Development of structural design tools for practical CAD applications

Structural design procedures for similar structural elements may differ depending on input parameters. Therefore, standardizing these procedures helps structural designers concentrate on more innovative tasks such as optimizing the choice of the overall structural system. Most of the commercially available programs include design options according to a variety of design codes. Nevertheless, structural engineers may often find themselves in need to carryout some stand-alone design tasks for several reasons, including: pre-dimensioning and preliminary design, accommodating local design requirements, and resolving conflicts with other design disciplines. This paper proposes a hybrid programming approach that combines the AutoCAD built-in VBA with spreadsheets as an environment to develop integrated computer aided design and drafting tools. To illustrate the proposed approach, a case study of the combined reinforced concrete footings is selected. It is shown that the proposed approach is versatile, efficient, hides the scrupulous structural design steps, and produces simple integration with design drawings for real life practical structural design applications.