General

General staged-construction tips are as follows:

• Joints are added in their undeformed position, meaning the deflections reported for newly added joints are not cumulative. Additional information is available in the Accounting for deformed shape in staged construction article.

• Sections and end releases may be changed from stage to stage using the Named Property Sets option.

Staged construction and the Bridge Modeler

Staged-construction tips which concern the Bridge Modeler are as follows:

• Mixed modeling – Staged construction functions with objects created using either the Bridge Modeler or standard controls. While the BrIM model is typically sufficient for conventional and regular bridges, enhancement through manual modeling may be necessary for complex and irregular structures, or to model a change in boundary conditions. A parametric model with manual enhancement is said to be a mixed model.

• Construction scheduler – BrIM objects need not be converted into an unlinked model before using the construction scheduler. The construction scheduler is essentially a simplified way to define staged-construction load cases. The same rules for staged construction apply.