DaveC we appear to be progressing. We appear to have a who and possible why, in terms of those looking for calculations.

Personally I prefer a blank slate, and consider trying to figure out what someone else has done in a workbook a pain. I work with my father, he has lots of structural spreadsheets I have lots of spreadsheets. He was trained civil/structural I was trained industrial/manufacturing/mechanical but structural is what we do. We have a generation gap, a discipline gap, and an experience gap, and simply different preferences. Most of the time we use the same workbooks in common. Occasionally however we get a different problem and one of us solves it. Whilst we share the workbooks we generally produce our own workbooks, and often from scratch.

The reason for this is that the workbooks are not simply presentation of calculations they are design tools, and the requirements also change from project to project. One project a single version of a calculation may be warranted and presenting it in detail may be preferable, on another several hundred repetitions of that one calculation maybe preferable. This is not simply a change in presentation, it is a change in cell referencing, absolute versus relative, use of named ranges versus cell addresses. Using VBA functions to have greater confidence repeated formula is consistent.

And a whole multitude of things can change with the presentation and application of the workbook. Adding dialogue boxes, removing same, or adding drop down lists and look up tables. Centralising look up data from drop down lists to linked workbooks.(Excel keeps telling me this not possible. But it is!)

Presentation wise I have a conflict. On the one hand I want to be able to follow what I am doing. But I am completing more and more work with a computer. Documentation was simply a natural side effect of solving problems with pencil and paper. Solving problems with computer requires separate attention to documentation and presentation.

I am starting to increasingly question why we produce calculations for presentation. I know why I conduct the calculations. But I do not know of any law that requires me to submit such calculations. Just because administrators of regulations request the calculations doesn't mean such are required. I do know the law requires an independent technical check that a proposal is compliant with codes of practice.

So to my mind the certifier is supposed to do their own calculations from scratch. Full independence probably also means they have to use different software than I use. Standards for data interchange thus become important, and the presentation of calculations becomes less important. (Well documented computer source code may well constitute the only documentation of the design-solution process)

This asks the: why of the calculations?

Often hand written calculations are unreadable. So the simplist thing a for a certifier to do is throw the submitted calcs aside and use their own design tools. Why spend 2 hours deciphering scribble which doesn't present a full assessment, when can check proposal on drawings in a few minutes in far greater detail using own design tools. The submitted calc's are not certified ever, it is the proposal that gets certified. Requests for further calculation are actually requests to present design-solutions to issues not addressed. The calculations only really required if want to argue the issue, and educate the certifier. If not do the calc's and revise the proposal.

Not tested the theory yet. But my calculations keep providing a more and more detailed assessment, with less process presented and more results provided, and approval without query.

My point here is: are computers and integration of calculation with virtual product modelling and diminished need for drawings as CNC tooling increases, also reducing the need for presentation quality calculations?
Or are these sophisticated modelling packages increasing the demand for simpler calculations and models to use as checks by the designers? Do they want to create these checks themselves of look for an existing model?

Put another way what is the lifecycle of ExelCalc's? Can it accumulate more calculations than other similar websites on the net? Or are such calc's becoming obsolete? Not excel applications, they will likely grow in number and sophistication as more software provides COM automation interface. But the familar calc's on paper, I believe they are heading for a highly limited audience.

Noting that part of the objective is to make money from users accessing Amazon through ExcelCalcs. Can it really grow and attract users? To do that ExelCalcs has to recommend the book, I have to be at ExcelCalcs first to use Amazon through ExelCalcs. If I want a book I go direct to Amazon. So there has to be a reason to be at ExelCalcs in the first place.

The only reason I came to ExelCalcs was because of an email promoting XLC, it seemed interesting so I came have a look. Its a good utility, 10 years ago I may have had a use for it. But I finally adapted back then and I have been doing things differently since. So I am not going to modify my existing workbooks to be dependent on XLC, nor create new workbooks which have such dependency. I am not really part of the audience looking for calculations.

By the way there was a link on this site a few days ago to an Excel version of Roarks's Formulas. Of course you have to pay for that.