clast,

I don't use a program for that.  Mathcad has a vlookup function that works similar to the one in spreadsheets.  You can import the table from the aisc database spreadsheet using the Import Data Table.  Then, go into the spreadsheet, highlight the entire spreadsheet, copy to clip board.  Then, go back to the table in the mathcad sheet, select the top left cell, and right click.  The dialog box that pops up has a choice past table.  select that one & the table in the mathcad sheet is populated.   You can if yiou want include the text labels from the aisc database, they will come into the mathcad data table in quotes, the rest are numbers.  

THen, into the placeholder on the left of the equal sign, type in the variable name.  Now that variable can be used.
assume the table is named beamtable
for example, define Abeam:= vlookup("W8X17",beamtable,2).1
if the area is in the second column of the table.  (the .1 on the end is how you get the subscript 1.  Without that, you get a 1X1 matrix as a result of the lookup.)  You can also attach units to this definition for A.  

No program is necessary.


regards,


chichuck

  

clast,

my apologies....

that .1 for the subscript was wrong.  I looked at your posted file, you have arrays starting at 0 not 1.

you need [0 not .1 to get from the 1X1 array (displayed with  ( ) to a scalar displayed without  ( ).


regards,


chichuck

 

the '.' is used to create literal subscripts - these are just for pretty display purposes and form part of the variable name.

the '[' is the shortcut for the indexing operation so that a particular element is selceted from the vector/matrix based on the subscript variable.

just for clarification of the occasional reader.