WE (ENGINEERS), both as a society and as a profession, have become dependent on our computers. They do everything we can imagine. They track our budgets, they enable us to draw and visualize, they allow us to communicate quickly with one another, and they perform design operations for our buildings. As structural engineers, we use them in analysis and design to take over some of our fairly tedious, repetitive tasks like designing beams and columns. Theoretically, this allows us to design more efficient structures. But sometimes it seems that engineers, especially younger engineers, rely on computers too blindly, treating their results as gospel when using hand analysis could potentially show inefficiencies in their designs, and even catch costly design errors. We should endeavor to use these programs more cautiously.
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