🏗️ Reinforced Concrete Beam Designer — EN 1992-1-1

A full-stack, professional-grade web application for designing reinforced concrete beams in accordance with Eurocode 2 (EN 1992-1-1). This tool performs rigorous checks for bending, shear, deflection, and crack width, complete with automated PDF calculation sheet exports, real-time 2D visualisations, and project persistence for structural engineering workflows.

✨ Key Features

• Standard-Compliant Engine: Implements strict EN 1992-1-1 checks in pure Python, meticulously validated against textbook worked examples to ensure engineering accuracy.
• Comprehensive Checks:
  • Bending (§6.1): Supports both Rectangular and True T-Beam sections. Automatically handles singly and doubly reinforced designs.
  • Shear (§6.2): Determines shear resistance without reinforcement, maximum strut capacity, and identifies required shear link spacing.
  • Deflection (§7.4): Span-to-effective-depth ratio check against simplified Eurocode limits.
  • Crack Width (§7.3): Checks maximum bar spacing for exposure classes against simplified tables.
• Advanced Modern Interface: Built with React, TailwindCSS, and Framer Motion, offering a stunning dark-themed layout, live feedback, interactive utilisation gauges, and a dynamic 2D beam cross-section visualisation.
• Project Management: Built-in persistence via SQLite and SQLAlchemy. Save designs into specific projects, track your engineering workflow, and instantly reload past calculations.
• Automated Reporting: Integrates xhtml2pdf to instantly generate and export beautiful, standard structural calculation sheets in PDF format.
• Robust Backend: Powered by FastAPI, decoupled into an API layer and a pure calculation engine for maximum modularity and performance.
• Containerized Environment: Fully containerized using Docker and Docker-Compose for seamless local development, testing, and deployment.

🛠️ Technologies & Stack

• Frontend: React, Vite, TailwindCSS, Framer Motion, Lucide React
• Backend: Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, SQLite, xhtml2pdf, Pytest
• Deployment: Docker, Docker-Compose

🚀 Getting Started

You can run the application either using Docker (recommended) or via a manual setup.

🐳 Using Docker

1. Ensure Docker and Docker-Compose are installed on your machine.
2. Clone the repository and navigate to the project directory:

   git clone https://github.com/Escgot/Reinforced-Concrete-BEAM-designer.git
   cd Reinforced-Concrete-BEAM-designer

3. Build and start the containers:

   docker-compose up --build

4. Access the application:
   • Frontend: http://localhost:5173 (or http://localhost depending on docker port mapping)
   • Backend API (Swagger UI): http://localhost:8000/docs

💻 Manual Setup

If you prefer to run the components independently without Docker:

Backend Setup

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

   cd backend

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv venv
   # Windows
   venv\Scripts\activate
   # macOS/Linux
   source venv/bin/activate

3. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Run the test suite to verify the calculation engine:

   pytest tests/

5. Start the FastAPI server (using Uvicorn):

   python run.py

Frontend Setup

1. Open a new terminal and navigate to the frontend directory:

   cd frontend

2. Install the Node dependencies:

   npm install

3. Start the Vite development server:

   npm run dev

4. Access the dashboard at http://localhost:5173.

🏗️ Project Architecture

The project is structured with a clean separation of concerns:

• /backend/engine: The core Python calculation engine, free of web framework dependencies, ensuring high testability and reusability.
• /backend/api: FastAPI routes connecting the calculation engine to the web and handling SQLite database persistence.
• /backend/tests: Pytest suite validating the engine against known engineering problems.
• /frontend: React SPA with TailwindCSS providing a clean, reactive interface for data entry, live visualisation, and result review.
• /docker-compose.yml: Orchestrates the seamless connection between the backend and frontend containers.

🚀 Deployment

Deploying to Vercel

This project is pre-configured for one-click deployment to Vercel.

1. Push your code to GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket.
2. Connect your repository to Vercel.
3. Configure the Project:
   • Framework Preset: Select Other (the vercel.json will handle the rest).
   • Root Directory: Keep as . (root).
4. Environment Variables (Optional):
   • DATABASE_URL: If you want persistent project storage, provide a PostgreSQL connection string (e.g., Vercel Postgres or Supabase). If not provided, it defaults to a local SQLite database (ephemeral on Vercel).

The vercel.json file automatically handles:

• Routing /api/* to the FastAPI backend.
• Building the React frontend and serving it as static files.
• Managing Python and Node.js dependencies.

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📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.