For engineers, calculation errors crop up all the time.
Most of them get caught and corrected, but they waste your time and mental energy, and there’s always that nagging feeling — what if I missed something?
Errors happen
It’s a fact of life.
You’re going to make small mistakes as you create something, especially when dealing with complicated calculations, and those small mistakes can have big consequences.
Fortunately, most errors get caught
The good news is that engineers catch those errors, and we’re good at it. Whether by inconsistencies between FEA and calcs or by a peer review or by our gut, most errors get noticed and properly addressed.
Even so, errors take time to fix.
If you get a result that feels wrong, you still need to spend time digging through calculations and then re-checking. Even if all you missed was one unit conversion, it takes time to spot it.
Popular tools make fixing errors harder than it needs to be
I’m sure you’ve dug through an Excel file looking for an error.
It’s a pain— you have to click through cells to see the equations, interpret the long single-line formulas, decipher the confusing names, check to make sure all unit operations are handled, and so on. Let’s not get into the headaches involved if the sheet is set up poorly.
Debugging spreadsheets is not fun.
Doing stuff by hand makes things clearer in some ways, but really it’s just as error prone, and incredibly time consuming if there is an error and you have to do it all again.
Some tools, like Mathcad, help you find errors more easily, but they can be annoying and time consuming in other ways, so it’s not always worth it.
Blockpad helps you catch errors without slowing you down
Blockpad is set up to help you find and eliminate errors in your calculations, but it doesn’t slow you down.
Readable formulas
It’s obvious.
Showing formulas in readable math notation helps you catch errors. That’s why Blockpad formulas are displayed like this by default. So you can see what’s going on.
They mostly work like a spreadsheet formula though, so they’re easy to work with. The biggest difference is that they aren’t hidden away behind a cell in a single, confusing line.
Which would you rather debug?
Easy to define value names
It’s hard to overstate how important clear names are for catching errors.
Engineering calculations can involve a lot of different numbers and values. When you can assign names and use those names in equations, understanding the equations is so much easier.
That’s why Blockpad makes assigning value names easy. You can do so directly in the formula, as part of your typical workflow.
Units intelligence
Units intelligence encourages good documentation on how units are used, so you can read through calculations more easily.
Moreover, units intelligence prevents many small mistakes from happening in the first place.
Errors like 1 ft + 2 m = 2 ft (which are all too possible in Excel) can’t happen because of auto-conversions, and for mistakes like 1 ft + 2 lb = 3 lb, Blockpad warns you that this kind of calculation can’t happen.
Waste less time and have more confidence
Calculation errors are a fact of life, but with most tools, catching those errors can take hours and make you go cross eyed.
With Blockpad, you can find those little errors in less time, and make less errors in the first place, so that you can have more confidence in your work.
