Trimble Business Center

What is the best approach to manually modeling between gaps in a corridor? I have recently started adding my manually created linework to gapped sections in my corridor "finish" surface to create my "still dynamic" full finished model. This has worked great on approaching intersections and cross overs where the lanes still exist but i gap shoulder definition. However, i have inserted the below gap using a blank template so i could manually create my bridge approaches. When i attempt to add the below green breaklines to the corridor surface, I wind up with interference flags that make no sense and no surface except a few random triangles near the slope stake line.  

After checking that the surrounding linestrings on each approach were fluid and that the linestrings that match the surface were connected correctly, i decided this must be caused by the blank corridor template. After that, I added a false "through-lane" so there was surface definition to tie to, trimmed out mid section of line work and added to "finish" surface. This worked as a workaround. However, I am curious is there a preferred approach to handling situations like this or is it just a limitation of the software?

Thanks in advance,

Joe

Share the file Joe and I can take a look at it next week for you and make a recommendation

Alan

I am currently building a corridor where the baseline is the center of two way roadway with a median.  This road has a SB and NB PGL at top of curb.  At the moment i decided to do 3D line-strings and reference those line in the corridor for instruction use.  I ran into this same issue where I would have holes in my surface,  it will show no holes in the corridor.  After several times revisiting the instructions and going in different directions i tried at last to not reuse the 3D line-string reference node.  Lesson -  only use reference lines for one time use and then use new created node.  

JOe - I receievd your data over the weekend and will try and look at this and respond today or tomorrow.

Alan

Sounds good Alan. I look forward to your recommendation. Though it is a strange circumstance, I actually witness it pretty often. It appears the same situation would occur at the end of a corridor as well, as I terminate the road with a blank template.

OK - this could be a longish answer, but I will try to also show you in video what is actually happening.

When you drop a Null Template from Station XX to Station YY it effectively puts a gap in the Corridor Surface model and the Corridor Template Model. What actually happens behind the scenes is that the Triangles of the surface are still formed but are Nulled Out so that they are not displayed - this is like putting a Hole in a surface model or texturing triangles of a surface with no texture. the triangles are hidden, they are not used in computations or surface slices or profiles, but they are still there. So if you try to add linework in that area it is now triangulating your added linework to the triangles that are hidden which is why it looks non sensical from a model / flag perspective. 

You can show all Triangles of a surface by changing the surface color of the surface to RGB 100,101,102 in the Color property of the surface. 

So the rules around when you can / cannot add data to a corridor surface are as follows

1) If the linework is outside the triangulation of the corridor surface model you can add it to the corridor surface to update / extend the surface - this works well for Side Roads at T Intersections or for Driveways entering a road etc because they are at the side of the model.

2) You can add linework inside the surface area provided that triangles beneath the linework being added are not nulled out

3) You cannot add linework inside an area where the current triangles are nulled out by use of a Null Template

So the options that you have are as follows (Option 4 is my preferred approach personally)

1. Build the Bridge Gap Areas as separate Models entirely
2. Build the Bridge Gap Areas as additional Templates in the Corridor Model - you can for example place a Template at 2800.00 as a Null template, then create a Bridge Template at 2800.01 and then add a Null Template at 2900.00 and start the main corridor again at 2900.01. The .01 gaps will give no error in volume, and will not affect machine control in any way but will break the Corridor allowing a Bridge to be inserted that is not transitioned to or from at either end. This works well if the bridge starts square to the road, not skewed. 
3. If the bridge start and end are skewed to the road, then I will typically build the road right through the Bridge area and then assign a surface boundary to create a hole in the surface that cuts out the skew of the bridge area (the hole is a parallelogram type shape
4. Or you can do the following - I have video'd this as it is a lot to explain otherwise (and this is likely the best approach to this problem

Click Here to Download Video

Thanks Alan, that is exactly what i need! I don't see any reason not to make option 4 a permanent part of my workflow. I have also started digging around on the MyRockpile Community and I am excited to follow. I especially like the the navigation and how you are cataloging your responses into categories.

Thanks,

Joe

I found this on a recent project i just did.  There where nodes that were not connect and in some station would leave a gap.  You would not not it was a hair size gap between the nodes unless you zoomed in the corridor all the way in the finish surface.  after adding a instruction connect nodes.  It allowed for the holes to fill in after this and you could see area fully closed. So a tiny gap could also make this happen