PyLaTeX Beam Report Generator

Generate a professional engineering PDF report from Excel force data using PyLaTeX and TikZ/pgfplots.

What this produces

• Title page and table of contents
• Introduction section with embedded simply supported beam image
• Input table recreated using LaTeX tabular text (not an image)
• Shear Force Diagram (SFD) vector plot using TikZ/pgfplots
• Bending Moment Diagram (BMD) vector plot using TikZ/pgfplots
• Summary section defining shear force and bending moment

Project structure

.
|-- assets/
|   `-- Simply Supported Beam.png
|-- data/
|   `-- Force Table.xlsx
|-- output/
|   |-- engineering_report.pdf
|   `-- engineering_report.tex
`-- src/
    `-- generate_report.py

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Python packages: pandas, numpy, pylatex
• A LaTeX distribution with latexmk, TikZ, and pgfplots

Install Python dependencies:

pip install pandas numpy pylatex

Usage

Run from repository root:

python src/generate_report.py --input "data/Force Table.xlsx" --output output/engineering_report.pdf

Arguments (optional):

• --input default: data/Force Table.xlsx
• --output default: output/engineering_report.pdf
• --title, --subtitle, --author, --institution, --project-name, --report-date for title-page customization
• --x-unit, --shear-unit, --moment-unit for unit-consistent table/plot labels
• --clean-temp removes .aux, .fls, .fdb_latexmk, .log, .toc, .out, .synctex.gz after PDF generation

Example with bonus CLI options:

python src/generate_report.py \
  --input "data/Force Table.xlsx" \
  --output output/engineering_report.pdf \
  --author "Your Name" \
  --project-name "OSDAG Screening Assignment" \
  --shear-unit "kN" \
  --moment-unit "kN*m" \
  --clean-temp

Input format

The Excel file must contain these headers:

• x
• Shear force
• Bending Moment

Rows must be numeric and x must be strictly increasing.

Notes on report quality

• Coordinates are generated programmatically and rendered as vector TikZ plots.
• Data checks include missing/non-numeric values and monotonic x positions.
• A data-quality note is added when abrupt shear changes are detected.
• Bonus features included: command-line customization, unit-consistent labeling, and optional build-artifact cleanup.