Originally Posted By: soup....can you plug in a caliber -bullet and get what works best with your rifle....
What's best for your rifle is one step beyond QL capabilities.
Anyway, and first off, just plugging in cartridge, barrel length, projectile, COL, type powder, then powder load grains,
is the starting point that then needs to be further refined (fudged) with burn rate and case volume in H2O gn.
This will usually get you very close to actual chronograph fps for the above load.
Unlikely that both the original default burn rate (Ba) and default case volume match what you are using, but it might.
From the above, QL will show pressure vs time chart and final exit fps, among a ton of other result information.
The pressure vs time chart is helpful in selecting one powder over another powder, based on burn rate.
One of the other important results is projectile barrel transit time (in ms) for the above load.
The what's best for your rifle question is a question that QL can help with, by giving this barrel transit time result.
Those that pursue Optimum Barrel Time (OBT) theory will then say to tune your load to their magic OBT time value,
which is derived from the harmonics a barrel encounters after ignition.
So having said all that, QL is not a good absolute calculator that we wish it could be,
but it is a great tool to do "what ifs" once you are comfortable with its many limitations.
One such limitation is the lack of SuperFormance on the powders list.
Another is its poor estimations on straight walled cartridges (pistol).
For those curious individuals (me) that like to explore "what ifs" and take the time to learn QL inside & out,
will find QL to be a very enlightening tool. The user interface is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done.
One big lesson I learned from QL was the sensitivity of COL to exit fps, as well as peak pressure.
Once comfortable with QL results and OBT, you may then want to tweak QL loads for OBT,
and that is what they say should be a "good load for your rifle".