Designing my first building was truly a learning experience. I remember one event in particular when I determined the required thickness for a steel column base plate. That day I wrote “1.5-inch thk. min.” on my calc pad and months later while out walking the job, I got to see that 1.5-inch thick plate in the flesh. Let me tell you, it was much thicker and heavier in-person than on my calc pad. This eye-opening experience – the realization that what you’re designing isn’t just a word or a number, but rather a physical object with width, height, length and weight – is something every structural engineer goes through early in their career. Designing something on paper doesn’t convey those physical properties very well.Continue Reading
Tag: Design
Is Designing with Wood Easy?
In college, I spent some of my free time either attending seminars or reading about high profile structural engineering projects. These projects tend to be noteworthy due to their massive scale or their use of innovative construction technologies (often both). Taipei 101 is 508 meters tall, and used to be the tallest building in the world. The Burj Khalifa has surpassed it as not only the tallest building in the world, but as the tallest manmade structure at 828 meters.
I never thought I would design the world’s tallest buildings, but I did think it would be cool to work on some mid-rises. I never did. My design firm didn’t do that type of work – which looking back, was a good thing for me. We worked on a lot of everything, including commercial, industrial, multi-family and mixed-used projects. The variety of projects meant designing with all the major building materials, including concrete, steel, masonry, and wood. Reviewing my project portfolio and thinking about what was really satisfying to work on, the projects that stand out most were wood-framed.
2012 Autodesk University
Autodesk University is an annual conference focused on keeping the design community up to date on the latest innovations, trends and technologies in design, drafting and visualization. Last year, Autodesk University was held in Las Vegas the week after Thanksgiving. Sadly, events always seem to conspire to prevent me from going to Vegas, but Simpson Strong-Tie was well represented by Frank Ding, our Engineering Analysis & Technical Computing Manager.
It was an exciting time attending my first Autodesk University in 2012. I have been to so many technical conferences during my professional career, but this one was quite different in scale, and the sheer size of it just blew me away. There were more than 8,000 attendees from 102 countries, more than 750 classes offered, and 163 exhibitors. I was impressed by the organization of such a large event, along with the online and mobile apps provided to help attendees manage their conference schedules.Continue Reading
Testing – Then & Now
“One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions.”
– Wernher von Braun
While reviewing some of our first catalogs, I was curious about the testing we did on those iconic products that launched our company. I found a test report from December 20, 1957 on crinkled yellow paper with a short description: U-29 Download Test. The signature from the independent testing agency was a little faded, and the data was typed by hand in a table. But I was thrilled to discover that our 1957 customers received exactly the same thing as our modern-day customers – the confidence in knowing that our allowable loads are supported by physical testing.
There simply is no substitute for a physical test.
