Surface Road Cut & Fill Calculations
The Create Surface Roads screen is used to create roads on a reference topography, using a reference line and various parameters describing road profile and cut and fill batters.
After running the command, the Create Surface Roads dialog is displayed in a dockable control bar.
Cut and fill volumes are calculated throughout road generation and
topography adjustment.
Centerline-based Cut & Fill
Initially, the volumes are calculated from the position of the reference lines. Volumes are dynamically updated during reference line adjustment. You will be warned if a reference line does not lie completely within the topography boundary.
An initial estimate of cut and fill volumes is based on the areas between the road profile and the topography.
This initial estimate will be updated in response to centerline edits, even if the Road Elevation view is not the current view. However completely closing the Road Elevation view will prevent any subsequent estimates from occurring.
This uses the area between the road centerline and the topography multiplied by the road width, to get the initial estimate. This won’t take into account batters or more complicated road cross sections, but may be sufficient for initial placement decisions. Volume estimates via this method will be accompanied by a warning: “Estimated from centerline”. If areas could not be calculated, usually because part of the centerline runs outside of the topography, the volumes will be reported as <invalid> and a message shown: “(Part of the centerline is outside the topography)”
Precise Cut & Fill Volumes
A geometric calculation is performed after batters have been generated.
This is more precise, and overwrites earlier estimations. If errors have occurred which prevent the calculation of valid closed solids between the road, batters and topography, then the associated volume may be reported as <invalid>.
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