Corridor not displaying on cross sections

[javbarcelo]

Hi there,

I have a corridor with 2 intersections. It is more or less like a main road with an off-ramp and an on-ramp, both on the same side, with a big triangle shape island in between them. It involves an existing road widening and a connection with another existing road. Since it is a real scenario, the intersections aren't perfect 90 degrees nor the offsets are constant. My approach was the following:

1. Create Western intersection and change offset and curb return targets to design aligments.
2. Create Eastern intersection and change offset and curb return targets to design alignments.
3. Model the corridor as per design requirements.
4. Due to design constraints, I ended up removing both intersections. I didn't delete all the offset and curb return alignments although they're not targeted on any region. Deleting this alignments seems to make C3D crash.

Apparently,the actual intersection definition hasn't been removed, as I read on other threads. I kept on getting a couple of error messages on Panorama Event Viewer every time I rebuild the corridor. Fine, I can live with that.

So, the problem comes when I try to output the cross sections from this nice looking corridor. They all look fine until they reach the intersection area. From the intersection onwards, the corridor is not diplayed on any cross section. Even way passed the western intersection.

Does anybody know why the corridor doesn't display on the cross sections passed the deleted intersections?

I have a bad feeling that removing the intersection wasn't a good idea in the first place but it's too late now.

Any help will be appreciated.

Regards

Javier Barceló

Civil 3D 2011 Version 3

Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit

[javbarcelo]

Hi again,

An update on this thread. The off-ramp and on-ramp run paralell for some time and they got separated near the main road. I have created another set of cross sections along the off-ramp. The sample lines are long enough to go over the on-ramp. Well, the cross sections display the corridor only on the sampled alignment, the off-ramp.

I hope that helps somebody to come up with a solution.

Regards

Javier

[wfberry]

Do you have one continuous surface spanning all your area and sampling this one surface?  I believe things changed for the better with Civil 3D 2012 - 2013 versions.

Bill

[javbarcelo]

Bill,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I created a surface for the top links along the entire corridor. Also, I created a second surface, pasting the previous surface and adding as a breakline the feature line that runs along the back of the kerb of the island.

What do you mean it gets better for 2012 and 2013 versions? I couldn't find any documented error about my issue in the 2011 version.

Regards

Javier

[javbarcelo · Accepted solution]

OK. It seems that I was wrong. There's is a documented error in C3D 2011 that  doesn't display the corridor in the cross sections when that corridor is not perpendicular to the the base line. So, I wonder what Autodesk's developers were thinking: "let's develop the tools to create really complex road models that are fully dynamic but if the user wants to output cross section, he/she won't be able to". Really? How embarrassing is that?

My frustration is reaching new levels with Civil 3D. The software doesn't perform as expected. Autodesk can't be bother to fix known issues. Embarrassing... Thinking about moving back to pen & paper. Definitely more reliable. I am also hoping that Google develops a drafting tool that wipes out Autodesk from the market. Yes, I am frustrated. Not a happy customer.

Javier