RCAD

RCAD stands for (R)einforced (C)oncrete (A)nalysis and (D)esign. It's not a very sexy name, but structural engineers are used to seeing horrible software names. For example: SAP2000, ETABS, STAAD Pro, CSIcol, BIAX, S-Concrete - none of these are very slick.

I chose go for the solver because I was concerned about how this could possibly scale to even a few dozen users without bankrupting me on server costs. I am happy to say I have a fully functional solver program in go, and set up a simple httpserver to send/receive input and output from the Angular app. The solver works by receiving the section geometry and reinforcing layout, discretizing the section into a mesh, and iterating over all the elements to equate internal and external forces (ie a finite element approach).

An important future step will be to benchmark the solver and look for optimizations, but for now I will leave it alone and focus on the other features that need to be implemented.

I started writing the frontend for RCAD using Angular.io. There's a ton of features I have in mind, so it will be a constant struggle to keep the MVP as simple as possible.

Having just spent the day designing columns for a residential tower, I found myself thinking about ways to improve the process and make it easier and quicker. I brainstormed a few features that I wish the available software had, drew up some wireframes on paper, and set it aside to ponder over the next few days.