Laura Meier's Blog

Be Careers Sponsors the 2010 ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition

Laura Meier — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:31:00 GMT

Autumn in North America evokes many images: scores of students head back to school, the changing foliage provides a spectacular backdrop, apples and pumpkins appear in roadside stands, and steel bridges take shape on campuses across the country.

Okay, so only some people will follow me on that last image (and you know who you are!)--but Fall to those of us on the Academic team in North America means ramping up to continue our support of various student design competitions.

Supporting Academic institutions and students is part of our mission at Bentley, to help students prepare for their future careers.

The participation of ASCE student chapters in challenges like the AISC/ASCE Student Steel Bridge Competition (http://www.aisc.org/content.aspx?id=780&linkidentifier=id&itemid=780) is an important step in putting their Engineering education to practical application.

Therefore, we are proud to co-sponsor the 2010 ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition. https://engineering.purdue.edu/NSSBC2010/

To further support the learning efforts of the steel bridge teams, Bentley's Be Careers Network is pleased to offer participating ASCE student chapters the following:
Free software (STAAD.Pro V8i, Bentley Structural V8i, and MicroStation V8i) for the duration of this year's competition.
Supporting tutorial materials (document & video) to help design, analyze and document your steel bridge

Please note: if your school already subscribes to the Academic SELECT program, then student teams already have access to this software.

Participating ASCE student chapters can contact us at becareers@bentley.com to request your CD; please provide your School name, Faculty Advisor/Chapter President's name, and Shipping address.

Not lucky enough to be a student on a steel bridge team?

Fortunately, the tutorial and accompanying video developed for this year's competition provide a useful guide for anyone interested in an example of the integration of STAAD.Pro V8i and Bentley Structural V8i for bridge design, analysis and documentation.

Therefore, we offer the tutorial here as well: http://communities.bentley.com/Other/Old_Site_Files/Member_Folders/m/laura_meiers_files/88065/download.aspx

and you can access the accompanying video here: www.bentley.com/bentleywebsite/files/streaming_media/BeCareers/StudentBridgeComp.asx

I enjoyed meeting the teams at last year's finals at University of Nevada Las Vegas (see my 2009 NSSBC blog here http://communities.bentley.com/Other/Old_Site_Member_Blogs/Bentley_Employees/b/laura_meiers_blog/archive/2009/05/27/2009-national-student-steel-bridge-competition.aspx) and look forward to this year's National Student Steel Bridge Competition at Purdue University in May 2010!

Best of luck to all the participating teams, and I hope to see your team at the National competition next spring!

2009 National Student Steel Bridge Competition

Laura Meier — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:46:00 GMT

Bentley is proud to be a sponsor of the 2009 ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition (NSSBC). The competition, this year hosted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas on May 22nd-23rd, allows students to tackle a real-world challenge and then put their designs through stringent tests. As a national sponsor, Bentley offered not only financial support for the competition, but also distributed free software (MicroStation and STAAD.Pro V8i) and tutorials to all participating ASCE Student Chapters last fall.

Approximately 200 universities took part in the qualifying competitions, at eighteen ASCE Student Conferences, with top ranked teams in each region then invited to compete at the national level. I was pleased to attend the 18th annual NSSBC, to witness the products of students' skills in steel design, fabrication, scheduling, and management, and also to discover what they learned working as part of a design team.

47 teams participated in NSSBC this year, filling the floor of the Thomas and Mack Center at UNLV. May 22nd was devoted to set up and display judging of the scale model bridges. While everyone eagerly checked out their competitors, there was an air of camaraderie born of a common challenge and shared goals. The teams then disassembled their bridges in preparation for the next day.

On Saturday, May 23rd the competition swung into high gear, with Construction and then Load Testing. At five build stations, 3-5 team members painstakingly laid out the components of their bridges-from tools, to beams, to nuts and bolts-and then waited for the judges to start the clock. In turn, each team sprinted back and forth from their components to the construction area, vying to build their bridge in record time. With the frantic pace and whir of electric tools, the construction teams were akin to Nascar pit crews fighting to beat the clock. In this case, however, the crew starts from a blank slate, without even their tool belts in place until the clock starts. Amazingly enough, SUNY Canton was able to build their bridge in only 3 ½ minutes!

After the judges evaluated the construction and recorded the official time (adding any penalties), each team moved their bridge to the Load Testing stations. Two pieces of decking were put in place on each bridge (the location chosen by a roll of the dice at the beginning of the competition, to ensure unpredictable loading) and 100 lbs. were added to each deck.

Next, 1150 additional pounds of weight were added to the left deck, while checking for sway and deflection. If the bridge did not exceed a one inch sway in either direction, or a two inch deflection downward at any of the deflection targets, then another 1150 pounds were added to the right deck. Thus, these scale model bridges are tested under a total load of 2,500 pounds.

Each bridge is ultimately judged on the following steel design requirements: display, construction speed, lightness (lowest total weight), stiffness (lowest aggregate deflection), economy (lowest construction cost), and efficiency.

All 47 bridges offered ample evidence that the next generation of structural engineers are more than well equipped to help design and sustain the world's infrastructure.

The 2009 National Student Steel Bridge Competition's overall winners are as follows:
1. SUNY College of Technology at Canton
2. North Dakota State University
3. Lakehead University

Congratulations to all of the participating teams, for jobs well done!

You can read more about this competition at http://www.aisc.org/steelbridge

2009 Academic Be Inspired Awards

Laura Meier — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:59:00 GMT

Early in April, independent jurors evaluated a record number of submissions to our 2009 Academic competition and selected the top projects from around the globe.

Some of the student winners were from the United States, and I had the pleasure of traveling to their schools to present them with their awards and scholarships.

On April 22nd, I visited Randolph High School, in New Jersey, to present an award to student Christopher Fairfield for his "Fair Field" project, which won the Middle/High School category. This year's challenge for the category was to design a Sports Center of the Future, using MicroStation PowerDraft. Christopher's design was highly detailed and well conceived; it's no surprise that several university Engineering programs are actively recruiting him.

You can see Christopher's design here: ftp://ftp2.bentley.com/dist/collateral/docs/Be_careers/2009-awards_fair-field_randolph-hs.pdf

Principal Carol Strowbridge, Instructors Jack Leffler and Bruce Sappah, the entire CAD class, and Christopher's family joined us for the award presentation.

April 23rd found me at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York, where I was privileged to take part in the School of Architecture's annual awards celebration. The Be Inspired Award for the Engineering Category was presented to Architecture students Kendall Baldwin and Jeffrey Christianson. Their "Lingotto Bridge Station" project was developed using GenerativeComponents, during a joint workshop with Polytechnico Torino last Fall, led by RPI Undergrad Chair David Reibe.

View Kendall and Jeffrey's inspiring project here: ftp://ftp2.bentley.com/dist/collateral/docs/Be_careers/2009-awards_lingotto-bridge-station_rpi.pdf

Dean Mark Mistur also accepted the award on behalf of the School of Architecture, in front of an audience composed of both students and faculty.

Finally, I wish to congratulate Dr. Earl Mark, of University of Virginia, whom jurors named 2009 Educator of the Year: ftp://ftp2.bentley.com/dist/collateral/docs/Be_careers/2009-awards_earl-mark.pdf

Dr. Mark will receive his award in October, during the Be Inspired Awards event in Charlotte, North Carolina.

You can view all of the 2009 Academic Be Inspired winners, and see their projects, here: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/Academic/Networking+and+Development/BE+Awards/

Congratulations to all of the winners, honorable mentions, and to everyone who submitted. We are truly inspired by your projects.

GenerativeComponents Student Showcase at Yale

Laura Meier — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:17:00 GMT

On Wednesday evening, March 25th, an audience gathered in Rudolph Hall for a showcase of student projects from the Yale School of Architecture. Students from Professor John Eberhart's first year studio shared their designs, developed using Bentley's GenerativeComponents (GC), with an audience of local design professionals.

Michael Hensley, a local professional, commented "The student presentations were intriguing and the variety of work presented displayed the broad range of possibilities that GC contains." The student projects sparked many questions and an interesting discussion between the presenters and the practicing architects and engineers in the audience.

For those of you who missed this Showcase, sponsored by Be Careers Network, here are a few glimpses of the student projects.

Jason Bond's "Delaunay Pavillion" played with a point set reconstruction in GC:

Tomek Smierzchalski's "Parametric Study" was inspired by the helix of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim, leveraging GC to explore endless design iterations:

Tomek Smierzchalski & Dong Fang Gao (who was unable to attend) used GC to another design purpose with their Parametric furniture surfaces:

Dong Fang Gao also recreated and examined the BMW Welt building in Munich through the power of GC:

Patrick Conner's project was based upon a space grid, manipulating simple geometry to create an optimal design in GC:

Aude Jomini used the logic of the facade of Mansilla & Tunon's Leon Auditorium. Then, using cut and paste GC scripting, she worked through various possibilities until she produced a design that satisfied her:

It was a pleasant evening presentation, for all concerned, and we thank these Yale students for sharing their inspired GC projects with the local design community.

GenerativeComponents Showcase: Stevens Institute of Technology Student Projects @ Center for Architecture, NYC

Laura Meier — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:47:00 GMT

The evening of March 18th found me at the AIA New York Chapter's Center for Architecture, where the Be Careers Network was pleased to sponsor a GenerativeComponents Showcase event.

Students from Stevens Institute of Technology's Product Architecture Lab shared their projects with an audience of over one hundred local design professionals, professors, and students.

All of the projects leveraged the design power of GenerativeComponents, and were as diverse as they were impressive--especially given the students are only at the midterm review point of the semester.

John Nastasi, Director of the Product-Architecture Program, opened the program with some words about the interdisciplinary graduate program (http://www.stevens.edu/ses/academics/graduate_studies/interdisciplinary/product_architecture.html) .

Instructors Gil Akos and Ronnie Parsons, the instructors for the Performative Environments class, then introduced each student presentation.

To provide just a glimpse of one of the many excellent student projects:

Greg Denisiuk and Nelson Hernandez's "Heat + Harvest" tackles the creation of an environmental design with modular components that offset heating and cooling costs, through a combination of Fresnel lenses and cells within a self-shading aperture. The solid state system requires no internal moving components because the aperture geometry is specific to the site and solar study. The design team utilizes GC's parametric modeling environment, in conjunction with environmental analysis tools, to find the optimal solution: "Each cell provides natural ambient light, insulation from the outside environment, seasonal dependent heating or shading, and power generation through solar radiation."

Makai Smith, Product Manager for Generative Components, comments "It was great to see what the students have been doing with GenerativeComponents. They each have very challenging projects that take advantage of GC's ability to relate design geometry to an underlying logic. Students at Stevens are using GC to take advantage of digital fabrication to explore models that show an active environmental response. There is a wide range of work in the studio but it all shows a focus clarity in choosing parameters that can drive a dynamic logic to create forms which perform. It is very exciting work and I'm looking forward to more at the end of the semester."

Next week will find me at Yale for yet another GC Showcase, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here are some more photos from the Stevens GC Showcase. Look in my gallery for larger images:

2008: The Year in Review, Illustrated Academic Edition

Laura Meier — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:33:00 GMT

Like many others this month, I've succumbed to the temptation to reflect upon the past year. Maybe it's the influence of all those print articles and television retrospectives analyzing the year to which we only recently bid adieu? In any case, here are my nominations on behalf of the North American Be Careers Network team:

The 2008 academic highlights, North American Edition:

GenerativeComponents continues to create excitement--and amazing projects--in schools of Architecture. In 2008 we launched the GenerativeComponents University Program, offering workshops for faculty and students at the following campuses: Penn, Yale, U Arkansas, Ohio State, University of Michigan, Columbia & Stevens Institute of Technology.

We also sponsored a three day GC workshop in October, prior to the ACADIA 2008 Conference (see http://www.acadia.org/acadia2008/?page_id=43 ) The workshop was led by Rob Woodbury (Simon Fraser University) and Kaustuv DeBiswas (MIT) and included 16 participants, from professional practice and from nine universities. After just a few days of introduction to GC, workshop participants produced impressive projects.

Showcases of Student work:
In May, we were pleased to sponsor a Showcase of Penn student projects, all utilizing GenerativeComponents. The students' work was truly remarkable both for its diversity (encompassing architectural, biological, and even textile projects) and its creative application of Bentley's parametric design software.

Note: GC Showcase events will also take place at U Michigan on January 28th, 2009, at the Center for Architecture in New York City (for Stevens Institute of Technology student projects) on March 18th, 2009 & at Yale on March 25th, 2009.

We were also the lead sponsor of the Arch Schools 2008 exhibit, at the Center for Architecture in New York City. http://www.aiany.org/centerforarchitecture/exhibitionspast.php#past The exhibit ran October 18th-December 19th, with fourteen Architecture schools from the tri-state area showcasing student work for metro-area design professionals and the public. I snapped many photos at the opening day event, but can share only a few here:

Student Competitions (to spotlight a few, among many):

Be Awards of Excellence: A panel of independent jurors gathered in April, to determine the winners of Bentley's 2008 Be Awards student competitions. Thank you again to our jurors: Michael J. Chajes, Charlie McGowan, Tristan Al-Haddad, and Tom Barrett! The jurors had many strong submissions to choose from, and a difficult task selecting the winner for each category. See the winners here: http://communities.bentley.com/content/2008BEAwardsAcademicWinners.aspx

Future City: In short, always one of our favorite parts of National Engineers Week. Check out
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/Academic/Student+Competitions/Future+City.htm

The 21st annual ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition took place in Montreal, QC, in June. We were happy to sponsor the national competition for another year, and impressed by the ever-evolving designs and innovation of the student teams over the years. You can read my blog about the competition here: http://communities.bentley.com/Other/Old_Site_Member_Blogs/Bentley_Employees/b/laura_meiers_blog/archive/2008/06/23/2008-asce-national-concrete-canoe-competition.aspx

In February 2008, we presented prizes to the winners of the MicroStation Student Competition at EAST Conference. The winning team was from Henderson Health Sciences Magnet Middle School in Little Rock, AR for their entry entitled "Schoolyard Habitat Arboretum".

We also committed to sponsor the 2009 AISC/ ASCE National Student Steel Bridge Competition (NSSBC) www.aisc.org/steelbridge . This past fall, we sent free software and tutorials to all steel bridge teams at ASCE student chapters; we're looking forward to seeing the results at UNLV in May 2009!

Be Conference 2008 took place in Baltimore May 28-30. Highlights included the Be Awards of Excellence ceremony, during which Educator of the Year winner Peter Glaudemans (Eastern Technical High School, MD) was honored:

We also enjoyed meeting with both Academic and commercial users during our Best Practices session on connecting Academia & Industry.

Of course, 2008 also involved many campus visits with faculty and students, Be User Group meetings, and conferences. To my mind, whenever we have the opportunity to meet with our Academic and commercial users it's always a highlight.

As we look forward to an exciting new year, I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2009 on behalf of the entire Be Careers Network team.

2008 ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition

Laura Meier — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:38:00 GMT

It takes time, skill, innovation, and a dedicated team to design and build a concrete canoe--and then test it in a competition against peers. Every year, ASCE Student chapters at schools across North America tackle this unique challenge, applying their learning to a real-world project that is both educational and inspiring.

The 21^st Annual American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) National Concrete Canoe Competition took place in Montréal, Québec June 19-21, 2008. This year's host school, École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) , provided facilities on their campus for the team's Academic presentations. The venue for the races (women's & men's Slalom/Endurance, and women's, men's & co-ed Sprint races) was ideal, and one that only Montreal could offer: the Olympic Basin (http://www.parcjeandrapeau.com/?tabid=304 )

22 teams (who qualify by winning their regional competition) competed in Montreal for the "America's Cup of Civil Engineering" this year. 25% of each team's final score is based on the design and construction pricinciples of their canoes, 25% on their technical design report, 25% on their business presentation to the judges, and 25% on their performance in five race events.

Bentley is pleased to help sponsor this event, and applauds all of the teams for inspiring designs and an exciting competition.

Here are the top 5 teams for 2008:

1) University of Nevada, Reno
2) University of California, Berkeley
3) École de technologie supérieure
4) California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
5) University of Florida

As a final note, these canoes can even be designed with an eye toward sustainability! Polytechnic University's team won the Spirit of Competition Award for incorporating green technology in their goals and therefore design. Their canoe, Osiris, included recycled glass (collected from their Brooklyn campus) as 60% of its composition.

For the full story, visit: http://content.asce.org/conferences/nccc2008/index.html

You can also read my article about last year's competition, in the BE Magazine archives (page 12-14): http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/bemagazine/vol4issue3/

View larger versions of the images here, with descriptions, on my gallery page: http://communities.bentley.com/photos/laura_meiers_images/default.aspx

To see them in action, check out my video of the Co-Ed petite final race: