US 6,295,544 B1Granted

Calculator for determining sizes and spans of wooden structural supports

AssigneeWestern Wood Products Association

InventorKevin C. K. Cheung

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Abstract

A convenient hand-held calculator includes a program stored in association with a processor for execution on the processor to compute building requirements for wooden structural supports, such as beams, headers, joists, and rafters. The program defines a series of input prompts displayed on a compact display of the calculator that lead a user through a natural sequence for acquiring information needed to perform the computations. The compact display provides the user with a constant reminder of the user-defined and calculator-generated premises upon which the computations will be made and provides a means for displaying the computed result. When the user is prompted for a numerical value input, the display indicates the expected units of the numerical value and a proposed numeric value. The proposed numeric value can then be approved by pressing an enter key of the calculator or changed by entering the desired value using numeric keys of the calculator. Certain other information or options are entered or selected by pressing one or more dedicated keys in response to a prompt. The calculator also includes a dedicated calculator key for switching between a program mode in which the program executes and a calculator mode in which the calculator operates as a simple arithmetic calculator.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A hand-held calculator for computing a safe dimensional specification of a wooden structural support, the wooden structural support to be made of a selected species of wood, comprising:

a display unit;
a processor coupled to the display unit;
multiple keys coupled to the processor for manually inputting information to the processor, the keys including multiple dedicated keys for manually inputting option data, the option data including a selected functional use configuration of a wooden structural support and a desired dimensional aspect to be calculated for the wooden structural support, the dedicated keys thereby simplifying the input of the option data;
a program stored in the calculator for execution on the processor to:
(i) display on the display unit a series of prompts that guide a user to input by the keys the information and the option data, the series of prompts including a load prompt for guiding the user to input a maximum anticipated load to be supported by the wooden structural support, a wood species prompt for guiding the user to input a selected species of wood, and a known dimension prompt for guiding the user to input a predetermined dimensional parameter of the wooden structural support,
(ii) calculate a safe dimensional specification corresponding to the desired dimensional aspect and based upon the selected functional use configuration, the maximum anticipated load, the selected species of wood, and the predetermined dimensional parameter, and
(iii) display on the display unit the safe dimensional specification.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.