Writing

4 posts on structural engineering, FEM, and app development.

structural
theory

The Stiffness Matrix from First Principles

Where does the element stiffness matrix actually come from? A full derivation from virtual work, through shape functions, to the 12×12 frame element matrix you use every day.

18 min
dev
etabs

Talking to ETABS in Natural Language: ETABSSharp + MCP

I built an MCP server on top of ETABSSharp that lets AI assistants query, modify, and run analysis on ETABS models through plain English. Here's how it works.

11 min
dev
etabs

Saola: A Grasshopper Plugin Built on ETABSharp

ETABSharp made ETABS automation testable and composable. Saola takes that one step further — bringing it into Grasshopper so structural engineers can build parametric ETABS workflows without leaving the canvas.

15 min
dev
etabs

Building ETABSharp: A C# Wrapper for the ETABS API

The raw ETABS API is verbose and weakly typed. Here's how I designed a fluent C# wrapper that makes structural automation actually enjoyable to write and get help from LLM.

14 min