Staking Roads

[Bruce Dawson]

Hi again everyone,

I am going to be staking a road in a few weeks. I am hoping I can just get the design data from the engineer and import it into J-Field. My question is what do I ask for? A land XML file? The Data Exchange option only seems to support TXT (ASCII) files. The alignment and profile are not difficult to enter manually, but the xsections confuse me a bit. There will be supers, widening, and other fun stuff. Looking through the manual, I am not sure if I have to enter all that data by hand (which would kinda suck).

Ideally, I would also be able to stake to any station, at any level of the construction. Slope stake, subgrade, base course, top course, etc.

Bruce

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Just updated and took another look to see that Data Exchange Import does support more than TXT. My bad. So would XML be my choice to get all the data I need?

 

[Shawn Billings]

You will want to ask for a LandXML file. We support LandXML alignments.

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Cool Shawn, thanks!

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Well, I got the Land XML file from the engineer today and....zip. I get nothing after import, no points, no alignments, no profiles, nothing. I know these things don't usually work all that great, but wow. Thought I would get something..

 

[Adam]

Can you attach it? I will try to import it.

 

[Shawn Billings]

Might be coordinate system related. What system is the xml file in?

 

[Bruce Dawson]

I looked at the XML and I don't see any datum specified, but the points shown are in the right locations for Washington State Coordinate System North Zone. It also looks like it's just a finished surface with no profiles or alignments. Maybe I need to ask for specifics like profile and alignments? Will the surface be transferable?

Not sure how to upload it, the "Upload a File" button does not allow XML extensions. Do I have to ZIP it up first?

Zipped it up.

 

[Shawn Billings]

We don't do surfaces yet. Has to be an alignment.

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Okay Shawn, that makes sense. So can I get horizontal, vertical and maybe cross section data? Not sure really what to request.

 

[Shawn Billings]

I've only worked with alignments, I haven't tried cross sections. I'll try to ask about that tomorrow.

 

[Mikhail Drakin]

We currently support loading only horizontal and vertical data from LandXML, no cross sections. Coordinate system data is ignored (except for measurement units - feet or m), numbers are taken as is and attached to coordinate system of destination Page.
If you attach a file with horizontal, vertical and cross-sections data here though, I'll see if it can be supported with reasonable effort.

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks Mikhail, attached is the current XML sent by the engineer. I asked for alignment, profile and cross sections. I tried importing into my LS, but got a single tangent of 489.593 feet long (perhaps the first segment?), no profile and no cross sections.

 

[Mikhail Drakin]

Bruce,
We currently support working with only one alignment at a time, so only the first segment in the file is imported. I could implement something like a batch import so that each alignment goes to it's own destination file. But our data structure does not support the whole range of cross-section specifications used in your file (in particular, we support only single cross-section surface, so that the whole model is actually 2.5D, not 3D), and I also doubt it would be easy to handle the large number of crossections stored in that file. So for the time being I can only suggest exporting only single alignment into a LandXML file to be able to import the centerline with profile, and then keying-in simplified cross-sections.

 

[Bruce Dawson]

Mikhail,
I don't think I can make the XML import work for this job and you have bigger fish to fry, I suspect. I can just get points for the stations I need to stake and work with that. For the future, if I might suggest it, I would like to see XML work like this:

1) Alignments imported as a continuous entity. Tangents, curves, spirals, whatever. Stationed appropriately, with equations handled. Multiple alignments handled as separate alignments in the list.

2) Profiles imported in the same way, tied to the alignments.

3) Cross section data imported and tied to the alignments. Perhaps separate "surfaces" or other term for the different lifts of the design (subgrade, base course, top course, paving). Widening and superelevation would be handled by the cross section data.

This would give us, I think, the ability to stake points by station-offset anywhere in the design cooridor. We could place catch basins at an odd station and offset and elevations would be interpolated between cross section points. This could also be handled by a surface, I suppose, but most of the time I am just staking within the catch points on a road. Stuff outside that area is less critical for elevation and could just be done with standard staking offset.

Thanks!

Bruce

 

[Mikhail Drakin]

Alignments are already imported as a continuous entity with profiles tied to them, just only one alignment per import. I've put the option to import all alignments from an XML file at once in the todo list. As for cross-sections, I do not know when/if it can be implemented, as it requires major rework.