Calculating Haul Quantity

[jonkroeker_coghf]

I am looking for help to calculate the mass haul quantity for a 10 km long roadway. Our existing ground is quite hilly, so the mass haul diagram is very up-and-down.

I can find loads of tutorials to create a mass haul diagram, but nothing on calculating the quantity of haul.

In my jurisdiction we pay for haul based on the m3hm or, cubic meter hectometer. This is volume of earth hauled 100 meters. This equals the area under the mass haul line or more descriptively, the area between the mass haul line and the zero line.

Any point along the mass haul line will give the amount of material that is in transit at that specific spot, but haul isn't JUST a volume is it? I could haul 40 m3 of earth 1 km or 10 kms and I would want a different amount of money for each of those operations. To find that I need the area under the graph, not a volume.

We always manually calculate the area under the graph with bpoly, picking the internal point to create the closed polyline, viewing the properties of that closed polyline to get the area, making some conversions to account for vertical and horizontal scale, and then adding up all the individual areas (there will be multiple areas – one for each portion of the line as it goes above and below the zero line as shown in the attached photo) for the total amount of haul to pay for the project. This total amount of haul is then what goes on the bid form for the project for the prospective contractor to base his/her bid on.

Is there a way in C3D to find this total number?

Edit: I forgot to mention, the method I outline above works, but it is too labor intensive to do it over and over whenever a corridor change is made. Something dynamic would help immensely.

[neilyj666]

It would be great if Civil 3D had the capability to do something useful with mass haul but the functionality in Civil 3D leaves a lot to be desired and is not fit for purpose (and hasn't been updated since I started using Civil in 2011) so I output volumes and use Excel to create the mass haul diagrams.  In the UK, it is generally left to the contractor to determine what is being hauled and for what distance and to price accordingly.

[jonkroeker_coghf]

I thought of this too. Outputting the volumes to excel, then manipulating them a bit with equations to get the conversions for scale, and then adding distance into it somehow, and that is where my brain started to hurt so I came here to ask the question 🙂

That is still too much work to do iteratively to be able to reasonably include haul quantity as part of the design process. We look at the mass haul diagram and estimate whether a change looks to have improved the balance or does a good job of splitting the haul above and below the zero line, but that isn't actually using numbers definitively.
It seems intuitive to me that C3D would have a function to calculate the area under the curve in seconds. It would be so simple.

[neilyj666]

Yes, with the wealth of programming talent that Autodesk has one would expect them to be able to produce a very useful and practical mass haul solution BUT earthmoving solutions don't lend themselves to the flashy marketing puff that sells seats of the software (and all Autodesk appear to be focusing on is Cloud stuff)