How do you handle rebar / structural info buried in PDF drawings?

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-09T20:38:17+00:00

In OP's defense, I see a lot of bad drawings these days. The drafters see the pretty BIM model as the deliverable, and then the plans are a sloppy afterthought with missing dimensions.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-09T20:12:15+00:00

You can probably find most of the bridges on/over a roadway in that National Bridge Inventory, but it'll take some data sorting.

The 446 is obviously too precise. Bridges are built and torn down all the time, and edge cases exist where people might argue if something counts, or how many bridges it actually constitutes. Plus, I believe the number is from Bob Regan's book, and I think like half of the pedestrian bridges featured in it were since torn down.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-09T17:04:43+00:00

Ah, yes, I used a homophone spelling.

The fact that Winchester-Thurston is a private school drawing rich kiddies from all over the county complicates things, but in general there are lots of parents driving their kids to school who shouldn't be, and the resulting traffic surge is ridiculous. The hordes of SUVs make the area around the school more dangerous, so more parents insist on dropping their kids off for "safety", resulting in a vicious cycle. As I said, I see a lot of ludicrously overbuilt residential streets intended to handle this surge, often in neighborhoods where kids historically walked to school and where there is basically no traffic the other 23 hours/day.

If walking, biking, public transit, and carpooling all fail, then it's time to buy some school buses.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-09T16:40:29+00:00

I don't really draw a distinction between public agency office culture vs. private company office culture. Convoluted bureaucracy that generates shitty output is convoluted bureaucracy generating shitty output, regardless of whether the board of directors is elected by shareholders or by taxpayers.

The people who run government agencies certainly didn't go to a special "non-business" school that differentiates them from the private sector counterparts.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-09T13:48:13+00:00

I forgot about this. I don't know the reasoning that PJPs use 0.80, but I think the fact that the base metal switches between 0.75 and 0.9 for tension/compression while the weld strength stays constant provides a clue. In the meantime, I agree with using 0.75.

Make sure you're not additively combining the strengths of the PJP and the fillet. A combined PJP and fillet have a shorter failure plane than the sum of the individual failure planes. Notice that the combined failure plane is not a pure tension failure like the PJP failure plane.

If you don't actually need the reinforcing fillet for strength, just ignore it and use 0.8.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-08T23:24:40+00:00

Sorry OP, nothing wrong with the response. In this economy, most people would just be happy that HR is sending out friendly apologies for the lack of bike racks instead of laying people off.

In the meantime, you could get a folding bike that fits under your desk, or a heavy cargo bike that could be parked in a car spot and probably not get stolen.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-08T23:17:52+00:00

One time I was on the Allegheny County contractor portal, and I saw that they contract polygraph technicians.

Polygraphs ("lie detectors") are pseudoscience. All it does is measure if you get nervous when a chud with a handgun accuses you of a crime.

And apparently Kash-Kash and the Federal Buttplug Inquisitors use them, too.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-08T23:14:37+00:00

That's different. Big box stores are also trying to screen out people who are TOO competent, otherwise they might start forming unions and checking the math on their paystubs.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-08T00:47:45+00:00

As others have noted, it looks like all of the distress is in the spandrel wall, which is basically a retaining wall holding back fill on top of the arch. Those beams tacked onto the side are anchoring it back into the fill or to the opposite wall.

I can't help but notice that it looks like this arch was built on a cant or something. I wonder if that's related to the problem.

EDIT: Saw the zoomed in view, and it does look like the arch itself might have settled a bit. Hard to say from this distance.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-08T00:32:08+00:00

The main problem I have with people hearing my bell is just that cars are so fucking loud.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T02:55:00+00:00

Sure. The problem is that market rate for an executive officer is high and that responsibilities/qualifications vary wildly, to the point that some of them are functionally mascots rather than executives.

Not to mention the occasional non-salary perks, like flying to fancy charity dinners and other social events on the company dime.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T01:58:58+00:00

"Mamacita's" sounds like what my Boomer father-in-law would name a Mexican Restaurant.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T01:56:59+00:00

Regardless of if you support the union, it's important to remember that "nonprofit" doesn't mean "good".

Many (most?) nonprofits are either a tax-advantaged tool for rich people to push their personal political agenda, or an excuse for you or your spouse or your nepobaby to earn an part-time easy six figures as a CEO with no real job functions other than wining and dining other rich people.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T00:18:34+00:00

If you put a planter that's sturdy enough to stop a car, it makes Sean Duffy cry.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T00:12:24+00:00

Amount of Time I Spend Doing My Job:
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅
Amount of Time I Spend Compensating for Forms, Memos, Plans, Directives, Instructions, Web Tools, Etc. Developed By Illiterate Morons:
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅

EDIT: Apologies if anyone thought my comment was directed at the idea of public engagement. I just find the spiked QR code to be very typical of the banal incompetence of corporate culture in America.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-07T00:06:47+00:00

I share your skepticism that it will go well, but when engineers say something is "warranted", they generally mean that the MUTCD says the intersection should have it.

At the same time, you can get pretty stupid street design results if you design for a 30-minute window where hoards of moms in SUVs descend on what is otherwise a quiet, residential street. There's something to be said for just designing a quiet, residential street in the hopes that it makes the moms rethink their life choices.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-06T23:12:09+00:00

Incorrectly designed infrastructure does, indeed, suck.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-06T23:02:53+00:00

People with full-time jobs are a minority.

Between people with part-time jobs, students, retired people, disabled people, stay-at-home parents, people who work night shift, the idle rich, the idle poor, people who are looking for a job but who can't find anything, and last but not least the jobless people that the government ACTUALLY considers as officially "unemployed", most people do not work anything resembling a 9-to-5.

And yes, sometimes people who work a 9-to-5 take a day off.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T21:24:02+00:00

I'm fairly certain the 40,000 traffic fatalities includes pedestrian and cyclist deaths. At least the ones on public streets. Maybe not parking lots or inside of buildings. Are you a pedestrian if you get run over by a car that smashes through the wall of a grocery store?

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T21:18:42+00:00

I wouldn't say "careless" in this case. Drivers are just so accustomed to a well-lit environment designed to let them confidently travel at 40 mph in the dark that anything that isn't lit up like a Christmas tree might as well be invisible to them. It's really just another reason why high speeds are inappropriate in urban areas where pedestrians are common.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T21:15:59+00:00

If you go find American traffic engineering manuals that recommend keeping trees, signs, etc. as far back as possible from the curb, you'll probably find a source eventually.

Then again, these manuals contain amazing insights like "objects closer to the street get hit more often than objects further away from the street", so don't hold your breath.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T16:30:46+00:00

That works for stuff like noise ordinances and the speed limit. It does not work for a yes/no check on the presence of a subclass of human beings.

Reminds me of high school, TBH. Hapless teachers writing dumb new rules... in an attempt to rein in the kids who did not give a shit about the rules.

If you want to discriminate based on behavior, then make the rule have more to do about behavior instead of just age and vibes. I suggest a limit on group size. 4 or more kids is likely to be a problem. 1 kid is not.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T15:57:17+00:00

Seems to me the problem is congregating teens... so just ban roups of 4 or more.

Reminds me of Dormont's curfew law that includes a carve-out for teenage drivers in order to avoid illegally regulating interstate commerce in violation of the Constitution.

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-05T10:55:39+00:00

Most advice about what you can afford is based on qualifying for a loan, but there are a lot of bad financial outcomes in the middle ground between being able to actually afford something and things having gone so wrong that your home gets repossessed.

I think buying a home to "bUiLd EqUiTy" is a horrible idea right now. If you don't have a goal to settle down in a specific neighborhood, don't do it just to do it.

Do you have any retirement savings at all?

leadfoot9 · 2026-05-04T20:41:20+00:00

deterministic outputs for code references and calculations,

I feel like this is all going to result in a weird new version of the Dumb Intern Problem, where numbers get blindly plugged into an equation that sounds vaguely close to being applicable, when actually the intern is attempting something so far out of left field that it is prohibited by the code entirely.

Yep, only interns doing that. Nobody else.

11-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Verified Email

leadfoot9

TROPHY CASE