WIP Beta released Suspension Value Calculator

I've recently started learning VBA and the intricacies of Excel, so as a fun learning project, using the Technical Articles over at OptimumG (thanks to Miura for showing me these articles) and the Beams page of the Wiki as reference, I've created this:

Goals:
My main motivation was the lack of documentation supporting the Jbeam format. I don't think I'm alone in feeling lost when trying to get any farther than "MILLION HORSEPOWER COVET" with my modding. Where VBA has the MSDN developer libraries, Jbeam has a skeleton of a wiki site (and a helluva community). So, my aim was to slap together a way to skip most of the "guessing phase" when tweaking a jbeam by pulling information from the aforementioned articles, the wiki, some unfortunate members of this community, and my own ass.

Result:
Whereas before I would spend hours trying to balance all of the variables individually: beamSpring, beamDamp, beamDampRebound, BeamDampReboundFast, etc; I can now pull data from BeamNG's Debug Window #1 and the vehicle's Jbeam file and input that data to this excel spreadsheet. Once that's done, there's only one value to guess: Resonant Frequency. In Layman's terms, the higher the Resonant Frequency, or f[SUB]r[/SUB] , the stiffer the ride. Lower f[SUB]r[/SUB] , and the ride gets softer.

The formulas that are used to calculate the final values will take PreCompression values into account, so you can set ride height independently of ride stiffness/plushness.

*side note: BeamLimitDamp and BeamLimitSpring are missing from this calculator because, at least in my testing, I've found that they aren't of prime importance for typical racing scenarios. They are meant to represent bump-stop of a shock and the point of maximum compression for a spring. As such, they're typically pretty large. As long as BeamLongBound and BeamShortBound don't cross into the main spring/shock value areas, they don't affect ride attributes that much.
To-Do List:
Some of the more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the "Roll Bar" cell and its relative emptiness. That is going to be a bit tougher to decipher, as I'm not sure that the Nm/degRoll (Newton-Meters of torque per degree of body roll) will translate very well to a .jbeam value.

After that, I plan on looking for a way to determine center of mass, as well as a way to accurately determining the Motion Ratio on a per-vehicle basis. Both of these should marginally increase the accuracy of the resultant values.

Use:
As far as convoluted excel worksheets go, this one is pretty easy to use once you get past the color scheme. The only cells you can edit without unprotecting the worksheet are the yellow-highlighted "User Input Value" cells. The comments on-top of those cells should explain their function fairly well. After that, Click the button in the center-left of the page to format your .jbeam-compatable strings, and paste them into the suspension file of the vehicle that you're messing with.

With the protection on this sheet and the simplicity of the Macros involved, I really doubt that the average user would be able to break this calculator without deliberately trying. Yes, that's a challenge.

Download:
The .zip file that is attached to this post contains two files, "Damp Rate Calculator.xlsm": an Excel 2013 macro-enabled workbook containing the full-featured, fully-formatted, protected version of the calculator. For those members of the community without hundreds of dollars to burn on MS Office (or a university license ), I've also packaged in "Damp Rate Calculator.xls": an Excel 2003-2007 document. I don't really have a way to test the functionality of that document though, so YMMV. (Also there's no real reason to have an outdated version of Office when Libre Office exists.)

Anyway, Thanks for your time, hope you enjoy the tool.
Beep Bep

 

I have no idea what any of these words mean, but it's totally AWESOME!

 

this is like the greatest coment I have ever seen lol XD...I agree with him ^^^

 

Holy wow! I never expected this to get attention from the big man himself. While I have your attention, maybe you could provide some insight into my Center of Gravity/Center of Mass issue? I'd like to be able to determine the weight distribution of the vehicle without adding all of the nodes up myself. I know that the game already finds the CoG, but its coordinates are relative to spawn, not the center of the vehicle.

Java is on my list of languages to learn, perhaps in the future

 

:O :O :O sounds amazing, looking forward to using it. and thanks for the libre office link. i used to use it all the time when i was running Linux, but i had forgotten the name of it and didn't want to purchase office.

 

This is incredible. I've been messing with jbeams, modifying vehicles I've downloaded (working toward creating my first mod) and this takes all of the guesswork out of the suspension. No more tuning one variable at a time! Thank you so much for this. Jbeams are intimidating to look at and the wiki is incredibly sparse. Tools like this dramatically smooth the learning curve.