Week 10: Structural Engineering

This week was a great week because I got to try something new, structural engineering. It has given me the opportunity to explore the engineering field, which is nice because I have had trouble deciding between electrical and structural engineering. On Tuesday I got to look through a set of drawings for the new Andover High School so I could see what structural engineers do. It was crazy how big this projects is. There were three sets of drawings for it and each of these were probably an inch thick. I also got to view a project on revit which showed me a 3-D drawing of a doctors office. This was cool to see what their drawings will turn into. On Wednesday I got to look through my mentors notes from college and learned terminology by looking at these notes. On Thursday I got to start a drawing on revit for a meat packing plant. My goal was to copy the drawing from AutoCAD to revit by taking measurements of the lines and transferring that information to revit. The picture of the building I completed is shown below. This was an educational week at PEC for me.

I completed a lot of my goals this week. The first goal I completed was learning the names of my new co-workers/mentors. Their names are Tyler, Wade, and Ryan (my mentor). The new terms I learned this week were girder, column, joist, gravity load, and lateral load. A girder run between the columns and a joist runs between the girders. A column supports a structure vertically. A gravity load is how much and structure can hold on a roof or floor and a lateral load is how much a structure can hold without tipping over. Snow would affect the gravity load and wind would affect the lateral load. I have also completed two more slides on my presentation. The last goal I completed was to read to page 57 in "7 Skills to Make Mills". The one goal I did not complete was to visit Colwich Elementary and measure out the gym for the tables for the science fair.

This is a drawing of a meat packing plant that I had to copy onto revit.