I’m with Stanweld and Gtaw on this, you have to have some knowledge and use some judgement and maybe several different codes or good text references to make a proper determination in some cases. What do the code commentaries say about the particular situation, what is the intent of the code requirement, why and how is the particular condition detrimental to the design? Then the real experienced engineer pools that knowledge and through experience makes a design or spec. decision. God help us if we get to the point where we can’t do something/anything because we can’t find an exact code citation for some/every crazy condition. And by the nature of the way codes are being written these days, and the way engineering education seems to be going, we are heading in that direction. What we need is more knowledgeable, more experienced engineers who can apply good sound engineering judgement. We really don’ need more stringent codes which further restrict the application of sound engineering judgement. And, we will likely never codify dumb design decisions away.