MicroStation Utility Program

Automated Bridge Camber and Elevation Generation

Abstract

CAD renderings for illustrating bridge camber data, deck elevation and girder profile are always tedious and error-prone for bridge engineers. Most of the information for generating these CAD drawings is either established by engineers as principal data required for conducting structural analysis or automatically generated by some utility program such as Merlin-DASH and Visual BRG. Automation of these drawings from the sharing of existing information not o nly will speed up the design procedure but also will reduce errors occurring in interpretations; thereby, the overall quality will be improved.

CAMBER and ELEVATION, a CAD automation program, bridges the geometric-analytical data and the presentation drawings for workshops. It is developed on the platform of Microstation V8 by using Visual Basic Application programming language embedded in the platform. Data files established for inputs to Merlin-DASH and created by outputs of Visual BRG will be read in and rendered as DGN CAD drawings. Engineers can interact with the program through user-friendly graphic-user-interfaces. It is comprised of three different routines to plot: camber data table, deck elevation and girder profile.

Program Scope

  • Plot the bridge camber and deflection tables
  • Display the deck elevation span by span
  • Render girder profiles with indications for plate sizes

Summary of Features

  • Visual Basic Application program, user-friendly interface and easy to operate
  • Run in Microstation V8, seamless integrated with CAD producing
  • Full compatible with DASH and Visual BRG
  • Preset drawing styles suitable for most cases
  • Customization available
User-friendly interface

User-friendly interface

Camber Table

Camber Table

Deck Elevation

Deck Elevation

Girder Elevation

Girder Elevation