Earlier this week I had a chat with a user that was refining the profile of a 3D line measured in the field to create a new surface profile for grading. They were asking how they could see the profile of the original line against the profile of the “improved” line in the same view. There are two ways of doing this
Linestrings
If the two lines are 3D linestrings you can do the following
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Select the Original Line that you measured
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Right Click and select Profile Viewer
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The selected line will open in the Profile Viewer. The Profile Viewer is using the line length for stationing and the elevations of the source line to show the profile by station.
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In the plan view - select the design / improved line
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Right Click and then hold the SHIFT key down while selecting Profile Viewer for the selected line. This tells TBC to compute the selected line as a profile that is projected into the currently open profile viewer coordinate system (station and elevation of the first line), and will display the design line as a second profile in the same window.
If you wish to remove the line from the view repeat the process above - i.e. select the line in plan view, right click and then select SHIFT as you select Profile Viewer - this will remove the profile of the selected line from the Profile Viewer window.
Alignment and Linestrings
If you have one line as an alignment and the other as a linestring then you cannot use the Profile Viewer on the Alignment and you have to use the alignment as the source line and then use the Profile View vs the Profile Viewer to achieve a similar result.
- Select the alignment
- Right Click and select New Profile View - this will open the alignment profile view for the alignment. Provided the alignment has a vertical alignment it will be displayed.
- Run the command called Create Profile Proxy - in the RPS Menu Ribbon it is in the Corridor Menu - Profile Group. This allows you to select the alignment reference (into which you want to project selected 3D lines) and to select the 3D lines that you want to draw in the Profile View. Note that the selected lines are recomputed in terms of Station, Elevation in the axis of the alignment in order to be displayed in this view. On execution, the selected 3D lines will be displayed in the Profile View.
Note you can display lines like Utility Lines or crossings like underpasses or culverts etc. in this way against road alignments. All lines that are displayed this way can be plotted in Profile Drawings that you generate.