Free Structural Design Cheatsheet

And plans for the next months

Hi friends, ✌️✌️

I am excited to share with you a project, I’ve been working on for the last 4-5 weeks: the Structural Design Cheatsheet.

It covers the engineering formulas and equations I use on a regular basis as a structural engineer. And it’s a “short” summary of many of the blog posts I published on structuralbasics.com.

You can download it from here: 👇👇

Before we get into the details of what it covers, a little disclaimer:

While the PDF covers many important formulas, be aware that it doesn’t cover every formula. And as always, some explanations and formulas are simplified. For example, the wind load is only shown from one direction.

Here’s what is in it more in detail:

• Timber design formulas (Eurocode)

• Steel material properties and design formulas (Eurocode)

• Reinforced concrete material properties and design formulas (Eurocode)

• Wind load formulas (Eurocode) and illustrations

• Snow load formulas (Eurocode)

• Explanation and formula of the dead load

• Live load explanation and links

• ULS, SLS and ALS load combination formulas (Eurocode)

• Moment, shear force and reaction force formulas of different static systems

• Formulas of geometric parameters such as moment of inertia, centroid and section modulus

Please let me know what you think about it. ✌️✍️

What’s next?

After spending my evenings and weekends of the last 4-5 weeks on the cheatsheet, I finally have time to focus on something new.

So what are my next projects?

December

Right now, I am spending quite some time on updating existing content on the blog, making it better but also translating many of the posts into my native language - German.

Apart from that, I am planning to update many of the category pages on the homepage, like Loads and Structural Design, but maybe also the homepage, before the beginning of 2024.

There probably won’t be a new YouTube video this year, because I am currently very busy in my full-time job, where we have a deliverable right before Christmas, and I am already working some hours on the weekends and long days during the week.

Personally, I am looking very much forward to the Christmas break where I will travel back to my hometown (Kempten, Germany) to spend Christmas with my family. I will also go on a 3-day ski holiday with my dad and brother, run a 10km race on New Year's Eve, play a yearly tennis tournament with my friends and see all of my friends from my high-school time again. I will have a bit of time away from my favourite screen 💻😀.

Beginning of 2024

As always, I will write one new article a week. I am planning on writing more reinforced concrete guides. But you are always welcome to comment below or email me if you have some special wishes.

Also, I am planning on getting more consistent with YouTube again. That means that we’ll publish one new video a month.

And then I am starting to work on the (e-)book where I will document and explain in detail the structural design of a residential building. Many of you showed interest in that when I asked roughly 2 months ago. I am expecting that this will take quite some time to create, as I want to create something of high quality with 3D models and great visualizations. My goal is to have the finished version by the end of the year.

Personally, I have also quite some travelling planned, which I am also very excited for. In February, a week in a sports resort in Egypt to escape the cold and bad winter weather from Denmark. Then probably a road trip from Las Vegas to San Francisco around Easter. There will definitely be more travelling in the summer and autumn, but I haven’t really thought about that yet.

In May, I will run my first marathon. I have already started training for it and so far I am enjoying the preparation. I usually run home from work once a week which is around 13-14 km and then usually a 15 km run on the weekend with a friend.

I am super excited what’s to come in 2024, where Structural Basics is heading, all the new tech that is getting better every day and currently disrupting our lives (LLM like ChatGPT), the new knowledge I am gonna gain and all the great travel experiences I will have.

I hope you are too? Let me know what you are most excited about next year.

And thanks again for being on this journey with me.

Cheers,

Laurin ✌️✌️