4 Advantages of Cloud Computing for Structural Engineering

4 Advantages of Cloud Computing for Structural Engineering

Today's structural engineers work in a fast-paced multinational context. Collaboration with numerous other disciplines in the AEC business, often around the world, has never been more important. Engineers are required to produce even greater performance for their buildings by reducing cost and embodied carbon, which necessitates the examination of many design possibilities. Finally, engineering firms must complete projects as quickly as possible in order to remain competitive, making automation an appealing alternative.

Embracing cloud technology is one-way structural engineers and engineering firms may stay ahead of the curve. They can use it to improve communication, execute complex analysis fast and automatically, and automate business operations to achieve better results.

What is the Cloud?

It’s hard to exist in today’s world without hearing about the cloud, but what is it really, and what does it specifically mean for structural engineers? Wikipedia defines the cloud as “the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user”.

In simple terms, the cloud is a way of accessing data, software and services via the internet. Whereas previously you needed to have that or that software on your computer, with the cloud, now all you need is a stable internet connection and the right cloud services provider.

For structural engineers specifically, this opens up a number of great benefits. Let’s take a look at those in turn, as well as discuss some tips for getting the most out of these technologies.

1. Remote Meetings

Remote meetings have shot to popularity in the last two years, due to the global pandemic. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and others all enable structural engineers to connect with colleagues across the globe. A particularly powerful aspect of remote meetings is the ability to share your screen. Engineers can now review structural design calculations and BIM models collaboratively by all viewing the same document or model simultaneously, wherever they are in the world.

TIP: One issue can arise with online meetings when a group of engineers are together in person in one room, and a number of others join remotely. This can have the effect of creating two meeting rooms within the one meeting – the in-person meeting, and then the remote meeting room. It can be hard for remote attendees to really participate on the same level as their colleagues who are there in person. Avoid this problem with this simple rule for remote meetings: if one person is online, everyone is online.

2. File sharing and collaboration

Looking at the same model on screen during remote meetings is great, but what about working on those models collaboratively? With the cloud, long gone are the days of having to send a structural model to a colleague or outside party like an architect, wait for their revisions, and then have that model sent back to you. Many structural engineering software vendors support collaborative editing of models directly in the browser, leveraging the power of the cloud to make and share changes to the structural model in near-real time.

For those softwares that don’t support editing in the cloud, file storage providers make it easy to upload the model to a single location, which is accessible to many users. Changes can then be made through subsequent uploads, and the history of the model is easily tracked, allowing for reversion to earlier instances of the model, if a design decision is changed.

Finally, these models can often be shared as ‘view-only’ making it easy to communicate the structural design to colleagues, collaborators and project stakeholders.

3. Web APIs

Few structural engineers will be familiar with web APIs – or even standard 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.

APIs open up the exciting possibility to automate parts of your structural analysis and design workflow. You can instruct your structural program to build a model, run analysis and design, and then report the results to you. This is especially effective for rapidly trying multiple structural schemes, or running repetitive designs.

Combine an API with the “access anywhere” philosophy of the cloud, and you have an incredibly powerful tool for running structural analysis and design, automatically, wherever you are in the world. A simple program can take data from your PC, send it to the cloud, and return structural analysis and design results back to you.  

4. High Performance Computing

Structural Analysis is a mathematically intensive task, requiring a powerful PC to run it quickly. Way back when computers were first developed, they filled entire rooms. This changed in the 90s and 00s, with personal computers and desktop software becoming much more popular. Structural engineers picked up expensive PCs to get their analyses running quickly, or paid the price in time, waiting for big models to solve and give them answers.

In the last 20 years the advent and popularization of the internet has caused us to look back towards these huge rooms of computers and the computing power they offer. We just call these rooms full of computers ‘Servers’. Servers are where the cloud physically sits and where it runs. All this hardware opens up high performance computing to a wider audience, offering a great alternative to increasingly more powerful personal computers.

For structural engineers, this means they can rely on a lightweight (both physically and figuratively) personal computer, and leverage the cloud to run heavy structural analysis operations. Huge structural models with many members, plates, and loadcases/combinations can be run in the cloud, without requiring expensive hardware in the hands of the structural engineer. High performance computing can return results in seconds or minutes for models that previously would have run for hours on a personal computer.

Furthermore, many models can be run simultaneously. Where previously an engineer might need to spend several days or weeks building and analyzing multiple models, high performance computing in the cloud means they can build and analyze these models simultaneously. Structural engineers can get results faster, understand their project’s structural behavior better, and turn projects around more quickly.

Conclusion

The cloud offers many benefits to structural engineers, from communication and collaboration, to automation and rapid structural analyses. Engineers can leverage these technologies to design better, faster, and more in step with their colleagues in other AEC disciplines.

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