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SubscribeIntersection Assembly Sets for Tunnels (part 1)
We’ve had some interesting questions about some interesting intersections in Civil 3D 2010 recently and have been testing some ambitious ideas with marked points and invisible generic links.
We’re pleasently surprised at how well all this works - it takes time to set up the assemblies etc , but once they are done, the intersection can be formed as quickly as a simple road intersection and the geometry is quite robust. The alignments can be dragged etc and the intersection/corridor updated like a standard Civil 3D intersection.
This example in this case is a tunnel. It’s an interesting example in general and also showcases the marked points / invisible generic links in the assembly sets.
Civil 3D 2010 and its evolution...
I’m not sure what we’re allowed to say about 2010 at the moment so I’m going to play it safe and talk about previous releases.
We did a presentation recently to a company that had seen Civil 3D back in the 2007 and 2008 releases. We were showcasing 2009 and from the reactions of the crowd, it was clear that they were impressed with the evolution of the software in the few years since they had seen it.
In particular, the ‘building block’ like structure was highlighted as a very encouraging concept…
(semi) Automatic Kerb Returns using standard components...
- These kerb returns are not perfect - they’re just a first pass to get some quick volumes but they do more or less grade themselves automatically.
- They can also update (in vertical design) automatically.
They use a combination of existing subassemblies that come with the standard installation of Civil 3D.
This is just a brief overview of the concept. I’ll be covering the topic in detail on my AU session on Roundabout Reconstruction (even though the title refers specifically to roundabouts, the session is really just using a roundabout as a good example of some geometry with some interesting challenges and constraints).
The session is an easy one to remember - it’s the last one on the last day 
!
The Future of Civil Design...
Have you ever noticed that the procedures in Civil Design software are based on the old fashioned manual method? The alignment / profile thing works great but with new IT hardware, surely there should be something original coming out.
A wise programmer once told me that the calculations side of a software package is a relatively minor part and most of the main work goes into sorting out the graphical interface…
A wise and well respected road designer recently pointed out the similarities between all the various packages and then showed me what he described as ‘the future of Civil Design’…
Large Data sets - speed up Tiled Raster files with WMS...
With aerial photos or scanned maps, it is common to have a large number of tiled images. Using FDO’s to bring the images is in a great way to improve speed but when we are talking about many images, it can still have issues. One of these is the fact that even though FDO’s are a serious improvement over the old fashioned insert image function, it will still slow the AutoCAD Civil 3D session down, particularly for panning/zooming - another is that every time the DWG file is opened, all the images have to be resolved regardless of whether they are displayed or not - for a large area (a State in Australia for example), this can take a long long time. I know people who go for a coffee while the system is sorting itself out.
In this example, each square on the grid represents a 50MB image. We don’t want all this images on the screen at the same time but we do want to be able to zoom into an area and have them appear for just this region without too much fuss.
This solution is not simple - we use Mapguide to do the work externally to the Civil 3D session. It is well worth the effort though - the improvement in speed is amazing.
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