When I returned to the United Kingdom
in the '80's, I joined a company that cut bricks and blocks into special
shapes for inclusion into whatever building projects, such as houses
or factories, that required them.
Amongst the many specials that
were available were tapered arch bricks or voussoirs. These bricks
might require a number of cuts to bring them to the required shape and
it always irked me that a certain amount of unnecessary time was spent
in working out the calculations prior to carrying out the actual cutting.
Because of this, I decided to write
a programme that would work out all the necessary dimensions after inputting
the required data. The four features that I was primarily concerned
with were Bullseye Windows, Semicircular, Flat Gauge and Segmental Arches
and the programme that I wrote concerns the first two which will be
available (sometime!!) to
download as freeware. It's called VOUSSOIR, works in Dos and,
once again, I used the KISS principal when coding it. I'm sure that there are other programmes
that work out these calculations and I have no doubt that they're very
good but please try out mine. It's an alternative, it's simple to use
and it really works.
I am presently working on a programme
that will take care of the Flat and Segmental Arches and ultimately
plan on combining all four in one programme using Visual Basic - if
I can find the time.