It would be very beneficial if we could apply a "Raise/Lower" of the surface to a region of the surface. Example would be to produce the pavement section layers. I know you can basically do this with corridors, but not all designs lend themselves to using corridors. The process I am envisioning is as follows:
- Create a new surface ("Pavement Subgrade")
- "Paste" in your proposed surface (Finished Ground)
- "Raise/Lower" surface using a polyline as a region definition (similar to a "Mask") the distance needed
- Repeat step 3 for each different pavement section (the current project I am on has at least 4 different pavement sections)
- Done
- Perform volume computations or whatever you want with it (sections, profiles, contours, etc)
This could also be used to create a surface for the ground after pavement demolition is complete. Currently, I am doing the following:
- Create a new surface for EACH excavation depth (i.e. One for concrete pavement section, one for asphalt pavement section, one for "sidewalk" section)
- "Paste" in your proposed surface (Finished Ground) to EACH surface created in step 1
- Create a Boundary/Boundaries for each surface for each area you want to lower
- Keep in mind that you will have to have a certain "offset" of those boundaries when they touch otherwise "bad things" will happen at the interface, things that you don't want
- Apply the proper "Raise/Lower" to EACH surface
- Create ANOTHER new surface for the composite of these
- "Paste" EACH surface created in step 1 into this new "composite" surface
- Hope there are no errors when pasting!
- Done
- Perform volume computations or whatever you want with it (sections, profiles, contours, etc)
That process is difficult if you don't have any errors when pasting and next to impossible when you do have errors as it doesn't tell you what the error is! Now, this isn't too bad when you have only 1 or 2 sections but if you have several sections and also a "grass" area that requires no adjustment (just past FG before you paste the others into the composite). The current project I have has 9 different pavement sections in the existing condition (see image below). So so create a demo surface to use for comparison, I had to create 1 for EACH and then, due to errors, I had to create a surface for the asphalt demo sections and one for the concrete demo sections. Then I had to paste those 2 together to create my composite. This process literally took almost all day. The revised process could take literally minutes compared to hours.