Hi everybody-
We just started using C3D about a year ago so we don't really know anything still. My question is this: When designing a residential site with 4 or 5 roads, is it better to put all of the roads and intersections in one corridor or is it better that each road and intersection be a separate corridor? We have advocates for both methods in our offices, and I just wanted to get an idea of what more experienced users do.
Thanks so much!
Meredith
C3D 2014
Windows 7 64 bit
@mermerCAD wrote:Hi everybody-
We just started using C3D about a year ago so we don't really know anything still. My question is this: When designing a residential site with 4 or 5 roads, is it better to put all of the roads and intersections in one corridor or is it better that each road and intersection be a separate corridor? We have advocates for both methods in our offices, and I just wanted to get an idea of what more experienced users do.
Thanks so much!
Meredith
C3D 2014
Windows 7 64 bit
We used to put everything in the same corridor, but have found many flaws with C3D 2013 and 2014. For instance, we had a corridor with a frequency of 50' for tangents and 10' for curves. Because a PC happened to be about 0.1' from a whole station, C3D refused to allow that section to be edited. It was showing in the plan view, but the corridor section editor didn't have it listed. I had a post about this months ago and SR, but was told that you can't have corridor sections that close to each other. There are also problems where a corridor won't build correctly if there are too many baselines. I noticed this just a few weeks ago and had to take a side road intersection out of the main corridor and place it in its own corridor in order for the corridor to build correctly. There would be whole sections of baselines not building correctly until I turned off any other baseline. Since I couldn't turn off any of the baselines, I had to take a few out and put them in their own corridor.
I would recommend that you keep a corridor for each road unless the side roads are short. Pick a main road and keep the intersections in it and make the side roads their own corridors.
Our workflow is street by street here.
This allows for splitting up the design amongst the project team and also keeps the files smaller & cleaner resulting in improved performance.
@Jeff_M wrote:
Interesting, I have always (well, since after my first project many moons ago) kept all roads and intersections in the same corridor. This helps to insure everything plays nice together, gives me just 1 corridor surface, and just 1 thing to keep track of. I've never experienced any of the issues engrtech describes. Although I must say I do not use 2013 or 2014, there are other issues with these versions that have kept me working in 2012. Also, I very rarely need to use the section editor.
Like you, before 2013 we kept everything in a single corridor because its more simple. That worked fine from 2007-2012, but 2013 and 2014 have issues, which is why we've changed how we handle them.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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"..I've never experienced any of the issues engrtech describes. Although I must say I do not use 2013 or 2014, there are other issues with these versions that have kept me working in 2012..."
That's pretty sad commentary Jeff... I encourage you to put pressure on your acquaintances in the Civil 3D leadership positions to rectify this.
I don't think there is a one-size fits all answer to this question. It depends a bit on the project.
As Jeff said the advantages to one corridor are:
- Easier to coodinate the connections between the alignments
- The result is a unified corridor surface for the whole site (a significant advantage imo)
On the other hand:
- The larger the project the slower the single corridor drawing will become. This can get very frustrating.
- All your eggs are in one basket. If the single corridor drawing becomes corrupted you've lost everything
My default position is to have a single corridor. However if the project is large then I break it up. How you define "large" will depend on your system spec and your risk tolerance level.
@alderliesteng wrote:
I don't think there is a one-size fits all answer to this question. It depends a bit on the project.
As Jeff said the advantages to one corridor are:
- Easier to coodinate the connections between the alignments
- The result is a unified corridor surface for the whole site (a significant advantage imo) - This is the deal clincher for me
On the other hand:
- The larger the project the slower the single corridor drawing will become. This can get very frustrating.
- All your eggs are in one basket. If the single corridor drawing becomes corrupted you've lost everything - although the corridor object is a pretty robust one compared with gradings
My default position is to have a single corridor. However if the project is large then I break it up. How you define "large" will depend on your system spec and your risk tolerance level.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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@alderliesteng wrote:- The result is a unified corridor surface for the whole site (a significant advantage imo)
You can still do a unified surface with multiple corridor surfaces. Just create a final road (or whatever) surface that is blank then paste in the different corridor surfaces. It stays dynamic and also lets you see problems easier, IMO.