What are your strategies to interchange designs?

[tonnot]

Hello everybody:

You have the main aligment and you have to design an out-lane aligment. 

 Standards describes the wedge and paralell lane lenghts, depending on speed, road type and grades.

 By last you have to perform a "connection" betwen main and out aligments, basically an interpolation.

So you have 3 areas/tasks to do:

  1.- Wedge and paralell definition

  2.- Locate the area in which main aligment and out aligment are pseudo paralell.  This area is located betwen the intersection of lanes widths  and the point defined by intersection of shoulders.

 3.- The area betwen this last point  and a singular point (defined by standards)  in which we can consider the aligments are fully independent. 

4.- The area betwen point 2 and the point in which vertical profile and superelevation are independent for out aligment.

You have to define a lot of things, profile, superelevation, transitions, etc... 

As far as I have seen, there is not any tool to do all of this.

How do you do it ?

[john.mckenzie]

The first thing I would do is to obtain a clear grasp of the requirements relative to standards. then I would try to obtain a clear grasp on what site restrictions exist that might cause difficulty or require at least special consideration in order for me to meet the design criteria.

Then I would lay in my offramp or onramp alignment to meet the horizontal design criteria and any site constraints.

After that I would build my assemblies/subassemblies, or perhaps save that for step 3 after I have roughed in my first attempt at a profile considereing the design criteria and existing site constraints.

Once I had horizontal and vertical roughed in I would apply my templates and finish off with the superelevation work.

Once that was done, I would tweak it for optimization of design.

Your list above satisfies portions of this process flow. You need only follow through.

Each design is different and there is not a "just do it" button in C3d.

If there were, the software would be brilliant and cost tons of money. Designers would be obsolete and a dime a dozen. Some would argue the software costs tons now. It certainly does cost a lot but it does a lot too. But it stops short of actually doing the design.

[tonnot]

In short.... , you have to paid more thant 6000 euros (change it to $) to do the work by hand ?

Here in spain we have tools to do this with an amazing automation if we compare their with C3D. 

Sincerely, C3D was expected  to be better .... 

Thanks

[Joe-Bouza]

And why are you not using these amazingly automating tools?

[john.mckenzie]

tonnot,

I certainly am not doing it by hand.

Civil3d is stationing my aignment but I need to initially place it. Also, Civil3d is updating the profile that goes with my alignment when I subsequently tweak it throughout the process. But I have to initially design it. Civil 3d is maintaining connectivity for all the templates I use for the corridor or intersection or whatever I may be doing, but I have to initially develop the templates.

Civil3d is also tracking to see if changes are being made sot that it can warn me to update, or sometimes automatically update my design.

While doing that it is presenting my design to standards that I have created and basically drafting it for me as I go.

I have 35 years design experience. I know what "by hand" entails. My motto in those days was

"Never draw more in a morning than you can erase in an afternoon." I know the difference.

Like I said in my earlier post, there is not a "just do it" button.

If you have found a solution that "just does it", like you seem to imply, I would suggest 2 things.

Before you tell us of this amazing software you should......

Stop wasting your time with Civil3d since it obviously is just a toy to you, and

Buy stock in the company that does it all because when word gets out...............

You are going to be a rich man.

If you plan to use C3d, I hope you have all the answers because 95% of this community is on to the fact that you just want to complain. People are going to tune you out if you are not careful.

C3d is not perfect but it is pretty darn good stuff compared to "by hand".

So what is the name of this wonder software? Please share. (but buy stock first because man it is gonna take off)