PTC-Mathcad Software Blog

3 Time Saving Tips Every Civil Engineer

Needs
November 24, 2015

by Beverly Spaulding (/blog-authors/Beverly-Spaulding)

**Guest post by Cosmin Negru**
As a civil engineer you will always have to perform
calculations for the structures that you design.
Ive studied civil engineering and as a student Ive learned to
use PTC Mathcad (/engineering-math-software/mathcad) in
order to get my projects done and I became a huge fan of it; but that is a story for
another time.
After graduating Ive been working in a design department and I can tell you from
experience that engineers use a wide range of tools when it comes to engineering
calculations (/engineering-math-software/mathcad/engineering-calculations).
Most of them use Excel or other similar calculation tools while others still do the
calculations by hand. That was absolutely fine by me before I started working

there. Let me tell you a few things that I had to struggle with and the top three
time saving tools I found to be the most necessary when performing my
engineering calculations.
Natural Math Notation
Posted in PTC Mathcad (/blog-categories/mathcad) , The Inside Scoop (/blogcategories/the-inside-scoop) , Tips and Tricks (/blog-categories/tips-and-tricks)
11/38

One of the biggest differences between Excel and PTC Mathcad is the units
intelligence that PTC Mathcads engine has. When you are in PTC Mathcad, youll
notice that (by default) all units are labeled as units and their formatting changes
to blue, bold & italicized. PTC Mathcads engine will automatically account for any
units, something that is very handy, but may cause you to see some unexpected
results in your PTC Mathcad calculations if you do not accommodate for them in
your equations.
There are two cases I see often where whats in the formula bar of Excel doesnt
directly translate into what your PTC Mathcad equation should look like. The first
case is for empirical formulas, thats to say formulas that have unit conversion
baked into them. Below is an example I recently came across doing a conversion
of my own. Ive stripped out the context, but the formula itself takes psi and

multiplies it by in and returns lbf. With units intelligence in PTC Mathcad simply
typing the same equation will return lbf/in. This is as expected since the equation
multiplies a pressure and a length, but the empirical formula returns a force.

To get PTC Mathcad to do this you need to divide the variables with units by their
unit and then multiply the entire equation by the desired output (I2).
Another common scenario where whats in your Excel formula doesnt translate
1:1 with a PTC Mathcad equation is for unit conversion. Many Excel formulas will
have conversion factors built into the equations to manually force Excel to
return the correct numeric value for the desired unit string. Those should not be
included in a PTC Mathcad equation since the unit labeling will ensure you that
your units are converted correctly.
You may see something that looks like this in the formula bar

=A1*5450.4
And after 15 minutes of deciphering you may be able to determine that 60
(minutes in an hour) * 24 (hours in a day) * 3.785 (liters in a gallon) = 5450.4
=A1*60*24*3.785
Which is the conversion factor for converting gal/min to L/day. Which isnt a
tragic thing to have if your formula is that simple; however, when formulas
become more complex those numbers become harder to tease out. In PTC
Mathcad, no additional calculation or formula needs to exist to convert your
volume flow rate from one unit to another. Just assign the variable a unit and
dictate which unit to display a result in when the time is appropriate.
3. Lookup Tables
You may have lookup tables integrated into your spreadsheets. Lookup tables
enable you to lookup specific values within a data set; both vlookup and hlookup
are commonly used in spreadsheets and often times you have vlookups inside of
vlookups. To put it shortly, PTC Mathcad has those same lookup functions so you
can easily pull the Modulus of Elasticity (E) for alloy steels.

4. PTC Mathcad loves matrices, simplifiying your array formulas

Excel for the average user does not handle arrays or matrices, dragging formulas
down the spreadsheet to try to work around that is a timely process. PTC Mathcad
on the other hand loves when you feed it arrays and matrices. If you have array
forumulas in Excel, those will translate to array (or matrix) math; when combined
with more robust range variables to replace your array constants the matrix math
you are doing in Excel will move cleanly into PTC Mathcad.

5. Locking single cells, rows and columns

Many excel formulas contain absolute references ($A$1) and or mixed references
($A1 or A$1). These are used to lock a specific cell, a specific column or a specific
row when you drag formulas across the spreadsheet. In PTC Mathcad you are not
going to press F4 to add a dollar sign to the formula, you will simply use
variables and matrix indices.

Although the task of moving all your excel calculations from Excel to PTC Mathcad
may seem like a tall task, after you do the first couple you will quickly learn the
nuances between the two software packages and become comfortable with PTC
Mathcads range variables, units awareness, lookup functions, and matrix
indexing.
Learn more today and watch this short demo on the Excel component

6/38

Dont have PTC Mathcad? Try it for free with PTC Mathcad Express
(/engineering-math-software/mathcad/free-download-dont-change-ever).

The first week at that job they introduced me to the workflow that they have and I
started looking through the files and worksheets in order to get familiar with
them. As I was opening them, I realized that nothing in there looked similar to
what I was familiar from school. It was hard for me to follow and understand the
formulas. It was all cell references, $ and !. Engineers do not understand cell
references; they understand formulas written in natural math notations. I had to
lose a lot of time to decipher the content of a file before being able to use it and
this sometimes required me paying a visit to the guy that created it in the first
place because he was the only one able to answer my questions. So re-using his
files was not that straight forward. Imagine that at some point that engineer
leaves the company. Everybody else will then have to struggle to understand his
work. Using PTC Mathcad will prevent things like this to happen because the
calculation is laid out in an easy to read, understand and easy to validate format.

Unit Conversion