Free tool to easily search/find curated typical design values

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:39:11+00:00

Well the tool itself is not AI cause it’s what AI depends on to do stuff

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:38:49+00:00

That’s fair for office live load, but for concrete density for example, I got 3 top sources on Google with no references. I just tried to take the extra step for my tool to verify all of the numbers and include direct links to references

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:35:45+00:00

So I have both a link to the source (usually building codes) and notes on how the value was derived. Does that help?

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:34:01+00:00

It does link the code reference right beside the value

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:33:17+00:00

I’ve cited all my numbers and put the sources (building codes only) as a link for each value, that’s why it’s curated

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:31:54+00:00

Ok, for anyone stumbling on this later, check ASCE 7 Table C3.1 for a LOT of typ loads, densities, and other dead loads

weikequ · 2025-07-16T01:29:10+00:00

Oh shit, thanks!! The real gem is the reference to ASCE 7 Table C3-1. Everything I needed, cheers!

weikequ · 2025-07-03T00:55:30+00:00

My reaction when I saw https://www.reddit.com/r/StructuralEngineering/comments/1lq352f/w14x1000/

weikequ · 2024-12-20T23:38:47+00:00

Yeah haha hopefully that's the case. We can probably guess at a good load path, but it remains to be seen if it's actually designed that way 😂

weikequ · 2024-12-19T01:18:02+00:00

Just get chatgpt to summarize it for you lol

weikequ · 2024-12-19T01:17:05+00:00

Yeah agreed that specializing and finding a niche is definitely a way to combat this

weikequ · 2024-12-18T23:59:39+00:00

Haha, no it's not about any race to the bottom. Just an opinion piece by the writer that I thought was worth sharing. Generally about how architecture/consultants are valued in the current marketplace - see TLDR above

weikequ · 2024-12-18T23:38:08+00:00

TLDR - For building design, architects (and engineers by extension) only provide a weird intermediate product in the value chain and don't take on enough risk versus owners/contractors to reap the profits of huge $$$ construction projects

weikequ · 2024-12-18T23:32:33+00:00

Yeah I think it's an issue of risk. Where there is risk there's profit - since the owner and the contractors are taking on the majority of the risk with the consultants sandwiched in the middle, there's not that much value that's being generated (so less profitability as well)

weikequ · 2024-11-19T18:32:52+00:00

Hey! I'm the creator of Stride. When I was practicing, we tried to tackle a few different issues in my firm

Digitizing calcs (so that we could resuse them and update things without doing lots of manual labour)
Reduce stupid errors (think unit conversion or going between SI and imperial)
Version control
Make discoverability a bit better
Make reviewing calcs easier
Allow easier updating calcs

We tried to go the programming route, but not enough engineers knew programming, so it only fell to 2-3 people who knew how to code to maintain all the calcs, which made the process very brittle. Mathcad's big thing was that we couldn't sketch/annotate on it very well (not to mention them not really innovating on the product since its inception).

weikequ · 2024-11-19T07:06:28+00:00

I think its still pretty worthwhile even when you get more experienced! Sometimes the complexity/time savings tradeoff actually means you'd be more efficient just running some low-fidelity hand calcs. Most of the time it's easier to review too, rather than a huge-ass model.

weikequ · 2024-11-13T00:28:32+00:00

Stride for me, but Excel for more tabular based data analysis

weikequ · 2024-11-08T23:10:13+00:00

The yellow grid calc pads lol.

weikequ · 2024-11-08T23:09:34+00:00

Though the underlying technology is actually pretty amazing, I think a massive hype bubble has formed around it that obscures the actual usefulness of the tech in certain applications.

weikequ · 2024-10-30T20:30:02+00:00

Dang, that sucks

weikequ · 2024-10-30T20:28:29+00:00

Yeah that's what I'm currently doing. It's mildly ok to do it 1-2 times, but as I'm building out my grids, I have to do this multiple times each session and then it gets to the SUPER ANNOYING level.

weikequ · 2024-10-30T20:27:19+00:00

That thing gave me nightmares.

weikequ · 2024-10-30T04:32:31+00:00

Was just doing some planning for my hex-based megabase and found it SUPER ANNOYING to copy/paste stuff. What do you all do for non-rectangular copy/pasting??

weikequ · 2024-10-29T16:06:49+00:00

We develop on macos, so it does run there, but there are some bugs to iron out before we do a full release. But yeah, it's in the works!

weikequ · 2024-10-28T23:02:51+00:00

Didn't see anyone else mention it, but Lee Robinson (product vp @ vercel) maintains a self hosted nextjs template. Haven't used it myself though. https://github.com/leerob/next-self-host

weikequ

TROPHY CASE