Hi,
Absolute Newbie to SMath - not a mathematician and not an engineer - just someone trying in retirement to gain a better understanding about buckling of steel members.

I requested help on the LibreCalc forum with a buckling equation. The help was received but the person who provided the solution suggested I perform that type of calculation with SMath. He also sent me a screenshot example of how to go about it - attached.

I have tried to reproduce the sheet with a different steel member but perhaps not surprisingly come up against a few problems. A second screenshot and the file is also attached.

I would like to understand:-

1. how he managed to convert the variables A and I from mm^2 to m^2 & m^4.
2. Why my units don't match.

EDIT - I have applied mpa unit to the Sy value - with no effect

I am on an MX Linux OS but have installed SMath with the Wine application. It seesm to be working OK- my lack of expertise is obviously the problem.

All help and advice will be greatly appreciated - I think I can derive much pleasure from the software.

Thank - Laurie

Файл не найден.Файл не найден.Файл не найден.

Hello and welcome here.

1. When you display a result of a calculation (simple equal sign) and the region is active, you should see a black placeholder with rounded corners after the result. You can type here the units you want to display in place of the base units, which are the ones used by the program for internal calculations and default output.
See this example from another thread f.e.

2. Units don't match because there are two different errors.
In the first screenshot there is a typo in the definition of E: the unit is written as Gpa (lowercase p) but it should be GPa (uppercase P).
In the 2nd screenshot there is also no unit assigned to Sy.

Wrote

Hello and welcome here.

Thank you Davide. I am away from my computer till Monday but I will post my progress after making the changes.

Wrote

Wrote

Hello and welcome here.

Thank you Davide. I am away from my computer till Monday but I will post my progress after making the changes.

Well I have made some progress. After correcting the E units and entering the units for Sy I was able to get a result for the equation at the bottom of the sheet below "Pcr".
From that I presume that Variables E, I,L, and C are correctly entered. The units now also seem to match on the "Pcr" equation.

Nevertheless I still cannot produce a result for that equation or for "k" and "leff" (which is L multiplied by C (design factor))

I also tried the example on page 7 of the SMath primer and got a result for that.


I am wondering if I have an incorrect settings (seems unlikely)or the problem is related to the fact that I am on a linux machine with SMath installed via the "wine" windows installer.

Or maybe I am just getting past it ?

Chord Buckling - Load Case 1.sm (7 КиБ) скачан 32 раз(а).

I'm not sure if I get what you want, here is an updated file... other than displaying the results, I'v modified the main equation since you had L^(2*(C^2)) instead of (L^2)*(C^2)

Chord Buckling - Load Case 1_A.sm (9 КиБ) скачан 27 раз(а).

Wrote

I'm not sure if I get what you want, here is an updated file... other than displaying the results, I'v modified the main equation since you had L^(2*(C^2)) instead of (L^2)*(C^2)

Davide - thank you once again - for not only looking at this but also proving an updated file.
All the results you have highlighted match those in my spreadsheet which is terrific and what I wanted.

I understand the correction you have made to my equation - I just have to try and figure out why I couldn’t get the results to display if the other equations were OK.

I will put your file somewhere “safe” as it will be a terrific asset for me, and have another tinker with my file.

Wrote

wrote

Davide - I have finally been able to display the desired results on my PC, however not quite the way I would have expected based on your file. By way of explanation:-

I decided to upload my file to "SMath Studio in the Cloud" and was able to set the units and produce the results using the menu item for units and the = sign. From this I concluded my sheet contained no obvious errors.

So I then went back to my PC based file but was still unable to display a result for leff, k or Pcr using the same method. By chance or intuition I decided to type leff= to the right of the equation and this displayed the result? Using this method I was able to produce the results for k and Pcr.

I have attached my updated file and a screenshot of the cloud file.

I am happy to follow this procedure on my PC even though it seems unusual. I still suspect it may have something to do with the fact that I am using the application via the Wine windows installer on a Linux machine.

In any event I would like once more to thank you for your help without which I may have given up.Файл не найден.Файл не найден.

Currently I can't test it on linux so I'm not sure what is the issue. In theory if you are running the same Smath Studio version there shouldn't be problems...

maybe a keyboard layout difference? In this case you can try to click on the "evaluate numerically" toolbox button to try to dispaly the inline result.

Wrote

Currently I can't test it on linux so I'm not sure what is the issue. In theory if you are running the same Smath Studio version there shouldn't be problems...

maybe a keyboard layout difference? In this case you can try to click on the "evaluate numerically" toolbox button to try to dispaly the inline result.

Thanks Davide - I will try that tomorrow (Timezone) and also post the details of my SMath version.

Wrote

I am on an MX Linux OS but have installed SMath with the Wine application.

Is there a particular reason you don't use Mono?
Could you please install Mono on your MXlinux and try SMathStudioDesktop.*.Mono.tar.gz?
That should work better than wine version.

Wrote

Currently I can't test it on linux so I'm not sure what is the issue. In theory if you are running the same Smath Studio version there shouldn't be problems...

maybe a keyboard layout difference? In this case you can try to click on the "evaluate numerically" toolbox button to try to display the inline result.

I tried your suggestion "evaluate numerically" from the toolbar but it didn't work. I think my installed version was not quite fully compatible with my operating system - image attached.

I then tried @overlord (see his post above)suggestion by downloading and installing the Mono version of SMath which has resolved the calculation problem for me. The only hassle I had was when I tried to change the font in my text boxes. That is not a problem for me - it won't affect any new worksheets should I desire to change the fonts.

See my attached file which I edited using the Mono installation.Chord Buckling - Load Case 4.sm (58 КиБ) скачан 26 раз(а).

This has been a great learning curve for me in many ways.

No doubt I will be back soon - with a new question.

Thanks again.

Wrote

Wrote

I am on an MX Linux OS but have installed SMath with the Wine application.

Is there a particular reason you don't use Mono?
Could you please install Mono on your MXlinux and try SMathStudioDesktop.*.Mono.tar.gz?
That should work better than wine version.

I just downloaded the SMath Studio version from here because I had successfully installed 1 or 2 "Windows Only" packages previously.:-
https://en.smath.com/view/SMathStudio/download.

The other reason I didn't use Mono is because I didn't know what it is but thanks to you I do now.
I downloaded it and used the Windows installer and everything seems to be working fine.

Thank you very much for your help.

I have just realised two things:-

I didn’t attach the version details in my reply to Davide Carpi - oops - Monday
I didn’t read overlords suggestion properly - apparently I can install Mono on my Linux machine - I will have a look into that next week.

Wrote

I have just realised two things:-

I didn’t attach the version details in my reply to Davide Carpi - oops - Monday
I didn’t read overlords suggestion properly - apparently I can install Mono on my Linux machine - I will have a look into that next week.

Image of the original installation version details attached. It looks like a very old version - not quite sure how I managed that.

Regarding Mono I have isntalled Mono Runtime with the MX package manager so there shouldn't be any problems with that once I figure out how to use it.

As things stand I have SMath Solver installed and it seems to be working well so I will leave things as they are for the time being.

Thank you both for your help.

It is indeed a very old version of SMath.
Try this latest version.

Latest SMath Mono version

Wrote

It is indeed a very old version of SMath.
Try this latest version.

Latest SMath Mono version

Is this different from what I already have installed? - see details attached

Version you had installed was released at 2013.
Latest stable release is 1.0.8348 and it is released in 2022.
A lot of changes and corrections are applied in these 9 years.
If you can, always use at least latest stable release.
Nightly builds are also usually rock solid.

Regards

Wrote

Version you had installed was released at 2013.
Latest stable release is 1.0.8348 and it is released in 2022.
A lot of changes and corrections are applied in these 9 years.
If you can, always use at least latest stable release.
Nightly builds are also usually rock solid.

Regards

OK so it seems I have the latest stable release which is good.
I will look into the nightly builds.

Thankyou.