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ExcelCalcs Trailblazers
Written by John Doyle   
Wednesday, 25 January 2012

I have been chasing up feedback from new users signing up to XLC Pro accounts in the last month. I am delighted with their positive feedback.

  • “I started using XLC but I am now insisting that my whole team use the add-in .“
  • “It is a great tool for validation and presentation of engineering calculations.”
  • “I am generally very sceptical about using other people’s spreadsheets but I am much happier using an XLC spreadsheet where I can read the calculation easily.”
  • “XLC is worth the $90 subscription alone - the repository is a welcome bonus.”
  • “All engineers should be using XLC.”
  • “XLC is working great - love the site.”

You may have noticed the recent addition of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ buttons. Give them a click for me when you are next up there.

ExcelCalcs Trailblazers

  ExcelCalcs benefits for large organisations:
  • Calculation Audit Trails and Traceability.
  • Calculation Validation Tools.
  • Enhanced Presentation.
  • Documentation Standards
  • Knowledge Sharing
  • Best Practice Adoption

We are making many more volume sales to larger organisations thanks to the enthusiasm of individual subscribers who bring us in to large organisations. ExcelCalcs subscriptions have been readily taken up by individuals but take up from large organisations has been much slower due to their inertia to change.  Here are some of the techniques that have been successful in creating a grassroots movement to bring in ExcelCalcs into large organisations.

  1. Benchmarking - In times of austerity some organisations need to measure a benefit to justify a cost. ExcelCalcs in its own trials has shown an average 23% productivity benefit per user. Sign up some test users and follow our approach to show the quantitative benefit relating directly to your own organisation. Your management team will be grateful when they scale up the benefit and roll out ExcelCalcs over the whole organisation.
  2. Hold an ExcelCalcs Event –Everyone is so busy to find time to evaluate new ideas but attending an ExcelCalcs training Seminar makes it easy to set aside time. Training can be customised to the needs of the organisation and can be from 1 to 5 days in duration.
  3. Showcase an ExcelCalcs Project – Ask us to take on some custom development work or solve a problem you are currently working on. When ExcelCalcs is seen to provide solutions for your own problems the enthusiasm to bring it into the organisation is dramatically increased.
  4. Flexible Payment Methods – Whilst our PayPal payment process is full automated and ideal for individuals requiring immediate access conventional invoicing and bank wire transfer methods are generally preferred by larger organisations. We are happy to oblige for any payment over $300.
  5. Volume Discount – The more subscriptions you purchase at one time the cheaper the unit cost.
  6. Corporate coupons – we release corporate coupons to bypass the ExcelCalcs checkout. In terms of administration this is much easier for large organisations to handle and more cost effective that processing many individual subscriptions.
  7. Working with IT Providers – Many large organisers outsource their IT provision to companies like Insight and CSC. We are very happy to work with them in bringing our engineering resources to large consumers.

ExcelCalcs Introduce New Course for Rail Industry Engineers

Repository News

2012 Jan. 24 This file is located in the Stress folder. New!45° Strain Rosette by JohnDoyle.
2012 Jan. 24 This file is located in the Structural Details folder. UpdateStair Stringer Design by docapri. File version 2.1 view full version history.

 

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Increasing Engineering Confidence
Written by John Doyle   
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Engineering training - “I run a team of engineers and whilst there are plenty of soft options for training expounding the latest management techniques there is precious little to develop the engineering skills of my team”. This is a familiar story we hear from clients of our training services. Our Excel design guides provide interactive charts to demonstrate the underlying science they make a fast track for learning and become invaluable resources for later use. We demonstrate the effectiveness of training by surveying confidence levels before and after the course. We split the class into low ability, average ability and high ability attendees and all levels show a marked increase in confidence levels.

Results of a class of 44 people

Low ability attendees start without any hope of starting a problem but show the greatest increase in confidence. Average ability attendees start being able to tackle problems only with the support of colleagues but leave tackling problems on their own. Even high ability attendees start with a reasonable level of confidence but leave being able to solve problems much more confdence and speed thanks to their new spreadsheet guides.

Weld Strength (½ day)

  •  Start with simplest weld types. Understand basic calculation principles and allowable stress. Use traditional hand calculation methods.
  •  Guide for weld sizing
  •  Guide to determine weld ultimate strength
  •  Weld strength problems.

Fracture Surfaces (½ day)

  •  Reading a fracture surface: Ductile and brittle? High load or low load? Static strength or fatigue strength? Type of load application?
  •  Guide for principle stresses, maximum shear stress, stress intensity, Mohr's circle & failure criteria for ductile and brittle materials.
  •   Examining Fracture surfaces

Bolts (½ day)

  •  Why bolt pretension is so important. How the tightening method controls preload. What can go wrong with a bolted joint? Understanding bolted joint diagrams. Differences bolting steel and aluminium. Preload fatigue benefits. Special bolting products.
  •  Guide to bolted joints design.
  •  Guide assessment of bolt groups.
  •  Bolt quiz.

Safe Life Fatigue (½ day)

  •  Stress Life Fatigue calculations for un-welded items. Damage tolerant or Safe Life? Size Factor, Surface finish, Surface finish factor, Probability of survival factor, Miscellaneous Factor, Stress concentration factor, Notch sensitivity, Mean Stress, residual stress. Assumptions, limitations and advantages.
  •  Guide for constructing a safe life SN diagram.
  •  Guides for stress concentration factors.
  •   Safe life fatigue quiz
  •  Fracture mechanics the life cycle of a crack. Fast fracture or grow? Assumptions, limitations and advantages.
  •  Guide for fracture mechanics calculations.

Dynamics (½ day)

  •  Design for vibration, impact and crashworthiness.
  •  Guide for generalised motion.
  •  Guide for forced vibration.

Fatigue of Welds (½ day)

  •  Putting the analysis the context of the whole engineering process. Stress concentration, materials flaws and residual stresses. Assumptions, limitations and advantages.
  •   Weld stress concentration quiz.
  •  Guide for Fatigue calculations.
  •   Fatigue calculation quiz.
  •  Metallurgical assessment of weld fatigue.
  •  Guide for comparison of international codes EC3, BS7608, AISC, AWS and AASHTO.
  •  Fatigue Enhancement.

Links and Mechanisms (½ day)

  •  Geometry and force solutions.
  •  Guide for pins and lugs.
  •  Guide for excavator design.

Beams and Frames (½ day)

  •  Calculating bending stress and deflections.
  •  Guide for section property calculations.
  •  Guide for beam calculations.
  •  Guide for torsion calculations.
  •  Guide for frame calculations.

Miscellaneous Topics (½ day)

  •  Strain gauges test demonstration.
  •  Guide for wear calculations.
  •  Guide for composite beams and sheets.
  •  Guide for helical spring design.
  •  Guide for interference fits.
  •  Guide for tension connections

Excel Skills for Engineers
Throughout the course you’ll be exposed to XLC, the good calculations principles and Excel tricks and tips. 

Course Customisation: Customise training for railway vehicles, construction equipment, oil and gas plant, cranes, mining equipment and theme parks.

Course Duration: Select your own training modulues (typically 2 to 5 days).

Course size: 5 to 50 attendees.

Course Location: In house training delivered at any location.

Contact John Doyle to discuss your requirments.

Apologies to trial users in December

Many trial users could not install their XLC trial in December this was due to an oversight on our part. Anyone can subscribe to our trial plan as many times as they wish so please feel free to download XLC again to find out just what you are missing out on.

Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn

Follow us on twitter or join our Linked In Group to keep up to date with site developments as they happen.

Site Improvements

Those of you returning to the site will notice quite a few improvements including:

• The addition of social network referral buttons allows you to recommend a page to your friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. We would be grateful if you would use these.

• The site has been optimised for viewing on mobile devices.

Repository News

Uploads seem a little sluggish in January. Remember we offer free subscriptions for any contributions.

2012 Jan. 12 This file is located in the Piping folder. New!Minimum Pipe Wall due to Internal Pressure by tklassen.
2012 Jan. 09 This file is located in the Conduction folder. New!PCB Equivalent Conductivity by TenTechLLC.
2012 Jan. 05 This file is located in the Add-Ins folder. UpdateXLC addin for MS Excel by JohnDoyle. File version 12.03.01 view full version history.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 January 2012 )
 
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ExcelCalcs Trailblazers

I have been chasing up feedback from new users signing up to XLC Pro accounts in the last month. I am delighted with their positive feedback. “I started using XLC but I am now insisting that my whole team use the add-in .“ “It is a great tool for validation and pres...

Increasing Engineering Confidence

Engineering training - “I run a team of engineers and whilst there are plenty of soft options for training expounding the latest management techniques there is precious little to develop the engineering skills of my team”. This is a familiar story we hear from clients of our trai...

Join our Corporate Partners Scheme

You are probably familiar with our tools of mass knowledge distribution on our website but ExcelCalcs also works more closely with corporate partners providing engineering training and engineering consultancy services. What’s more these services and ExcelCalcs subscriptions are availa...

Introducing ExcelCalcs eFormulas

ExcelCalcs eFormulas aims to replace traditional engineering formula books providing innovative functionality to copy from our webpages and paste directly into Excel. Once in Excel it is easily edited to suit your own problems this functionality is far more flexible than 'stuck on the web'&n...

Deciphering Spreadsheets with XLC

At some time or other you will have been given someone else’s spreadsheet only to be left scratching your head not having a clue as to what the calculation is doing.  If you are wise you will not use it because you can’t understand it. If you are wiser still you’ll use our...

Make Amazing Calculations

In our good calculation guide we emphasise the importance of sketches in calculations but you can produce interactive 3D wireframe sketches by incorporating Turan Babacan’s latest upload. Turan uses 3D charts to great effect in his Excel FEM programs. Andy Pope also has a 3D chart spr...

Coming Soon XLC Ribbon

A new version of XLC is in the final stages of development which will be compatible with the 64 bit version of Excel 2010 (currently it works with the 32 bit version of Excel 2010, 2007 2003 and 2000). We’ll keep you posted with progress. Please send us details of any features you ...

An Allowable Business Expense

Most ExcelCalcs users charge subscription fees back to their employers as a business expense. The cost is easily justified as membership of the site have been shown to yield a 23% productivity benefit. Many people do not realise that you don't even need a PayPal account to pay - you can pay...

Document Control at ExcelCalcs

Document control is a key issue for engineers but it can become an administrative nightmare. Here at ExcelCalcs we have developed many tools to control the calculations we distribute and as a member you have access to all these tools. Problem ExcelCalcs Document Control...

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