Don't let structural design software take your intellectual property hostage

With all of the proprietary tools and processes that are in use today, structural engineers sometimes run in to a situation where the vast majority of our produced IP is held under lock and key. Turning to our favourite concrete beam design software to quickly whip up a few designs helps us save time, but it may also cause some problems down the line.

The problems with proprietary file formats

Two potential issues include ownership and access. So who actually owns the files? We painstakingly create designs that sometimes we don’t even own (looking at you, cloud software without the ability to export your data). Even if the file is on your own servers, the next issue is its accessibility. If it’s locked behind a proprietary file format, what happens to your critical gravity/lateral designs when your software license expires? The software vendor’s servers go down? Or the company goes bankrupt? Or even if you want to use some other software to do a side-by-side comparison? It then becomes a more complicated risk vs reward analysis of if the added risk is worth the time savings.

A lightweight, portable, and adaptable solution - plain text

Or a similar non-binary format like markdown (pretty much just plain text with a bit more formatting).

But… What is it?

Plain text is comprised of just regular, human-legible (and understandable) characters, nothing else. It’s the foundation that much of the software world sits on and will outlast any proprietary file format well into the future. See image below of a plain text file versus a Word binary file.

There are tons of benefits to using it. Here are some of the big ones:

• Lightweight - plain text files are much less size intensive (~4x less than Word files), making them much easier to share and store.
• Universal compatibility - even if you’re left with nothing but just a command line, it’ll happily read a text file for you.
• You own this - this file and the IP within it is yours through and through and you don’t need anything else (besides a computer…) to open/modify it.
• Version control - due to its size and ubiquity in software systems, there are lots of excellent tools built around it to help manage versions and revisions.

Despite its benefits, using plain text files alone comes with some drawbacks as well. It can be hard to read, hard to work on, and very hard to extend. In addition, there isn’t an effective way to do any sort of engineering calculations at all with it (besides using it like pen and paper and only recording them down).

Our approach at Stride

We saw the immense potential of this format and built our entire system of calculation and documentation around markdown, eliminating the drawbacks in order to create a better platform for engineers to work on.

TL;DR - The next time you document a calculation, give plain text or markdown a try and see if it’s a good fit for you and your company. You can also check out Stride for a complete platform for calculation and documentation built around markdown.

Thanks for reading!