Centroid Structural Calculator
“Quick structural design calculations
in the palm of your hand”
Centroid Structural Calculator is a handheld calculator app that can perform structural engineering design calculations. Engineers use it for quick member sizing, conceptual design, and design reviews.
You can use the Calculator on your smartphone or tablet (as a mobile app), or on your PC or Mac (as a web application). It does not require a persistent internet connection — perfect for when you are on a construction site.
Use it on all of your devices
Option 1: Progressive Web Application (PWA)
(smartphone, tablet, PC or Mac)
When prompted*, you can (but don't have to) install it on your device. Installation enables it to function like a native application and work when you are offline.
*Note: iPhone and iPad do not display a prompt to install. Instead, press the Share button and then "Add to Home Screen".
Unique features
Centroid Structural Calculator is a scientific calculator app on steroids!
- Structural design: Performs structural analysis, design and unit conversion.
- Calculation history: View and use results of previous calculations.
- Document your designs: Annotate your design calculations, and print to PDF.
- Works on all your devices: Use it on your smartphone, tablet, PC or Mac.
- Device synchronization: COMING SOON – Your calculations on all your devices in realtime.
Centroid Structural Calculator does not try to replace sophisticated desktop design software or spreadsheets. Instead, it enables you to do quick structural design calculations when you are away from your desk or when your design software is simply too tedious for the task at hand.
Full feature list
The Calculator's feature set is evolving:
- Do math!
- Simple beam analysis to determine bending moment, shear, reaction, and deflection.
- Section property calculation for I shapes, solid and hollow rectangles, and solid and hollow circles.
- Concrete beam section design to calculate required flexural and shear reinforcement, or flexural and shear capacity for supplied reinforcement.
- Use metric or US customary units and convert between the two.
- Work with fractions and fractional inches.
- Document your designs by annotating your calculations and printing them to paper or PDF.
- View a history of calculations, and reference previous results in subsequent calculations.
Centroid Structural Calculator works like any other handheld calculator. But when it comes to using the calculation history, documenting your designs, and structural engineering calculations, you will need a quick orientation. Please see the Help screen for an overview of these topics, variables and units, and some design recipes.
There are many more features on our development roadmap and reported on in our our development blog:
- Detailed design steps with code references.
- Sync calculations between your phone, tablet, and desktop computer.
- Mixed unit calculations, e.g. add meters to feet.
- Concrete design to ACI 318 and other standards (currently A23.3 only).
- Steel beam and column design.
- Wood beam design.
- Load and load combination generation.
- Many design calculations we're not even thinking of yet and hope you will tell us about!
This app is brand new and missing many features. Please tell us how we can improve it to be more useful to you. Reach out to us at hello@centroidstructural.com.
Pricing
For now, Centroid Structural Calculator is completely free. Improving and maintaining it will require many development hours, meaning we will need supporting revenue. The likely scenario will be a choice of in-app purchases (if installing from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store) and a subscription services. We are figuring that out at the same time as we are learning how the calculator can help you.