Trimble Business Center

Is there a way to offset a corridor alignment into a whole new alignment? I swear when I use the offset command before, it keeps it as an alignment. But now, when I offset a corridor alignment using the offset command, it converts it to a linestring. And we end up converting it back to an alignment. Making this conversion as an option would be ideal. 

Karen: I posed the opposite question a while back (Alignment to Linestring) but the discussion that followed explained a lot about the characteristics of alignments versus linestrings etc and why offsetting them doesn't work.

The topic went a bit into SCS900 Field Software so if that isn't relevant just skip over it. The Trimble folks were really helpful explaining this.

Is there a way to turn an alignment (H and V) into a linestring? 

Marshall

I'm not too concern on keeping any of the corridor characteristics. What i'm actually doing is generating an alignment (to be able to export an xml file) of my EOP 3d linestrings for our sub-contractor to upload on their 3d curb machine. And they wanted an offset of these EOP aligments varying the vertical delta per the type of curb (catch/spill curb & gutter). 

This has always resulted in a Linestring (and a chorded linestring) because you cannot offset Vertical Curves and Spirals and get a spiral or vertical curve at anything less than a 0 offset. The linestring is an approximation of the alignment (and we appreciate that an alignment on e.g. a Subdivision doesn't have Spirals etc.), however an Alignment is a different beast to a Linestring and an offset alignment is not an alignment (or is only in a few corner cases).

If you copy an Alignment it will create another alignment, but offsetting it has to subset it and "downgrade it" for the above reasons.

The C&G Machine can use SVL files (no alignment) so you can just create linestrings for those. The PCS900 team have recently created a "best practices document" that covers what you need to do to create a SVD / SVL file set for a PCS900 C&G Machine. I will get a copy of that for you and post it here tomorrow.

Thanks

Alan

Did the Best Practices Document get posted? I'm looking for any PCS900 C&G info we can get. Also, is there a functional PCS900 emulator for C&G?