Hi Forum
At our office we are looking at GC to avoid time-consuming re-modelling of our curved concrete bridges.
Normaly we get from our Road-department (using Inroads) a 3d-centerline which we use to design our bridges using Microstation Feature Modelling.
Problem: When the Road-department change their centerline we use a lot of time te reproduce our bridge..
Is GC a good solution for this? And where can I find a step by step manual to start playing with GC?
Looking forward to get some help
Best Regards
Arjan Molenaar
Hi Arjan,
Yes, GC is a good solution for the use case that you describe. You can reference the road centerline into GC, use a Range node to convert the road centerline geometry into an object that GC can utilize, and then build based on that your curved bridge. If the road alignment changes, you reload the reference file in GC and the curved bridge regenerates based on that changed input.
You find an introduction to GenerativeComponents in the Wiki on this site.
After installing GC (V8i) you will find the Bentley GenerativeComponents V8i Quickstart Guide under the Help menu.
Bentley LEARNservices has GenerativeComponents training available, too.
Beyond that Q&A through this community is available, as well as, support through professional services (who can help you get further faster).
Please let me know whether these materials help.
Regards,
Volker
Bro_3dpdf.pdf
Hi Volker, sorry for my late responds... I have followed the tutorial located in Quick start guide...Do you have some other tutorials to get more familiar with GC?
Some examples of our type of bridges...(created with only Microstation)
Bridge at leftside is curved in two directions...
Bridge at rightside is only curved in one direction...
i
I also attached a 3d pdf file, so you can understand the geometry.
Our bridges are almost always curved in one or 2 directions, so is GC still the best solution for us? Design and for extracting 2d-drawings?
I can see Bentley has like 4 products to create bridges.....
In principle: yes, GenerativeComponents is a great tool for this and I know engineering firms using it in this way.
Of course, our Bridge Design and Analysis Solution provides you with specialized tools for bridge design and analysis which you would have to emulate in GC (similar to what you do in MicroStation). GC wraps MicroStation modeling in a way that allows inserting variables where MicroStation modeling uses fixed numbers, and change propagation to react quickly and comprehensively throughout the logical dependencies in your GC model to any changes occurring anywhere in the dependency flow.
I suggest that we get you in touch with my colleagues who know our Bridge Design and Analysis Solution so you can explore what those tools could offer to your practice, definitely beyond MicroStations general modeling capabilities into expert-system level bridge design.
That conversation will most likely go beyond what can be achieved in this public forum.
I will contact you. Please let me know if you don't hear from me by your Tuesday noon, because then I found an incorrect e-mail address.
Hi Mueller, I am from Australia and I work in Bridge Design team and I also have the same question whether or not you can do full 3d modeling of Bridge using GC, if yes then How you can achieve it. I am following a few other posts of yours and got the idea about the steps involved but as a beginner, it is very hard to understand. Is there any step by step real life example to understand the process.
I believe GC is a very powerful tool but there are very fewer resources available to apply it in real life. It would be great if I get some directions.
Thanks,
Jaimin Patel
Hi Jaimin,
Thank you for your interest in using GenerativeComponents for bridge modeling.
Because GenerativeComponents is a powerful tool and can be used to design many infrastructure items, we do not have fully developed examples for every type of infrastructure item.
Best approach is to work through the available material and look at the available examples (Dominic pointed to a few).
My colleague Stuart Milne provided the following information:
GenerativeComponents Online Training.
Step by step introductory training. The training is focused around a building dataset however the principles can be adopted to other industries.
CONNECT - https://learn.bentley.com/app/Public/ViewLearningPathDetails?lpId=112178
V8i - https://learn.bentley.com/app/Public/ViewLearningPathDetails?lpId=109349
GenerativeComponents Special Interest Group
Recordings of the monthly Special Interest Group which cover in extended detail topics which are important to using GenerativeComponents.
https://learn.bentley.com/app/Public/ViewLearningPathDetails?lpId=111738
GenerativeComponents Forum - Wiki, Forum and Example files
The area allows users to seek resources ask questions, and look at example files. The product management is very active on this forum so it’s a great place to work with the community.
https://communities.bentley.com/products/products_generativecomponents/
Training Video: Setting up and Linking AECOsim/GenerativeComponents to Bentley RailTrack.
This video demonstrates how to use a Range node to link your GenerativeComponents scripts to geometry that is not part of a GC script. This permits linking nodes to alignments from our road and rail products as long as those alignments are in DGN format.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMl_N04ATdI&t=786s
He also provided the following example script:
ModelExampleU3.dgn
This is for AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition Update 3 with GenerativeComponents as Companion Feature.
HTH,