I had a co-worker ask me today, “What would you do with this cul-de-sac?”
We then discussed what we actually need, for design model, plans for permitting, or survey construction staking.
The design model I believe should be as complex and precise as time and money should allow. After all object viewer is wicked cool and a time killer when the monotony of modeling goes stale. If you are hourly employee and have plenty of budget then go wild with the design, spend the extra time building corridors to include intersections and cul-de-sacs.
Plans sheets are of coarse our nemesis. We either show so much it becomes confusing or we don’t show enough. As you are aware we don’t always show EOP spot shots every 5 foot on plan sheets. Why would we? Governing agencies don’t care, and it looks like crap at 40 scales. Most of us can compute rim elevations using simple math equations, and with that and some polylines, POOF, you have a grading plan.
Guess what? Most surveyors will not use your model either. Being mathematicians they don’t need to. Print them some stations and profiles and they will stake all your curb returns on three foot offset, no questions asked, not even: “hey, what grade did you use for curbing on cul-de-sac #2?”
Being a designer, I love to model in 3D. Corridors and Assemblies were a godsend to C3D.
But how much is too much?
Cul-de-sacs are really not bad, you need a main profile and one more for your eop or curb line, which extends to the main profile. Intersections are much more complex, needing four profiles minimum, each one tied to another.
Subdivision corridor design can get very detailed, with many baselines and regions, but when complete and correct it is again, wicked cool. But what is not so, wicked cool is the fact that you will need so many independent alignments, profiles, and subassemblies that if revisions are needed you may find your designer with a knife to their wrist.
After spending many hours on the corridor you still may not get exactly what you are looking for. What we really need the corridor for is proposed surface elevations right, but when building tin data from the corridor the software seems to have a mind of its own.
We then discussed what we actually need, for design model, plans for permitting, or survey construction staking.
The design model I believe should be as complex and precise as time and money should allow. After all object viewer is wicked cool and a time killer when the monotony of modeling goes stale. If you are hourly employee and have plenty of budget then go wild with the design, spend the extra time building corridors to include intersections and cul-de-sacs.
Plans sheets are of coarse our nemesis. We either show so much it becomes confusing or we don’t show enough. As you are aware we don’t always show EOP spot shots every 5 foot on plan sheets. Why would we? Governing agencies don’t care, and it looks like crap at 40 scales. Most of us can compute rim elevations using simple math equations, and with that and some polylines, POOF, you have a grading plan.
Guess what? Most surveyors will not use your model either. Being mathematicians they don’t need to. Print them some stations and profiles and they will stake all your curb returns on three foot offset, no questions asked, not even: “hey, what grade did you use for curbing on cul-de-sac #2?”
Being a designer, I love to model in 3D. Corridors and Assemblies were a godsend to C3D.
But how much is too much?
Cul-de-sacs are really not bad, you need a main profile and one more for your eop or curb line, which extends to the main profile. Intersections are much more complex, needing four profiles minimum, each one tied to another.
Subdivision corridor design can get very detailed, with many baselines and regions, but when complete and correct it is again, wicked cool. But what is not so, wicked cool is the fact that you will need so many independent alignments, profiles, and subassemblies that if revisions are needed you may find your designer with a knife to their wrist.
After spending many hours on the corridor you still may not get exactly what you are looking for. What we really need the corridor for is proposed surface elevations right, but when building tin data from the corridor the software seems to have a mind of its own.
CORRIDOR:
TIN SURFACE:
With all these freaky looking tin lines my contours are exactly where they should be!
Notice this is a low point, so my center line profile has a grade in and a grade out. If I were to revise the profile slopes, my curb returns will not update as they are on separate baseline within the corridor. <-- Not Cool!
2 comments:
i strongly dislike manually editing cul de sacs and intersections, so i found once i made a few specialized design labels and worked out a semi-automatic workflow, splitting my viewports and making the changes so that everything matches up when the centerline gets revised takes far less time that I was investing with plines, featurelines or manual edits. But that is just me, and we all know I am weird.
I think I might have used a different targeting strategy than your model there- hit me with the drawing if you'd like to see the dana-ized version. you're clever enough to find my email address, methinks. ;p
I know what I would do with a problem intersection. I would see if I could get or trick Jimmy into doing it for me, while I set up sheets or something much easier!
CB
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