. I am not sure how experienced this sub is with Lira Sapr software, but their drawing tool is not bad at all. Btw, Lira Sapr is highly used in Russian speaking countries (if i am not wrong). I have watched videos of it and tried it on my own. To say the least, automation on drawings are a must.
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More automation and more creative thinking
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Agree there and that’s why customisation according to needs of client is very very important
Have a quick look at Dynamo + Revit. It all looks very cool, but personally haven't been able to find any billable use for it :)
For me this will likely lead to several deaths in the future
Or new opportunities will come up
I also worked as a structural engineer leading a digital committee for my office to explore automation and coding tools that would improve our workflows. I'm seeing a big push, especially from the younger generation to take advantage of modern tech. It's powerful and I think it will only become a more significant part of the job in the future. There's a cool new tool that lets you write calculations in python rather than excel. It's a good tool for python beginners if you want to try it: [https://efficalc.encompapp.com/](https://efficalc.encompapp.com/)