road crowns

[neonpainter]

has anyone figured out whether it is possible to develop roads with accurate road crown reflected in the DTM?

[islandmon]

Road crowning is a very important but subtle attribute which is not yet possible with the generic Roadway tool because it cannot be modelled with the existing Path procedure.

However, using 3D mesh and/or NURBS the surface can have any degree of Z curvature. Extrude along Path offers a procedure for using the profile.

[neonpainter]

Thanks for the suggestion. That is a novel approach I will experiment with. It would be nice if road crown profiles could be included in future roadway tools as a standard feature.

[mike m oz]

EJ - it will, but how do you get it to bank around the corners as in real roads?

[neonpainter]

Yes - I request a super elevation tool as well be added to new features.

[islandmon]

mmoz... yes, banking is the good ol' dihedral problem. Ideally, we would have a road tool that understands G forces and models the turn to compensate with the 'lift' of the tangent. Not so difficult actually ... but would require a minimum of 5 paths.

The road profile would then be a NURBS pentagon with vertices following the 5 five paths.

[holsteinson]

VW has acquired in the past DTM software from Compuneering but did not implemented from a real world perspective or usage by civil engineers and earth moving contractors.

I dont see why VW seeing the HUGE success $$$$ of Autocad Land Desktop module can do better?

Certainly HighRoad beats any other software designing and laying out roads, channels, breakwaters, excavation and any other related earth works, for WINDOWS or MAC plataforms! An you can use UTM or State Plane coordinates for stake outs (no scale adjusment yet but Chris is working on it!) So dont lose time and get it