adding road way features

Brice

I think what you are asking is can you bring Solid Shapes for Curb, Barrier, Guard Rails, Bridge Beams etc into a Corridor Model? If that is the question then at this time we don't support solid cross sectional elements in the Corridor Template. Having said that any shape element can be modeled in the Corridor model as a Top and Bottom element for example a curb can be modeled as a Top (Lip, Flow, Top Face, Back of curb) and a bottom (Lip, Base Front, Base Back, Back of curb) where the Lip and Back of curb are common to both Top and Bottom. When you build the Bottom you assign the Material above as Concrete and you will get a Solid Curb object made of concrete and the volume of concrete will be in the Corridor Earthwork Report. Note that the Top of the Curb would be part of Finish surface and the bottom of curb would be part of another material layer - could be Curb Base but could also be a part of a subgrade surface. You do not have to connect at the Lip and Back of Curb really either if those points are vertically above one another then the Concrete material will tie up automatically without the Vertical sides.

For things like Guard Rail which are "above Finish Grade" while the Template looks like it will not allow you to create objects above Finish you can create Material Layers in the List that actually have values above Finish Grade - so for example I will model Barriers that way if I want them in the Model but not in the Finish Surface - create a Material Layer for the Top of those surfaces and the Bottom of those surfaces if you want them filled with a Material like Concrete and then create the instructions just like you would do for any other layer. Same for Guard Rail - it depends on what you are trying to achieve though - if you are looking to create BIM Visualization of Guard Rail then I would not try to model the entire shape of the Guard Rail in the Corridor Model - I would model a line for the center of Posts at the base and top of posts and maybe another line for the center of the guard rail itself (that maybe all you need for stakeout or checking purposes - and if I wanted visualization of the Post and rail then I would use the Solid Modeling tools in the Drilling, Piling or Utility Module to extrude the shape of the posts and the guard rails. If I was truly trying to do BIM Modeling I would likely incorporate Sketchup into my workflow as a tool for modeling the solids as BC-HCE today while you can achieve some of what you want using the methods above, Sketchup is so fast at building a Solid model of complex shapes like Headwalls and even Barriers etc. that you could save a lot of time currently at least by having a license of sketchup. BC-HCE can Import and Export to and from Sketchup and can use the Sketchup models as part of visualization if that is what you are trying to achieve.

Don't forget that if you create a Material Layer called Guard Rail Post Top, Guard Rail Post Bottom and Guard Rail Face for example in a Template to create those three lines then you can create a Corridor Surface Model under your Corridor to show just those surfaces- you can then explode those surfaces if you want to get at the linework and once you have the linework you can use the Utility Module to extrude the linear features like Guard Rail and use the Piling tools to create the posts etc. You can also create a set of Polygon Faces with shading to represent the 4 sides and Top of Posts and then copy those along the alignment of the Post Bottom line that you created in the Template. You however have to rotate those objects to line them up with the line, whereas if you use the Piling workflow it will orientate the "Piles" to the line if you need that.

So depending on what you are trying to do there are approaches here that may help you. I use the Corridor model to create me Guard Rail Post and Guard Rail Face lines for stakeout and I have used the tool to build me the lines that I can use for modeling Bridges etc. It is a little "Out of the Box" thinking but you can do a lot more than you think you can. But at some point I will stop trying in Business Center and use Sketchup to model certain complex elements because it is easy to do and the SKP file import in BC-HCE brings in all of the component lines of the objects created in Sketchup which I can use for Stakeout or Checking or if I need visualization I can also use them as the basis for visualization.

Sketchup Objects can also be used to replace block objects in the 3D View - for point features (things like Trees etc) this is quite useful for visualization purposes, however Sketchup models have their origin in the Lowest East, Lowest North coordinate of the model not at the center of the object, so placing them at precise locations takes a bit of effort. Note also Sketchup models in BC-HCE are all held individually - and some models are huge (leaves on trees etc) so this can get quite graphically intense if you add a lot of Sketchup Models into a BC-HCE scene.

I am not sure what you are really asking in your second question - is this a BC-HCE question or an SCS900 question or a combination of both. And where you say Stake Value Length - what do you really mean (in SCS900 there is a Stake Length which is used to drive the Stake Marking information during Stakeout - is that what you are referring to or am I totally missing the point of your question here? Apologies for not understanding the question. Please provide more detail and I will try to answer

Alan