Joe Bartok
01-06-2005, 07:22 AM
There’s actually a question at the end of this essay, and it seems appropriate to it post down here in the engineering forum rather than under DIY-Crown Molding.
Rich, your building sounds interesting. I’m out of computer time as far as the internet is concerned for today, with barely a chance to speed read new posts and to paste’n’post this (spent over an hour typing it up in advance). But I’ll surf the web tomorrow check out your structure with all the curves. Be prepared, there may be more questions on this topic …
By the way, I inferred from the way you phrased an earlier statement (“let's clarify what we mean by …”), as well as the picture of the elliptical roof in another thread, that you’ve had experience in dealing with shapes out of the ordinary. I was expecting lots of opinions to the contrary when I threw my comment about it being possible to build a room with less than 360 degrees in the ring. Should have let it ride for a couple of days!
We function on a totally different level in my little corner of the world: irregular surfaces are dealt with by jigs built to one of the cross-sectional shapes, or the correct bevel angles, and projected directly to a curved face. Nothing much to figure there. Whatever does require numbercrunching is actually concerned with removing any irregularities to create flat planes. Not being a mathemetician or engineer by formal training or education, there aren’t likely going to be any opportunities on my horizons to work on anything more challenging. But the math I do work with arose in response to real problems in the real world, and I always keep my eyes open for new methods and easier ways of doing things. Especially techniques that can be applied on the spur of the moment, on the job, by an ordinary “joe”. There are sure to be some interesting questions and answers in this respect from the other people in this forum.
Assuming anyone’s read this far and they’re still awake, here’s my question: Does anyone out there have an engineering program with a graphic interface where the screen has scaled gridlines and the user sketches a shape with the mouse? Or know of a downloadable trial version? The program should be handle of shear load and centroid calculations involving irregular cross-sections, and I haven’t had any luck finding anything on the internet that will do the trick.
Rich, your building sounds interesting. I’m out of computer time as far as the internet is concerned for today, with barely a chance to speed read new posts and to paste’n’post this (spent over an hour typing it up in advance). But I’ll surf the web tomorrow check out your structure with all the curves. Be prepared, there may be more questions on this topic …
By the way, I inferred from the way you phrased an earlier statement (“let's clarify what we mean by …”), as well as the picture of the elliptical roof in another thread, that you’ve had experience in dealing with shapes out of the ordinary. I was expecting lots of opinions to the contrary when I threw my comment about it being possible to build a room with less than 360 degrees in the ring. Should have let it ride for a couple of days!
We function on a totally different level in my little corner of the world: irregular surfaces are dealt with by jigs built to one of the cross-sectional shapes, or the correct bevel angles, and projected directly to a curved face. Nothing much to figure there. Whatever does require numbercrunching is actually concerned with removing any irregularities to create flat planes. Not being a mathemetician or engineer by formal training or education, there aren’t likely going to be any opportunities on my horizons to work on anything more challenging. But the math I do work with arose in response to real problems in the real world, and I always keep my eyes open for new methods and easier ways of doing things. Especially techniques that can be applied on the spur of the moment, on the job, by an ordinary “joe”. There are sure to be some interesting questions and answers in this respect from the other people in this forum.
Assuming anyone’s read this far and they’re still awake, here’s my question: Does anyone out there have an engineering program with a graphic interface where the screen has scaled gridlines and the user sketches a shape with the mouse? Or know of a downloadable trial version? The program should be handle of shear load and centroid calculations involving irregular cross-sections, and I haven’t had any luck finding anything on the internet that will do the trick.