I hear this periodically and it came up again today. A few weeks back I had a similar comment from another user, and I recorded this video to show them how to use and what is possible with the TBC Vertical Profile Editor. It can do a lot and may change your view on this if you are thinking the same thing - let me know what you think here.
The customer from a few months back had a project where the design of the vertical alignment had been made to dig a deeper cutting on the project so that they could take out material that they thought was there that would be usable for structural fill on the project, however when they started work they found that material was deeper than expected and no longer a practical option. So they were asking the designers for a new vertical design to revert to shallower options because they were now digging out more dirt than was needed. The engineer asked the construction team to create them an idea of what they wanted and they were trying to use TBC to create some options for the designer to consider. The redesign of the vertical alignment, and coming up with different options and looking at revised quantities was a part of that work. Carrying out “What Ifs” was also a requirement - i.e. if we change the alignment here, what happens to the quantities. The videos below show what can be done in TBC.
Take a look you may be surprised and learn something new …