Trimble Business Center

#enhancementrequest

@Alan Sharp

Enhancement request in the Vertical Tab, Location Type.  Has the development team considered adding under the location type drop down selection tool of adding an add elevation option of By Delta elevation.  An example would be when editing a curb line that has both 6" curb be able to add a VPI by +0.5' based upon a reference linestring.

Also curious if the development team would consider the ability to have a parametric smart linestring elevation editing ability by linking a linestring to a baseline linestring and as the baseline elevations/slopes change the parametric linestring's elevations reflect the changes along the baseline.  I am producing surface models for parking lots and site grading and corridor modeler is not always the most efficient method for these projects.

In answer to your second question - this is what the Create Sideslope command does exactly - you pick a Linestring as your baseline and then define offset lines to that using parametric controls for Offset, Slope, Elevation, Delta Elevation etc, so if the baseline changes the offset lines change also - this is like a corridor but working off any linestring or alignment element.

In answer to your first question - I assume that you are talking about the Linestring Editor - Vertical control tab. If you use the Horizontal control and switch from coordinate input to Station and Offset input, then each point can be defied as a Station (along a reference line) an offset and an Elevation or Slope (so if you want a 0.5' offset and a 0.5' elevation delta use slope and 100% or 1:1 for the slope to get your 0.5' offset vertically to the reference line - this is also parametric so if the source line moves or has elevations added the line you created will update automatically.

If applying a Vertical Control, change the vertical Control mode to Offset Slope also and this will do the same thing for a VPI only. Appreciate that this is not a Delta elevation and that you have to convert the delta elevation into a slope value but it does work today, and if you want Delta Elevation then you can do that with Sideslope command.

While I am on this subject - some people ask me for a Variable Offset Line type capability in the Linestring Editor - that is possible today when you use the Station and Offset Method of entry for the Horizontal Control

I hope that this helps - I have requested the Delta Elevation option for this also, but use Slope or Create Sideslope for now as an alternative

Alan

Thanks Alan,

That answers some of my questions.  I do utilize the Vertical Control – Offset Slope command frequently.  I personally feel it gets tedious to enter a slope offset when all I need to do is have a delta elevation of 0.5’ or whatever it may be.  I see cad dwg’s from a lot of different engineering firms, some stick to the 0.5’ offset for their curb and gutter while others draft it to the exact dimensions of the engineering standard road plan.  And since I am also staking off of our TBC files I prefer to elevate the cad linestrings in the dwg.  The majority of the cad files we receive have separate C3D features lines that the engineering firms use to generate their grading features and it is too long of a process to export the C3D feature lines to a usable TBC format.  Also in elevating the linestrings for staking purposes it minimizes missing a critical grade break points and allows me to minimize/eliminate the need to generate stake out points that clutter the screen real estate.

I have not used the horizontal control – station and offset input method for generating parametric linework.  I will test that method in generating parametric linestrings.

I do have another question regarding linestring VPI.  Would it be possible to add a feature snap to linestring VPI’s?  Currently to do so I need to right click and select end point to snap to the exact location of the VPI.

Thank you for the input.

Matt Voge

Surveyor

Jensen Builders Ltd.

Direct: 515-955-1370

FAX: 515-573-5146

Mobile: 515-573-0544

1175 S. 32nd Street

Fort Dodge, IA 50501

The snap to VPI location is already enabled, it just does not display a

visual indicator - but it does snap to VPI location accurately

Alan

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 1:25 PM mattv@jensenbuilders.com <trimble@jiveon.com>