Please bring back the pre-2011 Superelevation Editor

[Anonymous]

After having worked with the new superelevation editor, I have to say that I want the old, simpler editor back.  There are two things that I see wrong with this new editor.  One is that you can only access the Superelevation editor if you have curves in your alignment.  If you don’t have any curves, the editor won’t even open.  Faking in a very long curve to get the editor to open is not something I want to have to explain to my project engineer.  Maybe back when Civil 3D was in its infancy this kind of explanation would have worked, but now we should be able to use the tools for what we need, and not have to create workarounds because the option is no longer available in 2011.

The second is that this editor is much too complex to be used for simply diverting drainage on a smaller paved or dirt road (something that we do all the time now with the superelevation tab on the alignment properties).  I can understand how the new editor would be useful for highway design, but it’s much too complicated for trails and smaller dirt or paved roads, which is the majority of our work these days.

Creating separate corridor regions to force slopes also isn't a great solution, as this is tedious and prone to errors when someone edits the alignment or makes other changes to the corridor, and forgets to adjust the stationing for each region. These are all workarounds to a problem that didn't exist prior to 2011 and I'd really like to see an option for the simpler superelevation editor for those of us that use it to solve a variety of design challenges. 

Additionally, the more workarounds I need to explain to our engineers and designers, the less likely they are to have confidence that the design really is working, and ultimately, the less likely they are going to want to use the software.

Thanks,

Michaela

[wang890]

i just ran a search on google to see who doesn't like the new superelevation editor, this is like the first that showed up. the new editor to me is a PITA to work with

i am totally with you. the old one is much easier to use. they should add features not remove existing. i am not even gonna complain what's not good about it. since you did most of the complaining already.

[Anonymous]

Under what circumstances would you design a superelevation on a highway tangent?  Superelevations are for curves and curves alone.  How do you apply AASHTO superelevation criteria to tangent, when there are none.  Superelevation is for banking on curves, no?

I'm curious about the design intent.

Nathan Selles-Alvarez

Civil Engineer, EIT, Civil 3D Certified Associate

AECOM

[Anonymous]

Hi Nathan,

We don't just use the superelevation for highway or road design; we use it for trails, dirt roads and 2-lane roads in rural areas that have existing drainage ditches that might switch from one side of the road to the other. Essentially, we'll add a 2% slope along the entire length of the trail or road to force drainage from one side to the other.

We've also used the superelevation editor to tie a new taxiway into an existing runway. In that case, we need to match the slope of the edge of runway where the taxiway meets up. Then at so many feet back from the edge of runway we begin to transition to a 2% slope on each side of the taxiway. I know we can do all this by targeting feature lines, but it's much faster to just tell Civil 3D to figure out the slopes and transitions instead of having to calculate the elevations along the feature line. With the taxiway design, all I need is an existing surface for the top of the runway to get the slopes at the location where the proposed taxiway meets. Then I enter those slopes into the superelevation editor and my taxiway lines up perfectly with the edge of runway.

I hope that helps.

Michaela

[peterfunkautodesk · Accepted solution]

If you don't have curve in the alignment, you can still open the Superelevation editor by defining a user defined curve group. The curve group will be from the start of the first element you select to the end of the second element (if you pick the same element twice it will go from the start to the end of it.

The reason that we went to curve groups from the old editor is that in the past the superelevations were based on stations. When the alignment changed, the super stations didn't. In 2011 we introduced the curve group and super is based on the curves instead. If the tangents change or the curve gets longer, the super regions will move with the start and end of the curves and not with the stations. The other change that we made was the graphical super elevation editor for people that what to edit the superelevations with something other than a static spreadsheet.

Cheers,

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Peter. I'll give that a go.

Your explanation as to why Autodesk went to the new editor makes sense. I guess I'll just have to teach everyone how to use the new editor and they'll get used to it eventually. Job security, once again.

Michaela