New FeatureScript: AISC Structure Steel Profile Generator

dave_cowden

This FeatureScript will create  1343 standard American Structural Steel shapes in a single step

Included Profiles:

Angles:            127
Beams: 

    M Series      17 

    MT Series    14

    S Series       28

    ST Series     28

    WT Series    273

    W Series      240

    HP Series     11

Channels:

    C Series       32

    MC Series    40

Pipe                  37

HSS Shapes:

    Round          128 

   Rectangular  368

Total                 1343


Direct Link: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b66d1ff63684957c167272d8/w/2ac42f22fbfa9366e2f4df35/e/33b8950d87918aefcb267a4f

Our store listing http://store.parametricparts.com/store/p12/STEEL-GEN-1.0

Let me know if I missed any profiles from the AISC Database.  Enjoy!

dave_cowden

I have attached a copy of the included profiles, in case folks are interested.

owen_sparks

Impressive work Sir.
This seems an excellent implementation of featurescript.  
When you come out of beta what ballpark price do you intend to offer your features for?
Regards,
Owen S.

dave_cowden

It is hard to work out pricing because distribution is not yet clear. Onshape doesn't provide any tools to know how often a document you have created has been used, which makes billing tough. 

I hope that Onshape will launch a Featurescript store, and provide ability to bill on as-used basis. If that functionality were available, I would charge  like $1.00 per use.

 I'm also considering monthly subscriptions. For that, maybe $5- $10 per month, depending on the feature. 

A single, up front cost is really hard to price fairly. Its either  too expensive for just a few uses, or too cheap given the value produced for a frequent user.  Probably $25- $100 for a single time upfront fee I guess, but candidly I'll probably stay in beta till Onshape provides better sales tools.

dave_odle

the fact still remains... this is something that onshape should already provide for us. as well as a 3d sketcher and frame design feature.

3dcad

Just thoughts about pricing in general.

I wouldn't pay more than <$0.5 for single profile feature per use - it is pretty easy to model profile and derive sketch if needed rarely. And paying like $0.2 is annoying so it should go in same bill where I pay my yearly subscription.

On the other hand if I was frequently in need for all kind of profiles, I would go with max $100 upfront payment for lifetime. Monthly fee feels too expensive if it's $10 since that's 10% of software cost. You could offer updates at additional cost (like $20) after certain perioid for lifetime clients.

Then there is illegal copies which eat your bread if purchase price is too high.

I really do hope that Onshape grows an ecosystem for independent feature coders because if I ever need something very special I can maybe afford to buy it from single coder but not from coding company which begins with all kind of mapping and resourcing causing budget overload before coding has even started.

dave_cowden

@3dcad, thanks for those thoughts!  If/when OS produces a featurescript store, that will really enable what we need.  I agree that micropayments only work when they can be combined with the platform payment that's already happening. Right now, the infrastructure simply isn't there.

Coders generally have a hard time making money on one-off development.  The win-win is usually code that can be written to serve the needs of a group of some size > 1.  You can see that in the price range you quoted above.  If you're only willing to pay about $100 for <something> it follows that I'd need to be able to code that <something> in about two hours to make a decent rate.  It took more like 30 hours to write and test the AISC steel structure featurescript, so I need to sell a reasonable number of copies for it to be profitable.

From another perspective, a good dev in a specialty language like FS is going to run about $80/hr minimum, so even the tinyest feature is going to be more than $100.

3dcad

@dave_cowden
You are right, expenses need to be covered otherwise it's not business of any kind. With max $100 I was refering to something standard which can be sold to many users - like steel structures for example.
Something very special just for me would be probably that $xx per hour and your standard features would confirm me that you're the man for the job.
I suppose the price for *very special* feature would have to pay for itself in decent timeframe and make money after that to build satisfied customer base.
That all depends on many things.

The biggest problem I see in this (and all) coding work are bugs. They need to be fixed -fast- but no one is willing to pay for it.

dave_cowden

Yep I think you have stated it perfectly! For-hire coding quickly boils down to a matter of trust. Low trust means high costs and high waste. High trust means lower cost and waste, but you have to build trust first somehow.

chris_grant

Hi Dave. Almost 4 years later and this is still a hot topic. You've got the big stuff covered, but I'm looking for 1/2, 3/4", 7/8", 1" and 1-1/4" square and round tube along with 1 and 1-1/4" angle HSS. Any chance you've created such? I can sketch and extrude.....but predefined shapes are so much faster.

Regards,

Chris

MBartlett21

@chris_grant

You can try Neil Cooke's Beams FeatureScript ( http://onsha.pe/documents/e15c2c668d138f01242d0c80 ), or alternatively, if you want Australian profiles, you can use my Australian Beams FeatureScript ( http://onsha.pe/documents/cfcc264d41817d876589755c )