Bridge Design

[Roger Evans]

As a matter of interest what would be needed to make Revit useful for Bridge Designers?

ie What specialisms would bridge designers need to have within Revit?

Is this a market area likely to be profitable for Revit to go into?

I'm also thinking about off shoots & benefits to the general program.

[gregcashen]

Given the general limitations of Revit's structural components at present, I would not use Revit for bridge design. However, if Revit were to allow some sort of interoperability between structural analysis software in the future (wink, wink) then it would be much easier to model the stick model in SAP2000 or something and then import/link into Revit. I don't think Revit has the ability to accurately model connections at this point, but if it got better at this, Revit could be a very handy little bridge designer indeed.

[mjfarrell]

We were deep into a discussion on the lack of any
stuctural application being offered by AutoDesk/Revit
before the site crashed.
I would imagine that to be effective such an application
would need to allow the designer to use standard beam
sizes and create custom beams, it should include and
iterative beam,load, calculator that would allow the user to
input knowns and perform all standard structural calculations
and output to any user formated table.
On the CAD side it sould include standard connectors, and
user defined connectors, and be able to create bolt pattern
optimization, and have the details and dimensions
fully relational to the model.
Oh yeah, box girders would be cool, and even the ability to
model 'slip' formed structures, and rebar detailing, and
calculations.