Hola
I’m curious what other methods are out there to do what I want. A few times a year I help with corridor projects that have no design profile. Some have more strict design criteria than others, varying from nothing to full highway jobs that have to meet certain FHWA specs.
So far my luck with Optimize Linestring has been pretty bad, but I can usually get to a profile faster starting with that than a fully manual, guess and check approach… In the end I spend a lot of time playing with the profile VPI elevations and curve lengths …which I wish had grips…
I’m working (mostly AI) on a Python script to read an .XML file and build a smoother profile with user-defined parameters. Maybe a TML one day…
Thanks in advance
I have thought of this as well. I have in the past received FM road centerline as-builts that I would have to smooth out. The way I started before the Opt line, I would do a view profile of the vertical and try to manually make a vertical curve in the view profile. it was sorta tricky in the curves. Which i think if the guys in the field would have had their shots closer in those vertical curve area. I could have manually built a smoother curve or even now have the Opt Line built a good curve. The curve have to have closer points.
In the last 3 months I have been asked to create several horizontal and vertical profiles and to create a “corridor”. These are essentially build in place / field fit designs not real corridors and were to be used as multi-use pathways. I had exactly the same questions you did. “How best to do it quickly?”
I had the surveyor shoot a linestring down the CL of where he assumed the alignment would go ‘by eye’ and trying to take into account both vertical and horizontal changes. I assumed that this linestring was at the “subgrade” level.
In TBC I took this linestring and used grips/linestring edits to create a smooth-looking horizontal and kept the vertical as is. I then took this edited line and created an alignment. I used the profile view to edit the vertical grips of the alignment until I had a smooth looking vertical alignment. I did attempt to minimize cuts/fills but still have a visually smooth result.
It worked pretty well. Not particularly elegant but certainly served the purpose. Now I have 1800m of paved, 3 layer (SG, SB, PVMT) multi-use pathways.
Marshall
Hi Marshall
That’s not dissimilar from my typical workflow, except I am usually provided a horizontal alignment with no vertical profile. I convert the alignment to a linestring, then change elevation to the OG surface, then make that into an alignment again with OG as the profile.
Currently I have a 14-mile road to do and it’s …tedious…
I was asked to do a longer one essentially ‘from scratch’ although I did have OG. I used BricsCAD’s built in corridor/alignment tool. Basically, you pull in the TIN surface (in my case was OG as an XML). You then literally draw in an alignment by clicking at “PI” points basically by eye. It creates the curves etc as you click.
You then refine the horizontal by adding or moving grips. All the while it is creating a coincident vertical alignment.
Then you refine the vertical by giving it a plus/minus value to OG to reduce cuts-fills.
It was overkill for me and pretty much an experiment on my part but with 14 miles to do…the license is full and free for a month…no restrictions.
Video of the technique: https://youtu.be/4HShG9jrWj4?feature=shared
The first 10 minutes roughly shows how it’s done.
Marshall
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you could do a small Google Earth assist. You ncan eye bye the center of a road if visable. Then bring in the line as a KMZ. Optical linestring command that line if there is no HAL given.
To add on Marshall using the val in the newly created HAL. you can created a linestring in the profile view. That way I have the OG vertical and a new one. You can add the new linestring created from connecting the VPI to a new veritcal in your HAL as a append line VAL.
Francisco: In the area where I was Google Earth was way too outdated, at least 4 years.
Yes, once I had created the alignment I used the original linestring as “OG” so that I had a comparison to see how ‘smooth’ my vertical would be. For doing rough quantities the original linestring was also useful to approximate.
I have also tried ‘appending’ the vertical as you describe. The more times I am asked to “field fit” something like this the better I’ll get!
Marshall
Above Latitude 60°, anything you get from any resource is iffy at best. Might as well be Topcon Maps 
you can shift to match the project you are on!!