Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Step1
Buy the right software. If you're designing bridges, it's best to buy a design program geared toward bridge design. There are design software packages for almost every engineering discipline. (See the related eHow article titled "How to Buy Engineering Software.")
Step2
Learn the new software. If you don't take the time to learn it, you could be up for some major man hours required to fix a problem that could have been saved if the designers had the right training.
Step3
Know the glitches in your engineering software. Every program has them, and very complicated engineering design programs tend to have many. Visit the software manufacturer's website and see what bulletins they have posted. If you have support, call the support number and tell them the problems you're having. Commonly some of the newer features of the software will cause the most errors. For instance leader lines in AutoCAD for many years caused the system to crash and for work to be lost.
Step4
Do test calculations periodically to make sure the program is running correctly. This may seem redundant, but you will have peace of mind when you're done that something like a rounding error did not blow your tolerances off. This is much better to find out in the middle of the project, than at the end.
Step5
Have a meeting with your design staff. Set aside a time during the week to go over problems and any software glitches you encounter. This hour of weekly time spent saves hours of potential lost work and will give your designers an opportunity to collaborate on design and drawing methods used with the engineering software.
