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Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

(OP)
I wish to create a suite of online structural calculation apps. No FEM, just clean, simple calcs. I'm thinking of something a bit more ambitious than Jabacus, but not by much. The end goal would be most of this kind of thing:

1) Accept some user input and run some calcs that could be printed.

2) Static diagrams would be necessary. Dynamic would be nice but optional.

3) I'd at least need to be able to plot simple graphs.

4) I'd like to have at least enough blog-ish functionality that I could accept recommendations from users regarding errors an future offerings etc.

5) I'd like users to be able to log in if desired and upload company logos etc that would be stored.

6) In the distant future, I'd like others to be able contribute calc modules to the system as well.

At the risk of boasting, I was actually quite a hotshot coder at one point in time. Unfortunately, that point in time mostly predated the internet. I've never made a web page yet alone a web app.

What I already know extensively:

- Microsoft Visual Basic
- Mirosoft Access
- MySQL
- Relational database in general
- MathCAD, Excel.

What I'd like are recommendations regarding what platforms that I should consider teaching myself in order to best achieve what I've described above. If I can piggy back on my existing knowledge, that would be peachy but, at the same time, I'm completely willing to scrap everything that I know and start over from scratch. I want to do it right. I just want to focus my efforts efficiently. In general terms, it seems to me that I'll need some permutation of:

- CSS
- Javascript
- HTML

ASP.NET calls to me as it looks familiar in many ways but, again, I don't want to get sucked in by that if it's not the way to go. I hear the young guys talk about Python a lot but really don't understand the fuss at this point.





I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.

RE: Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

Take a gander at Delphi... it's Pascal based... has the power of C++ and the simplicity of Visual Basic. You can also use it to create Android and Apple apps. The Fastener app is one of a couple of dozen that I've made... steel columns, footings, piles, conc column/wall interaction as well as biaxial bending.

Dik

RE: Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

Excel, or the Google equivalent, plus JavaScript seems like the obvious choice to me.

It would be nice if you could set up a simple JavaScript interface to existing VBA code, but for some reason it seems that Microsoft have no intention of doing that.

It would also be nice if there was a good simple tutorial for the basics of setting up web-based spreadsheet code. There may be one, but I haven't found it yet.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

RE: Best Platforma for Developing Web Based Structural Calculation Apps

there is Flask and Django on the Python side.

Only reason I use Python is the extensive library of open source and maintained extensions Scipy, Numpy, and Matplotlib being the ones I use the most.

I could see alot of things being done with just CSS, Javascript, and HTML/HTML5. using forms and some of the graphing scripts out there. example being Charts.js

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