Today's worldwide workplace is fast-paced and demands agility from structural engineers. There has never been a more pressing need to work together across several AEC sector disciplines, frequently on a global scale. By reducing costs and embodied carbon, engineers are expected to achieve even higher performance for their buildings, which is why exploring various design possibilities is crucial. Automation is a desirable alternative since engineering firms must complete projects as quickly as possible to maintain their competitive edge. Using cloud technology is one method structural engineers and engineering firms may stay on the cutting edge. They may use it to improve communication, automate their operations to create better buildings faster, and do a variety of complex studies swiftly and automatically.

What is the cloud?

It's difficult to live in the modern world without hearing about the cloud, but what exactly is it and what does it represent for structural engineers in particular? The on-demand availability of computer system resources, particularly data storage (cloud storage) and processing power, without direct active supervision by the user, is what Wikipedia defines as the cloud. To put it simply, cloud computing is an internet-based method of accessing data, applications, and services. With the advent of the cloud, all you now need is a reliable internet connection and the appropriate cloud services provider, as opposed to the days when you needed to have that or that software on your computer. This provides several excellent advantages, particularly for structural engineers. Let's examine each one in turn and talk about some advice for making the most of these tools.

Documents sharing and collaboration

While it's convenient to view the same model on a screen during remote meetings, what about collaborating on such models? The days of having to email a structural model to a coworker or an outside party, such an architect, wait for their changes, and then have that model returned, are long gone thanks to the cloud. Several providers of structural engineering software enable real-time collaborative editing of models through web browsers, utilising cloud computing to allow for quick modifications to be made and shared on the structural model. File storage companies make it simple to publish the model to a single, publicly accessible site for those softwares that don't support editing in the cloud. Subsequent uploads enable modifications, and the model's history is clearly traceable, enabling the model to be reverted to earlier iterations in the event that a design choice is reversed. Lastly, as these models are frequently shared as "view-only," it is simple to explain the structural design to coworkers, project partners, and stakeholders.

Remote Meetings

The worldwide epidemic has caused a sharp increase in the popularity of remote meetings during the past two years. Connecting with colleagues worldwide is made possible for structural engineers via platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others. The option to share your screen during remote meetings is a very useful feature. Nowadays, engineers may collaborate to analyse BIM models and structural design calculations by viewing the same document or model at the same time, no matter where they are in the world. A potential problem with internet meetings is when an engineer group meets in person in one room and several more join virtually. This could result in the creation of two meeting spaces inside the same gathering: one for in-person discussions and another for remote meetings. For those unable to attend in person, it might be challenging to engage in the same degree of participation as colleagues. Apply this straightforward rule to remote meetings to avoid this issue: if one person is online, everyone is online.

Web APIs

It's unlikely that many structural engineers will be knowledgeable with web APIs or even basic desktop APIs! “API” is short for “Application Programming Interface”, but in simple terms it means a way to tell structural analysis and design programs what to do, by writing some software code. The intriguing potential to automate certain steps in your structural research and design workflow is made possible via APIs. Your structural program can be told to create a model, do analysis and design, and then provide you with the results. This works particularly well when trying out several structural ideas quickly or running repetitious designs. When you combine an API with cloud computing's "access anywhere" mentality, you have an immensely potent tool for conducting structural analysis and design automatically from any location in the globe. You can receive structural analysis and design findings back from the cloud using a straightforward software that retrieves data from your PC. TIP: The Structural Analysis & Design API from SkyCiv is the first on the market that directly automates structural engineers. It's even simpler to start using your solutions right away with dedicated help for getting them up and running.

High Performance Computing

Because structural analysis is a numerically demanding operation, it must be completed rapidly on a powerful PC. When computers were initially invented, they took up whole rooms. With the rise in popularity of desktop software and personal computers in the 1990s and 2000s, this began to alter. Purchasing pricey PCs to expedite their analyses or bearing the cost of waiting for large models to solve and provide results were the two options available to structural engineers. The emergence and widespread use of the internet in the past 20 years has led us to reflect on these massive computer rooms and the processing power they provide. We simply refer to these computer-filled rooms as "Servers." The servers that house and power the cloud are its physical locations. With all of this gear, high performance computing is now more accessible and provides a fantastic substitute for ever-more-powerful personal computers. This implies that structural engineers in Delhi can perform complex structural analysis tasks using the cloud and a lightweight (both literally and figuratively) personal computer. Large structural models with a large number of members, plates, loadcases, and combinations can be executed on the cloud without the structural engineer needing to purchase pricey gear. Models that would have previously taken hours to run on a desktop computer can now receive results from high performance computing in a matter of seconds or minutes. Moreover, numerous models can execute concurrently. Thanks to high performance computing in the cloud, engineers can now construct and analyse several models at once, saving them the days or weeks it would have previously taken to do so. Structural engineers are able to complete projects more quickly, comprehend the structural behaviour of their projects better, and produce solutions more swiftly.

Conclusion

Structural engineers can benefit greatly from the cloud in a number of ways, including automation, quick structural evaluations, and communication and collaboration. By using these technologies, engineers may design more efficiently, more quickly, and more in line with their peers in other AEC disciplines. Businesses such as Perceptive Ideas provide a range of software solutions that leverage the potential of the cloud. These companies' software is fully cloud-based and includes versioning and sharing. A team of professionals is typically available to assist you with automating your structural workflows with the Structural Analysis and Design API, which enables you to do so from any device, anywhere. And lastly, they constantly innovate and use the cloud's capabilities to their advantage.