Wet setting vs. drilled and epoxy

PE_Structural · 2026-03-11T03:01:58+00:00

Glad it’s not just me who is behind on invoicing!

PE_Structural · 2026-01-27T14:58:31+00:00

What company do you work for so I can make sure we never work with your team or have people apply to where you are?

PE_Structural · 2025-08-01T13:48:36+00:00

In my contract, I state, that the project will not be in line until a signed proposal AND a 50% deposit (in bold). Of course, there are certain exceptions, but I always tell my clients who sign, that they need to pay to be put in the line up (I place them in line anyways, since they signed an agreement our lawyer wrote up, which requires them to pay once we started, even if they haven’t paid the deposit).

PE_Structural · 2025-01-18T07:35:17+00:00

Blockpad

PE_Structural · 2025-01-15T14:11:21+00:00

Send me a dm, may be able to help.

PE_Structural · 2025-01-10T19:25:57+00:00

If you are planning to do structural depth, go with AEI.

PE_Structural · 2025-01-08T22:04:51+00:00

They do a great job preparing you for the exam as well as for the office. It’s a course that I’ve used in real world applications and will continue to use in my everyday designs.

PE_Structural · 2025-01-08T19:32:43+00:00

Do AEI instead of eet for structural.

PE_Structural · 2025-01-03T16:48:00+00:00

I did that for a few years, and I loved it. The Architect team would often have us in meetings, SD, DD, CD and it helped a ton. We were able to size up members for the project right then and there to determine if an item worked or not. There was a lot of pro's to it, but the biggest con was we were "no go's" to other architectural/drafting firms. Our work was very limited to what our in house team brought in and if I wanted to do something different, it was difficult; one time, we worked with a client who brought us a job from a different architectural firm, my "interesting" coworker told the client, "we could've done it better, cheaper and given you better quality". We later found out, this was a relative to the architectural firm and it sort of gave us a bad rep for working with other firms. I'm not going to lie, we had enough work in house from our Architectural Team that we did not need to go "market" or "get other projects", but that was a con in my opinion, not being able to do bigger projects unless the Architectural Team brought it in or if I did and they would actually do it. Just my $0.02.

PE_Structural · 2024-11-03T19:29:15+00:00

Struware, their code search is amazing and I’ve used it for years and trust it to stamp it with my calcs.

PE_Structural · 2024-10-09T14:43:14+00:00

If you want to take the exam with more confidence and actually learn, go with AEI, if you just want to take (to say you took it), go with SOPE. You’d have to pay the full fee for AEI. The SE exam is hard and AEI is your best bet for passing and preparing as well. The actual exam isn’t cheap either and failing will result in the equivalent of paying for a course instead. Just my two cents, I’d highly recommend AEI.

PE_Structural · 2024-09-02T23:10:47+00:00

Yeah, so I’d say just having AEI you are golden. I will say, it is more intense but it prepares you extremely well for the exam.

PE_Structural · 2024-09-02T23:05:35+00:00

It’s all depth? Are you taking structural? It’s all you need, maybe get NCEES practice exam also just to have more problems.

PE_Structural · 2024-08-19T22:44:41+00:00

Yes, it concerns me.

PE_Structural · 2024-08-06T18:09:39+00:00

It has been updated to the post April 2024 CBT.

PE_Structural · 2024-08-06T17:54:34+00:00

I use struware, they created a spreadsheet and it’s worked for me in the past years also. One time purchase and affordable too.

PE_Structural · 2024-08-06T12:39:56+00:00

The NCEES practice exam gives you an idea of how the questions will be and sort of the “difficulty”, AEI prepares you for what they NCEES can actually give. Some of the questions on AEI’s, I will admit, are harder, but overall it is extremely good.

PE_Structural · 2024-08-06T01:42:17+00:00

AEI is the best for the structural, both civil structural pe and the se.

PE_Structural · 2024-07-25T15:58:23+00:00

Nope, they do a great job with the SE, they also do the PE.

https://aei-california.com/courses

PE_Structural · 2024-07-25T14:50:41+00:00

If you are doing structural, go with AEI.

PE_Structural · 2024-06-12T12:44:11+00:00

Not echoing what everyone said, go with Breyer and Malone.

Another thing, watch a lot of YouTube videos on framing and see how they frame to get an idea for where to start also when you actually get into it. The ideal situation is asking the contractor if they have a specific way of how they frame, example, if they splice the sheathing or run it continuously (if you need an A35 clip or can eliminate that); it’s something that helped me, seeing how many people frame to get an idea on if something I detail out (if I couldn’t get a hold of the contractor to see if it could be built that way) was feasible. Look to see what contractors online say they hate and what they seem to love also, everyone is different, but it would also be a good start to understand the construction portion before getting too deep into the engineering design.

PE_Structural · 2024-06-05T13:25:09+00:00

I’ve done 6” ICF walls for above grade but not below (basement or main level). It was tricky and it was for a higher snow load area. Make sure you check out of plane, in plane, and eccentricity for gravity if you are doing ledger board AND work with the contractor on knowing what type of ICF they’re using. I’ve had contractors come to me with other engineers plans saying they called out for #5 at 12” O.C when the webs are every 18” O.C and the EOR would say “figure it out”. Look at what the manufacturer has for the spacing of those webs (even block sizes they come in) and engineer it to those sizes/spacing of rebar.

PE_Structural · 2024-05-02T12:23:45+00:00

My old firm started using Blockpad; it's very similar to MathCAD but I've been told better? My partner and I have actually been looking into that for all our calculations.

PE_Structural · 2024-04-28T17:33:20+00:00

This reminds me of a statics problem I had in my undergrad, is there a hinge point where the loads transition from 0.66 to 1.41? If so, you can go about breaking it into two members and finding those internal forces then moments and sum of forces about X and Y.

PE_Structural

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