The Top 5 Articles of 2022

It’s that time of year again – when we share the top five blog posts that were the most popular with our readers in 2022. This year saw some of the most innovative and unusual bridges get built, and our subscribers enjoyed reading about them: Lego bridges, airport bridges, even bridges that resemble driftwood take some of the top spots. Here are your favorite posts from 2022.

1^st Place: The Lego Bridge in Wuppertal

The most popular post by a huge margin was about this unusual bridge in Wuppertal, Germany. Despite the name, the bridge is actually made from reinforced concrete. However, clever artwork makes the bridge appear as if it is made from giant Lego bricks. Wuppertal has had a bridge like this since 2011, but a second bridge was painted in 2020.

© Morty, CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2^nd Place: Accelerated Bridge Design: The Rize-Artvin Airport Bridge

Located in Turkey, this bridge was designed by engineering consultants Yüksel Proje in just two months, despite its complex geometry and variable thickness. The new cast in-situ, post-tensioned bridge connects the two towns of Rize and Artvin, as part of the construction of a new airport. Thanks to parametric design and BIM, it was able to be designed and constructed in record time.

© Yüksel Proje

3^rd Place: 4 Tips on How to Present Your Projects More Convincingly

Readers also enjoyed some practical advice from ALLPLAN’s Product Manager, Massimo Baldessari. Here, he shares some of his top tips for how to create better visualizations using some of the different tools available, and also how to seamlessly share them for further editing in graphic design solutions. Techniques for analyzing the model and isolating information, as well as creating clear documentation efficiently, complete this helpful article.

© Patrik Jacquemod, Domenico Mazza, Marco Bianchi

4^th Place: Drift Bridge: Plug-and-play urbanism in practice

One of the most unusual bridges of the year was the Drift Bridge in Fort Worth, USA. This prefabricated bridge was able to be rapidly installed thanks to the meticulous digital planning of the designers. This combination is what the architect calls “plug-and-play urbanism”. The wood-and-steel structure is also unique for its unusual form, which incorporates the footpath, seating, and railings all within one seamless structure.

© Peter Molick

5^th Place: Integrating Engineering Specialists into Bridge Design with BIM

The final post is not about a specific bridge, but rather how we can better integrate bridge design and other specialists into the overall BIM process. Since BIM was introduced, a way to integrate the structural analysis and other specialist activities (such as geotechnical or earthquake engineering) into the overall planning – until recently, at least. This post describes how Allplan Bridge addresses this issue and ensures all parties involved on the project can take advantage of the benefits of BIM.

© ALLPLAN