Trimble Business Center

All,

I have been reading through several feeds when it comes to roadway culverts and how to get them to show up in template editor view and what not.  To me this seems like a real hot topic and I would like to add my two cents if you will and see what other say and also what Trimble has to say about it as well.

For years I have been wanting to add my roadway culverts into my corridors so that I can easily see them, adjust them and above all check to make sure you have the required cover needed.  I have tried using generic ifc models to do this but you can not reference them into the corridor that I am aware of.  I have built surfaces to show the top and bottom of the pipe and referenced them into the corridor but that is a real hassle.  I have even been told to use smart text to do this.  But this is supposed to be a molding software, or at least I thought and with everything being all about BIM theses days, the above mentioned methods seem archaic to say the least.

Call me crazy but i think you should be able to create a culvert ideally with a FES if needed using either the utility model or not but, make it an ifc so that you get the wall thickness and the bells of pipe to show up properly.  Append it to the alignment, corridor or reference it into the corridor I don't care.  Tell it the station it sits at, the offset from cl to end of pipe and the elevation for one end of pipe and the slope or elevation of the other end of pipe.  Have it show up in the template editor so you can see it and take measurements from sg to top of bell if need be.  You can adjust your ditch then to make it work, and ideally it would be nice to modify the pipe as well in that view!

This hand drawing pipe in a cross section view is so old that I am disappointed that someone has not come up with something better to date.  If at first you can only create them perpendicular to the roadway fine.  But be working on being able to create them at a skew as well!  This is something a lot of do on every job we model or design.  It is also a very important detail as well.  I think it should be easier than it is.

I would love to hear your feed back!