Grading Small Lots - Best Practice Suggestions?

[mikeshick]

Most of my grading projects involve single family residence and usually nothing too complicated.  However, due to the nature of custom lots, I generally find myself grading with mostly feature lines, gradings, and generally a corridor for most of the driveway.  I'm curious if others have any suggestions for this type of project.  I've attaced mine for a sample.  Would love to hear your ideas.

Maybe this should be a seperate post, but I've also got a question about possibly superelevations.  Generally my driveways consist of have a single cross slope, but sometime I need to converge drainage in the middle or change cross slope the opposite directions.  What's the best way to accomplish this, and provide transition between these cross slope changes?  Is superelevation tool the key?

If you take a look, I may benifit using the layer state manager for alternating between my design setup.

Here is the link for the DWG.

Thanks.

[Neilw_05]

I can't say there is NO way to do it with a corridor, but even if there is, when you consider the amount of setup and the complexity involved in managing and manipulating it, at some point you have to pause and ask: is it really practical to do grading that way? For larger sites it would get really hairy.

How simple it would be if gradings could handle mitered corners.

[annw2]

I hope you don't design roads.  General rule of thumb is to not have driveway cross slopes change to avoid havnig storm water run across the pavement and cause accidents.

[mikeshick]

Unfortunately, Ann, I believe you missed the entire question altogether.  It's also unfortunate that you make a derogatory comment about another professional with so little information about them.

But thanks for your interest.

[annw2]

The intent was to be more joking around than critical. 

I do get scared with a lot of not seeing the forest for the trees in a lot of the newer design.

I also get scared when I see designs that miss the concept that water doesn't flow up hill and a lot of poorly desinged roads in this area that are accidents waiting to happen from  water flowing across the road.

I just had to do a review of a detention design that was approved by a kind older reviewing engineer.  The basin had essentially been designed with two oultets as one of the inlets supposedly flowing into the basin had a top of frame elevation less than half way up the berm.  The scarey thing is I see this about every couple years.

This makes me nervous about stormwater issues.

[Joe-Bouza]

that is a grading.

[Joe-Bouza]

No issue here. Nielw said gradings cant handle mitered corners...

<snip> Gradings are unstable and prone to corruption and crashing. Also they are so slow to process that I hate using them. Too gradings cannot handle mitered corners so if you have mitered curbs with sidewalks you can't model them with gradings.

My image shows a grading of a sidewalk an curbs with a mitered corner. I know the corner will never be 2%.

I'm trying to understand why NW sees miters not doable with a grading.

[Joe-Bouza]

Neil, My earlier post shows (what I think is) a mitered corner and I used a grading to do it. Where do you see a problem? can you provide an example?

[Joe-Bouza]

To Para phrase the grateful dead..... If the thunder doesn't get you then the lightning will.

Old habits die hard.

[ralstogj]

Ok Joe, Neil

What the hell lets keep this discussion going grading best practice ideas and jump to the end of the grading process.

I find mostly that a small jobs mean small budgets and other consultants not using Autocad

What do we give back to the them at the end if they are not using autocad, but can take a dwg exploded featurelines as 2d or 3d polyines is the only option I see?

I posted thoughts on a process I used today here

http://c3dxtreme.blogspot.com/2012/01/sharing-data-with-other-cad-programs.html

 Any best practices ideas thoughts

[Neilw_05]

How did you make that mitered corner Joe? In my screen cap I created gradings from an edge of pavement featureline outward to the sidewalk. First I add the gutter, then face of curb, back of curb and sidewalk. Did you perhaps start at the back of sidewalk and grade inwards toward the pavement? That might work in that scenario, but inevitably you'll have to go the other direction. What happens if you do that?

[jmayo-EE]

I don't have much time to get into this but if you you really want the best advice, don't stick with one tool. Gradings, Corridors and Feature Lines all have pros and cons. You need to choose the correct tool. If you know you need alignments and profiles for a wall or road widening project use a corridor. If this widening fronts a commercial site, keep the cor for the rd and maybe use a grading or feature lines for the sitework. You can use these tools together to form one FG model.

You also need to be fast on small projects. Set up your grading criteria, common assemblies, tables and labels for quick access. Corridors do not have to be complicated or incredible detailed they can be used to rough out a few feature lines or project grades across a site. They are not time consuming if you are prepared for them and there are advanteges on some sites with profiles controling a surface.

[Neilw_05]

I don't disagree with your comments John, but I think this part of the discussion is more about how to make the model dynamic and easy to edit when the design changes. That in turn leads to the issues raised with regard to using corridors and gradings to model the site. Until some of those issues are addressed by the developer we are stuck with those limitations and inefficiencies.

[Joe-Bouza]

right on.

[wfberry]

To continue beating this horse.  One of the things that helped me the most in a project that I recently completed is that our man Jeff wrote some routines now appearing in Sinpac that allows 3D polys and Feature Lines to be graded to Daylight.  This really make a big difference for me.

Bill

 "Sorry Neil I had to respond to someone."

[wfberry]

Well, I had to respond to myself this time.  "Sincpac" !

Bill

[jmayo-EE]

That is one of the LDD tools that got left behind. I posted a wishlist item for that a few years ago. It is an incredible tool that the desk'ers should have ported over. Sinc & Jeff were smart to pop that in there. I have been exploding gradings since the 07 release when all I need is a daylight from one particular feature...

[Joe-Bouza]

Dang! self correcting

[Joe-Bouza]

Niel,

 this one is done from face of curb to back of sw. You know I doit it with more than one grading, right? Use an infill for the mitered corner.

[Neilw_05]

How do you create the corner? If you are drawing it with featurelines then the corner will not update with the curb gradings, right?

[Joe-Bouza]

the corner is an infill. and completely dynamic. And if it were it would be a simple update.