I'm studying Civil Engineering, how will I apply my programming skills to civil engineering.

Question

I'm studying Civil Engineering, how will I apply my programming skills to civil engineering.

Answer 1

I have a brother in law working in a construction company as estimator, his job primarily be measuring the quantity of materials and their quality to meet standard specification, and to also estimate the cost. He makes CAD drafts and does the calculation in Excel, and he once asked if I could help him to interface his AutoCAD drawings with Excel data to they work in sync, shame I didn't know how.

I guess you can implement coding skills in such areas of Civil Engineering, make a tool to ease calculation, interface data sync amongst other applications used so their data in sync, etc. etc.

Answer 2

There is a huge gap between Engineers and Computer programmers because fewer engineers are programmers.

Before I explain how being a computer programmer means you become one of the few engineers who bridge the gap, let me mention a few projects.

ANSYS - A Simulation Software helping make the breakthrough we find in Engineering is developed by Engineers. ANSYS helps solve problems using Finite Element Methods in Mechanics, Dynamics, Fluid, Heat and Mass Transfer. From Space Rockets to Electric Bicycles to the Intel, AMD and, MTK chips running on your phone. Softwares like ANSYS are being used by Engineers to solve various design problems.

Now some of these softwares are still limited in abilities and people are developing solutions that extend them through extensions.

Example of these softwares include. Catia, Abaqus, Solidworks, STAAD, Matlab and more.

At the German Aerospace Agency and NASA, Catia and ANSYS are being used in developing super materials that are lightweight and rugged enough to withstand the harshest conditions in space.

However this materials can't be modelled using just the softwares I mentioned. They can only be modelled effectively using the softwares and Python.

Python is one of the languages used to command these softwares.

So if you graduate from Civil Engineering with a good knowledge of computer programming you can find you place in Research Agencies or in the Software Development Companies where solutions to today's engineering problems are solved.

Answer 3

thank you ipang

Answer 4

You can create a program/function that solves a type of problem so then you can solve any of the same type with different inputs.

You can create a simulator applying all the formulas in your subjects. For example a structure stress resolution/analysis.

You can program kind of planning tool for project progress vs time where you can easy modify it when unexpected things appear.

You can create a script to run automatically when your pc boot and engage your music player with the music you like fir studying (if any).

You can create an app to solve every kind of exercises in a subject and share it with classmates.

Etc...

You can do almost everything you can need or imagine.

I had a professor that said: "An engineer that cannot code, has nothing to do in this digital society"