The Chartership Forum

Computational Engineering / module 4

Programming and automation for engineers

Enough programming to automate safely: the vocabulary, the decision about whether to automate at all, and why spreadsheets deserve their own lesson.

What you will understand

  • Use the vocabulary — algorithm, input, output, variable, condition, loop, function, data structure — correctly
  • Decide whether a task is worth automating, with a calculation rather than an instinct
  • Choose between spreadsheet, visual script, text script, reusable library and application
  • Explain why automating a bad process is worse than not automating it
  • Audit a spreadsheet for the eight failure modes that recur

Lessons

  1. The vocabulary, and what each idea buys

    Algorithm, variable, condition, loop, function, data structure — the six ideas an engineer needs, and what each one is for.

  2. Should this be automated?

    The calculation nobody does, and the reason automating a bad process makes it worse.

  3. Spreadsheet safety

    The eight ways a structural spreadsheet goes wrong, and an audit that finds them.

Module summary
  • An algorithm is a sequence of unambiguous steps; the hard part is the unambiguity
  • A function is the unit of reuse, of testing and of understanding
  • Automation pays back development time, checking time and maintenance time — count all three
  • Automating a bad process produces bad results faster and in greater volume
  • A spreadsheet hides its dependency chain, and that is its defining risk
  • Untested code is a hypothesis; version control is what makes an answer reproducible
Teaching basis and review status

These are educational models and exercises. Check their assumptions before using the results. The full technical content and every diagram have not yet been independently verified.

Concrete and steel calculations retain their stated first-generation Eurocode teaching basis. Use the standards and amendments specified for your project; do not mix generations without an appropriate design basis.

Read the lesson register and outstanding review notes

Check your understanding

Check yourself

An office wants to automate a member-sizing check that currently omits one load combination. What should happen first?

Practice

A tool takes 40 hours to build and verify, plus 8 hours a year of maintenance. It saves 3 hours per project across an office doing 20 projects a year. In which year does it move into cumulative profit? Give the year number, counting the build year as year 1.