niels007 wrote:
Hey Guys,

Since this is the second time I thought: "Wouldn't it be handy if.." I
am now asking the pro's. :)

For stress analysis of a tube frame, Excel is handy because after the
initial sin/cos/tan type formulas, you can see the forces and peaks
change with different dimensions of the frame. However, if this frame
is a 'mechanic' that changes position, for example the tipping
mechanism of a truck, there is an added variable: the angle of the
tipping.

If I want to make this graphic in Excel, and want to accurately see how
the forces react from 0degs to 90degs tipping, I have to copy/paste the
(very complex and big) calculation cells 90 times, each time changing
the angle variable +1. It works, but is very tedious.

I just want one calculation that calculates an initial position, with
Excel being able to make a graph of the outcome with the initial
position +1 on the horizontal scale.

Would this be possible?

Thanks!
Niels Heusinkveld

-------------------------

Well, I have a simple brute force approach that I use occasionally.

What I sometimes do with big problems like that is to set it up to take the X
variable from one cell -- A1 say. Then I build a table of X values I'd like to
use and blank cells for the Y values (and/or multiple X or Y values).

At that point it's fairly simple to write a macro that will fetch one of the
desired X values, plug it into A1, take the resulting Y value(s) and plug them
into the table I want to build. Then keep looping through that process until
all the desired X values have been used. From that constructed table then Excel
can plot charts of whatever I was interested in to begin with.

There are possibly more elegant solutions, but this is an easy way to repeatedly
run a calculation. And it's kind of neat to kick off the calculation and watch
the graph be built before your eyes one point at a time.

If you've never programmed a macro before this is a good problem to start with.
Just tell Excel to record a macro as you step through the loop you want once
or twice. At that point you can go into the recorded macro and see what it's
doing and modify it a bit to put a For/Next or While/Wend or whatever around it,
etc.

Bill