I previously wrote a program to parse the MDBs for communicating loads to structural engineers. I don't think that this is being used anymore and that company reverted to manually transcribing information. Recently I had tried to use the MDBs to calculate relative deflections across an expansion joint (where neither end was fixed) across all operating cases, but I ended up going a different direction to get those answers. Actually, I think this would be a good report to integrate into AutoPIPE's standard reports. (e.g. joint goes A01-A02. A01 moves X=0.2. A02 moves X=0.05, so compression in joint is 0.15... this is the relative motion between the two points and is relevant when selecting/designing an expansion joint. Math gets more troublesome when talking all 6 motions and then also 5+ different operating cases.) I use them every so often to get a different twist on the autopipe data. If they aren't much trouble to maintain, please do not kill off these features. If there are more folks interested than just myself, changing the MDB format to the newer access format (accdb?) would be helpful.
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