Students and Faculty Now Can Lease Computerized Engineering Handbook By the Semester At Low Cost

(Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey - February 1, 1999) -- Desktop Engineering has introduced a new program allowing students and faculty to lease its computerized engineering handbook called The Desktop Engineer by the semester at low cost. Persons associated with educational institutions can lease The Desktop Engineer for one semester or four months for only $89, for two semesters or eight months for $149 or for three semesters or one year for $199. Students and faculty can also purchase the program for $475, a reduction from the normal price.

The Desktop Engineer is a new Windows-based program that dramatically reduces the time required to solve every-day engineering problems while increasing accuracy and improving documentation quality. A major upgrade to the previous DE/CAASE program, The Desktop Engineer provides answers to over 5,000 structural and mechanical engineering problems found in over 100 reference manuals. An important new module provides the ability to calculate section nominal properties for any two-dimensional thin-walled cross section consisting of open cell, closed cell, single cell or multiple cells.

The Desktop Engineer can be used to validate analysis results or as a quick check to determine whether time should be taken to perform a complex analysis of a specific design. In many cases, a closed-form or closed form like solution will prove that there is no need to perform further analysis. The program also can be used to generate section properties that can then be plugged into a finite element analysis. It also provides time savings in situations where very accurate results are required in an area of the model that can be represented by a first order analysis.

The Desktop Engineer includes over 50 modules grouped into the following categories: geometric analysis; static analysis; dynamic analysis and buckling analysis. These categories are used to analysis structures including straight beams, curved beams, cables, circular arches, circular rings, columns, discrete systems, disks, foundations, frames, grillages, helical springs, plates, shafts, shells and solids. Thin Walled Sections is an important optional new module of The Desktop Engineer. This module calculates more than 30 nominal section properties, including twelve torsional properties, for arbitrary thin-walled sections. All modules are self-prompting to help the user find section properties, displacement, forces, stresses, etc.