Author Archives: Calcpad

Units in empirical formulas

There are many formulas in structural design codes, that are empirical and if you enter them in Calcpad “as are”, you will not obtain the results in the expected units. Moreover, there are even formulas, that are not dimensionally correct and won’t calculate. Lets take for example the shear resistance without reinforcement, according to EurocodeContinue reading “Units in empirical formulas”

What’s new in Calcpad 5.8 and later?

In the last several months, Calcpad was subjected to continuous improvement, driven by the efforts of its developers and the help of the community. In this post, we will make a short review of the most important changes. 1. Modules If you have a simple and short worksheet, it is definitely easier to keep itContinue reading “What’s new in Calcpad 5.8 and later?”

5 reasons to choose math worksheets over Excel spreadsheets for structural calculations

Although there are plenty of software nowadays, engineers still have to develop custom calculations to solve specific problems. Some may still make them “by hand”, but most engineers use some kind of software for that. The problem is that in most cases, we have to document our calculations and collect them in design reports orContinue reading “5 reasons to choose math worksheets over Excel spreadsheets for structural calculations”

How to calculate square/cubic root by hand?

Today, technologies make everything easy and fast. And sometimes, when we see the ancient marvels of engineering, we wonder: “How they designed this without computers”? And the answer is: “with knowledge, inspiration and hard work”. However, being almost irreplaceable, computers makes us more and more adjective. Our brains become lazy and we are losing someContinue reading “How to calculate square/cubic root by hand?”

What’s new in Calcpad, version 5.6.3?

Since version 5.6 was released, we made some little, but nice and useful improvements. They were driven mostly by our small and dedicated GitHub community. Some of the most important changes are listed below: 1. Autorun mode When enabled, the results are refreshed automatically each time you edit the code and leave the current line.Continue reading “What’s new in Calcpad, version 5.6.3?”

How to use Calcpad with Notepad++

Notepad++ is one of the most popular and free text/code editors. It supports many different programming and scripting languages. You can also edit HTML, XML, CSS, JSON and other types of files. Currently, its text editing capabilities significantly exceeds those of the Calcpad own editor. Some features that worth mentioning are: multiple file tabs; predefinedContinue reading “How to use Calcpad with Notepad++”

How to plot the Julia Set

In the previous post we discussed the Mandelbrot set. There is another beautiful algebraic fractal, called Julia set š¯“™. It is named after the French mathematician Gaston Julia, who has discovered. It is obtained by the same formula as the Mandelbrot Set: zn+1 = zn2 + c The difference is that z0 = x +Continue reading “How to plot the Julia Set”

Plotting the Mandelbrot Set

Calcpad has an interesting and undocumented feature, that I am going to reveal in this post. You can use it to quickly plot the Mandelbrot set. This is a set of complex numbers c, for which the iterative equation zn+1 = zn2 + c does not go to infinity. The most beautiful part is thatContinue reading “Plotting the Mandelbrot Set”

Calcpad is free and open source!

In December, 2021 Calcpad joined the big family of open source software. It is now distributed under the MIT License. The source code is available on both SourceForge and GitHub. We welcome any contributors that could help improving the software or developing more useful features. The next big challenge is to add vectors and matrices.