The Civil & Environmental Engineering department at Leigh University in Bethlehem, PA—like many engineering schools across the United States—offer a Masters of Engineering degree in addition to the more traditional Masters of Science in Civil Engineering degree. In lieu of defending a thesis prior to graduation, M.Eng. students at Lehigh perform the design of an existing structure as a group project. Over the course of ten months,...

"If I don't get some shelter, yeah I gonna fade away." -Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones Growing up in the Southeaster United States, I was raised with both: a healthy fear of tornadoes, and a love of the Rolling Stones. The former was from my mother, who grew up near the coast under the annual threat of hurricanes. Upon moving west across the Appalachians, she was a shocked to learn just how devastating the high wind speeds of a...

Bridge replacements are far from uncommon (though, arguably, should be more commonplace) and shipping in prefabricated bridge pieces is also commonly used. However, shipping in an entire 2,400 ton (or, 4,800 kip, for us U.S. engineers) bridge is a little more of a spectacle. That's just what New York did last summer when it replaced the Willis Avenue Bridge over the Harlem river. Photographer and film maker, Stephen Mallon , was there to capture...

Most people here in the US (and certainly American football fans) saw the news of the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsing under approximately 16 in. of snow. Fortunately, structural failures are relatively uncommon news and this one happened just in time for game day, so it got even more coverage. (image: AP, courtesy of BBC ) However, just in case you missed the footage, here's NFL on Fox's coverage containing some of the security camera...

There are places in this world where one drives on the left side of the road- mostly those with a connection to the British empire - and places where one drives on the right side of the road. Relatively few of these places are directly connected to one another and even fewer have a large amounts of traffic that would want to regularly travel back and forth (yes, I haven't forgotten the Chunnel). However, Hong Kong and mainland China are such a...

A tech. industry consortium (Kronos) has announced plans to move forward with a 3D graphics standard for the web. But before you break out your folding 3D glass you got out of a cereal box, this won't 3D as in "Jaws 3-D" but rather, 3D as in first-person shooter or a 3D .PDF file you created using MicroStation (those two types of 3D are very different technologies). Ars Technica reports that their approach will mostly to port the widely...

Okay, as structural engineers, most of us are in the business of getting structures to stand up; not fall down. However, there is a special niche of the industry whose job it is to make structures come down quickly and safely. Unlike most structural engineers who long, hard hours of work go to making something stand up for years (decades? centuries, even?), their work pays off in fractions of a second. Controlled demolition usually involves prelimary...

Some Friday afternoon fun; here's a terrific short film for us CAD/ Scifi fans: " World Builder " by Bruce Banit. "A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves." Many folks seem to call these interfaces "Minority Report" type (after the 2002 film of that name, which was in-turn based on the 1956 short story by genius author, Philip K. Dick - which ironically didn't feature any such interface...

It's Friday afternoon, winding down what has been a banner week for the Bentley Structural Team. We had six releases this week, two of which were entirely new products to market. It's true V8 i has been a monumental undertaking for the entire company and this week really brought a lot out of our group. I'm very proud to have been a small part of this, and to be here at a company that produces the very tools I used to use as a practicing engineer just...

Here at Bentley, we make products which help engineers, architects, and other design professionals sustain the world's infrastructure. Another big part of building a sustainable environment for humans is in the process of material selections. Many of the materials which go into structures or roads take a large toll on the environment in their extraction, refinement, and fabrication. However, that may soon no longer be true.     New cement...

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting our Huntsville, AL office for the day. One of the first things I notices that morning while walking through the office was a really cool poster someone had plotted with the Bentley "B" logo, but with the Bentley name in a cool looking, green typeface. My initial thought was "Hey! I kind of wished our official logo looked that great!" (not something I might have fessed up to at that point, though...

This blog post and screencast have moved to the Bentley Structural Team blog . Please note that all future screencasts will be posted there.

The following is a short-form video meant to demonstrate Bentley's import/export plugin for Revit Structure and RAM Structural System . The software demonstration was taken from an eSeminar by Steve Crabtree , a Technical Product Support Specialist here at Bentley. I condensed the content in a brief, seven minute overview to introduce users to the topic. Well, for some reason the Flash video isn't showing up in this post, despite it showing up in...

Just in case anyone missed it (I didn't read it until just today), make sure you read Melanie Lawson's terrific article in this month's Structural Engineer magazine. Titled " Manufacturers Turn: Structural synergy ," the article describes how the structural design process of a new high school in Murrieta, California was streamlined using Bentely's RAM Structural System . Theatre at Murieta Mesa High School - Image courtesy of KNA Consulting...

Most of us involved in engineering rarely think about finding jobs full of action and danger for ourselves. However, just in case there are those of you out there who were looking for such things; they do exist! This month's issue of Wired magazine has a terrific article about Titan Salvage and their rescue of the cargo ship Cougar Ace . The team of Titan Salvage is made up some real-life Indiana Jones type guys. One of whom - on this mission - is...