Trimble Business Center

I have a parking lot that I need to model curb in. I was wondering how other people are doing it. Right now I'm breaking the line at a contour line and adding a elevation to it. I believe there has to be a easier way to do it just don't know how. 

I wish there was one way to model a curb for a parking lot, but I seem to do it several different ways because of how the engineer has designed it or what information is given on the plans.

The most common way I do it, is to create a temporary surface of the pavement only. I extend this surface beyond the area of the curb. The extension is usually done by extending the contours several feet. Once I have all of my water flowing correctly, I then Drape the flow-line of the curb to this temporary surface. From there I use that line to offset horizontally and vertically the shape of the curb. I will then use the clip command to break the extended contours at the flow-line and then delete the extra contours that conflict with the curb. 

If want to share your project, I can take a look at what I think would be a good method.

Benjamin

There are a number of ways to tackle modeling curb, depending on the source data that you have been provided with - here are some pointers that may help

1. Where you say you break a line at the contours and then add an elevation to it - I think you maybe doing "too much" but without an overview of what you mean by that here are a couple of points
   1. If you have a line that represents one of the elements of a curb (those being Lip of Curb (where it meets the pavement), Flow Line, Top Face of Curb, Top Back of Curb) and the only elevations you have been given are the contour lines that cross those curb feature lines, then the way to elevate the curb feature line is to use Elevate Lines command from Data prep menu using Intersecting Lines (provided your design contours have elevation). Then it will automatically place a VPI (Vertical Point of Intersection) on the curb feature line, everywhere a contour (group of contours) crosses the feature line. If you edit the feature line and go to the Vertical Tab you will see all of the VPIs that were created. If your contour lines are 2D but you know the elevations then you can also just edit the feature line and go to the Vertical Tab and add VPIs manually - set the Interesection Running Snap (base of the screen - Snaps) so that you snap on the location where the contour intersects the curb feature. You can simply enter the elevation for each VPI that you create. You should have no reason to break the curb feature line at all. Once elevated using the Contours, you may need to compute the elevations at the corner points of the parking lot using the Add VPI in the Linestring Vertical Tab using the Incoming Slope or Outgoing Slope methods.
   2. If you have additional Elevation Labels in the CAD data or PDF data, you can also add VPIs to the curb feature lines where the callouts are using manual methods or using the automated methods (Elevate Lines Using Text from the Data Prep Menu). This allows you to pick the Line(s) to elevate and the Text Items to use to elevate and then define how the Text is to be used (Leader Lines or search radius etc. and then the elevation is automatically added.
2. If you have elevated e.g. the Flow Line or the Lip of Curb and you now want to create lines that are parallel at Offsets and Elevation differences to the elevated line that you have, then you can use
   1. Offset Line to enter a series of Offset / Elevations to create an offset line for the Top Face of Curb or Back of Curb etc.
   2. Use the Create Sideslope command to create a series of offset lines at defined offsets and slopes from the selected source line. This is a good command because you can create and store templates that can be used on any 3D Line to create a series of offset lines to represent all of the curb feature lines.

If this doesn't answer the question, can you provide the following

1) What is the source data that you are working with

2) Is the source data 2D and you are trying to make it 3D? 

3) Do you have all the lines and are just trying to elevate them?

4) If not the above can you provide more detail on what you mean by "Trying To Model The Curb" so I can give you a more specific solution

I will try to record a short video for you later in the afternoon to show you some of these things

If I am missing the point apologies

Alan

This Is what I get at best.  Most of the time I have to import pdf data. I will build the BOC line and then offset the rest of the curb.

Here is how I would model the curb (sorry for the quick and dirty video) I am running out of Daytime here

Alan

Thanks that was a huge help.

I love the Side Slope command. Definitely made modelling 3D Curb a lot easier. 

Tho I would like to see a Reference template added on the Options drop down list so that I don't have to type in the template name each time if the type of curb is exactly the same.

Alan,

So now I've started using the Side Slope command for my slope, I happened to come across this issue. 

My lines, for some reason, doesn't quiet follow the reference line (orange line) at the 90deg turns. 

Any ideas of why this is happening? 

This is because the Sideslope Command is computing at an Interval just like

the Corridor Commands do and it is not computing extra points at the the

right angle corners like at the location you are showing. It is good for

Curvilinear alignments but you will get this at angle corners unfortunately

(at least as of today)

Alan

On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 2:00 PM kdeguzman@landmark-sc.com <

I just ran through this today Karen and got the following on angular corners - it appeared to work well for me. The only thing that I can think of is that your source line has some additional nodes near the corner or something and that has thrown off the calculations at angle corners as mine with "Clean Corners" of right angles or angles seems to be just fine and does what is expected here. The routine is using the corridor model, and for sure will work best with curvilinear alignments, but it should project to bot internal and external corners as shown here. I used an irregular interval of 1.32' so that it would not be exactly at one of my corners and maybe that is something you could also try (Edit theTemplate properties and enter a random interval so that it is unlikely to hit at an exact multiple - and also check the original line - if it has multiple nodes near the corner that may throw off the calculations. Failing that send me a VCL of the data and a copy of your Template and I will look at it here (after Jan 4th unfortunately).

The other thing you asked for is the ability to use a Reference rather than having to import the Template file. You should just be able to use the Copy for the same purpose.  That is already supported. The only difference between the Reference and the Copy is that if you change the Reference it updates all of the References whereas the Copy is detached from its source and does not update - is it that capability that you think is missing and that you want?

Alan

Decreasing the maximum sampling distance definitely solved the issue, Alan. 

Being said, is it best to break these bullnoses from the linear curb so that such sampling distance only applies at the turns/corners and not the whole parking areas? Doesn't the surface sampling distance affect the size of the file?