Interacting with AASHTOWare’s Bridge R/D software

The primary connection between Precast/Prestressed Girder and AASHTOWare's Bridge R/D (formerly Virtis/Opis) is setup from the Transfer menu. Click on Setup and in the sub-menu that displays, click the link to bring up the Setup dialog box.

Input the User Name and Password and click OK to connect to the database. Once connected to the database, access the menu item under LEAP Bridge titled Select Components. The project tree presents a list of all of the bridges from the specific AASHTOWare database you are connected to. Use the checkbox next to the bridge names to select a particular bridge to work with.

Typical Scenarios

Reading a Bridge from Virtis/Opis into Precast/Prestressed Girder

To read a bridge into Precast/Prestressed Girder from AASHTOWare, perform the following steps:

Start Precast/Prestressed Girder. AASHTOWare need not be running, but the database itself should be started and running.

Select Transfer, Setup to bring up the connection option. Select the appropriate DSN (data store name) from the Data Source drop-down listbox. Enter the User Name and Password to connect to the specific database and click OK. Make sure the Connect to Data Source option is checked.

Select the Select Components command from the Transfer menu; expand the Bridges tree item and select (checkbox) the bridge that you wish to work with.

Click OK. Precast/Prestressed Girder reads the selected bridge, and if it is a valid prestressed girder bridge (i.e., P/S member alternative type in AASHTOWare), the information required to populate the fields in the Project Geometry and Materials tab is loaded. Additionally, if the strands and/or stirrups have already been defined in the Prestressed girder, then Precast/Prestressed Girder reads in that information as well.

The Project Name field in Precast/Prestressed Girder is populated by an "From AASHTOWare" tag for easy identification of the source of the data.

The next step is to define the dead and live loads in Precast/Prestressed Girder and perform an analysis.

At this point, the Precast/Prestressed Girder file itself can be saved.

If after analysis it is determined that instead of a particular strand pattern, a different strand pattern, perhaps with more strands, is required, the change can be made in Precast/Prestressed Girder and written back to the AASHTOWare database using the option Write to DB.

Go back to AASHTOWare and review the information in the particular girder for the bridge that was written back from Precast/Prestressed Girder, and you will see that the strand pattern is now updated.