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ENERCALC Engineering Software (now ENERCALC, INC.) originated as one young engineer playing with his new T.I. programmable calculator in 1980. In 1981, a set of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet templates was developed to automate the repetitive design of components of tilt-up and small office buildings. The software proved so productive and time saving that it was decided to market it in the newly founded microcomputer industry. The entire set of 26 spreadsheet "templates" was named Structural Engineering Library and shipped on three 360K 5 1/4" diskettes, running on a 4.77 MHz 8086 IBM PC. Typical cost of this state of the art engineering hardware and software system was $6,000!

 

As years went by, sales of the product increased. For engineers to purchase a technical software system based as a pre-programmed spreadsheet "template", it was a testament both to the intelligence of the users and to the easy and simple design of the spreadsheet based software package.

 

In 1986, Lotus Development introduced a tool for programmers to link programs written in "C" to the very guts of 1-2-3. Called the "Add-In Toolkit", it offered a unique opportunity for ENERCALC software designers. A decision was made to rewrite all of the current engineering spreadsheet "templates" into the "C" language, and link these powerful programs to simple 1-2-3 "templates". The Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets would become data entry/output screens driving powerful "C" language compiled processing programs. This solved the major problem with a spreadsheet.....lack of iteration capability that was critical to engineering tasks.

 

Our first application of this technology was FastFrame 2-D introduced in 1987. FastFrame transformed a simple, off-the-shelf spreadsheet program into a powerful finite-element analysis system with full graphics. Prior to founding RISA Technologies, Bruce Bates worked on a "lightning fast" 16 MHz PC to develop the FastFrame solver. That solver would later become the guts of the first version of RISA 2-D. Users were amazed that the previously complex batch processed frame analysis systems were reduced to entering a number in a spreadsheet and INSTANTLY the entire frame was recalculated. At the 1987 Lotus Developers Conference in Boston, MA, the actual software authors of Lotus 1-2-3 were stunned to see their "business tool" doing complex analysis for multi story buildings!

 

With the decline of DOS and Lotus 1-2-3, ENERCALC rewrote the entire "user interface" portion that provided the calculation screens and printing. Keeping the same "look and feel" to ease the change for users, our programmers wrote our own user interface program, as simple and fast as 1-2-3, complete with support for hundreds of printers. Version 4.4 for DOS was released in August of 1994, and produced a large increase in ENERCALC's user base. Version 4.4 for DOS has become known as the "Volkswagen of structural engineering software"... simple, enduring, yet designed to get you almost anywhere.

 

Structural Engineering Library 5.0 for Windows was introduced in 1996 as a completely new rewrite of the legacy systems of the previous 15 years. Although much of the proven "C" language engineering calculation processes were retained, the rest of the system was redesigned and written from scratch for the modern Windows based computer systems. The days of a spreadsheet based program were now gone, and a new system designed to be as easy as 1-2-3 was introduced.

 

In 2007 ENERCALC released Version 6 of Structural Engineering Library. Over the course of three decades since ENERCALC began we've enjoyed a large, loyal and consistently growing base of users. This new version is a complete rewrite....the first of its kind. New solvers, graphics, reporting, user interface, and database designs prepare this new platform with the future in mind. We look forward to years of enhancements based on this new release!

 

In 2017 ENERCALC released the next generation of Structural Engineering Library.  With this release, we de-emphasize the "version" number, and rely solely on the build number to identify the release.  The software is now based on new development tools that are available to make processes more efficient and to provide a fresh, new look.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Michael D. Brooks, P.E., S.E.

President & Founder

ENERCALC, INC.