Trimble Business Center

Feature Request for Alignment Editor

• Best fit line for a profile
  • Take an existing profile and smooth it out based on criteria such as:
    • Vertical Curve Criteria
    • Holds on the start and stop of the profile
    • Whether it is a cut, fill, or doesn't matter.
  • Useful for rehab jobs
  • Necessary if we are putting machine control on the project
  • Huge time saver
• The ability to get the cut and fill between 2 profiles, this is very useful when trying to clean up an existing profile
• For the vertical portion of an alignment, the ability to quickly switch between elevation and slope
  • You can change the settings to allow you to enter a slope but you have to change this back and forth every time you switch the method of input
  • The match functions do not work smoothly here because you cannot use parenthesis
    • (1050-850)*-.01 - Won't work
• PVI
  • More Visual distinction
    • My 
    • My Rough Concept, above
    • Cad Example, below
      •  
  • Provide the high point and low point for the PVI
    • This is necessary when trying to maintain certain holds:
      • Catch Basins
      • ADA Ramps

Great requests Patrick - Anyone else have any views around Pats requests here. I am hoping that we will be getting some focus on Roads soon and I know the Geospatial Team are really working on how to use Scan Data as a basis for Construction Models and As Built Checks and we are working together on those workflows (which will have similar needs), so I feel we could look at this type of thing in the next development round.

Thanks for the Videos also - very helpful (what would also be good to get is a VCL file of some source data which you feel is typical for the Best Fit VAL and Cut Fill request

One comment - if you turn on Ortho Snap and Nearest Snap - you can snap to the nearest point on a line in Profile View and if Ortho is On it will draw you the vertical line and give you the vertical snap point when you are measuring.

The Object Explorer - if you selected the Ground Profile and then Select the VAL as a Reference Line and if it then read out Cut / Fill when used in Profile View along with Stn and Elevation - would that give you what you need? Would you want Cut and Fill live like Station and Elevation or only when you click a location?

In the Slope / Elevation entry of a VAL - if you key in one it would just change the other right - and so the two fields are dependent but you can enter one and then modify the other to update the first again - is that how you see that working? Would the last entered value be Blue and the computed value be Grey / Black in your eyes so that you know which one you last entered for that location.

Will be in touch 

Alan

@Alan Sharp in regards to the last portion of your response, I wanted to post an example of why this would be beneficial.

In response to what it would look like, I think something along the lines of what you mentioned above would work. I would recommend grey for previous entries (typically you do not need to go back if this is provided data) in the alignment editor and and blue for an active field (the blue would flag that this is the field you are working  in).

Pat

I just posted a response to Fred Bergstom - could you send me a set or sets of point data that are from real jobs that track the HAL / VAL that you want to create and I will try to get our Road Engineering Team to look at this Best Fit HAL / VAL requirement. The Road Geometry Tools that we have built for the Road Design stuff has a Best Fit Engine already, and the Engineers say that in a few hours they could run some tests on a few data sets to see what we get and generate HAL / VAL for me to look at. If I can get some data I will see if I can get some Engineering time to look at this and see what it would take to build a tool set to create a HAL / VAL geometry from a set of point data.

The tool needs a series of NEZ points in Station Order along the alignment that you want to create. It has Tuning Tools to set certain control parameters and it generates Lines and Arcs or Lines and Vertical Curves in both HAL and VAL (it doesn't try to do Spirals (at this time at least)

This is not a commitment to build a product tool kit, at this stage it is R&D to see what we can do and how useful it would be.

Alan

Alan, 

Here is the data you requested. I have provided two types for you:

1.) data from an engineer that only provided contours and a horizontal alignment for a road

2.) Points that were topo in the field and we used to create a horizontal alignment and profile.

Love this forum.     ✌ 

I saw you had a similar question. Hopefully this is on par with what you were requesting and thinking. This is a feature that I would use pretty frequently.

I like the picture of the Hololens. I bought one myself and think it is great. Keep the future tech coming.