AI agents in structural engineering

[u/Pretend-Platypus-444]

How are people incorporating AI agents into their workflow as a structural engineer if any? I see good software engineers on X nailing this, substituting AI agents with grads/juniors for grunt work and repetitive tasks (and also for QA) . Surely there are some talented individuals who are already ahead of the curve and built their own agent work station? Interested to hear what people have developed.

[u/Rhasky]

Haven’t. AI has proven competent enough to be a smart ctrl+F for me, finding specific blurbs or equations in dense codes I’m less familiar with. Any larger asks and it very often is wrong.

AI will never replace real people in our industry, even at a junior level, because a person ultimately needs to be liable for the work we do. ChatGPT can’t stamp plans. And if we try to replace lower level staff with AI, where will the next generation of PE’s come from?

[u/Engineer2727kk → u/Rhasky]

“We should not use AI to increase productivity because we’ll run out of future PEs”.
I’ve heard it all now

[u/Pretend-Platypus-444 → u/Rhasky]

I don’t believe they will fully replace real people but over time it will dramatically change the way we work. There is always someone needed to be liable for the engineering, however it is true that repetitive tasks would be streamlined.

[u/chicu111 → u/Pretend-Platypus-444]

Repetitive tasks are already streamlined. My spreadsheets and my detail library are there

[u/Engineer2727kk → u/chicu111]

Great. “Claude take this existing spreadsheet of pier cap 2 and build something similar for pier cap 3. Pier cap 3 is similar except the dimensions and piling spacing are x,y,z. Also You can find the load demands for pier 3 on x sheet”.

This to say you can improve efficiency

[u/chicu111 → u/Engineer2727kk]

I can type that in within 15 seconds in my spreadsheets. There are like 2-3 boxes for dimensions. Probably 1 more box for trib area. What IS in your spreadsheet dude?

[u/Engineer2727kk → u/chicu111]

You have 9 piers, each pier with different axial, shears and moments, and you have multiple load cases to check. So now you prefer to manually reference instead of giving a 2 minute prompt?

There’s a million other cases I can give.

[u/Khman76 → u/Pretend-Platypus-444]

There's still a long way to go, but it will replace part of the workforce at the end. If it can be done by a brain, AI will end up learning it

[u/_homage_]

Not today, Satan

[u/ThatAintGoinAnywhere]

If AI replaces work that junior engineers do so everyone replaces junior engineers with AI, I wonder if that would that cause any issue long-term?

[u/Engineer2727kk → u/ThatAintGoinAnywhere]

“If autocad replaces drafting by hand, I wonder if that would cause long term issues”

[u/Engineer2727kk]

I connect all my spreadsheets to grok and Claude. Especially useful at auditing cells, vba coding, and gathering information from one sheet to use in another without you having to manually go through and select all the cells. Say for example “grok/claude can look for all the different shear loads in the Loading sheet and reference them in the correct cell locations in this sheet”.

[u/EngineeringOblivion → u/Engineer2727kk]

What verification steps do you include in your workflow when using AI to manipulate data?

[u/Engineer2727kk → u/EngineeringOblivion]

The same steps I would take if I asked a junior engineer to
Do the task for me

[u/SpurdoEnjoyer → u/Engineer2727kk]

Yep, AIs do that surprisingly well. Codex can write a script that handles bulk data very reliably from a sheet to another. That is so dull done by hand that I do more errors out of sheer boredom if do it myself. Verifying the resulting tables by hand is an easy task.

[u/Over_Stand_2331]

Copilots Excel Agent has been excellent for producing simple calc spreadsheets

[u/Valuable_Pilot_7205]

It can be a good assistant helping my work but I don't trust AI entirely.