USING CAD IN CONSTRUCTION FIELD ENGINEERING

The California transportation system is currently undergoing major exp ansion to accomodate the increased demand on its highways. Such expans ion includes the widening of a number of existing bridges to increase the system's capacity. This paper discusses how the construction of th ese widenings is controlled in the field by the Department of Transpor tation's (Caltrans) structural field engineers. Particularly, the pape r describes the automation of the process of developing vertical and h orizontal control documents, known as bridge deck contour maps, to ens ure compatibility between the new widening and existing bridge decks. The automation was achieved using a computer aided design (CAD) tool.