Civil 3D Corridor Site Design Considerations

We can employ Corridors to solve a lot of significant and common site design problems in Civil 3D. Albeit we do need some skill and practice. Corridor design methodology is more productive than the classic Feature Lines only approach. After all, Corridors can produce related and managed Feature Lines in bunches.

That nifty trick alone says we should consider and take Site Design with Corridors seriously.

The good news about Site Design Corridor is that Corridors generally create better-managed and more flexible or adaptive design. In other words, we can achieve better design optionality for the same man-hour investment.

Site Design with Corridors

The bad news is that Feature Lines only methodology is familiar ground for most long-term Autodesk civil product users. Linear based design from breakline type primitives is a task most of us can do in our sleep. The old friend works.

Corridor complexity apparently appears to mean we have more collected stuff to plan, maintain, and to consider. Why bother?

One of the common sense principals of a sound investment is that delayed gratifications pays.
Site Design Corridors are a case in point. Eheh.

 

Site Design Corridor Considerations

Dynamic Offset Alignments and Widenings work well to help us solve many basic to advanced site design grading problems. This simple planar parking lot shows us the least of the potential benefits.

Site Design Corridors do require a more managed process and understanding of the nuances of the Civil 3D Corridor engine.

Since 2018+, classic Corridor Alignment and Profile pairs are not the only way to generate Corridor Baselines. Feature Lines work as well. That doesn’t mean Feature Lines are easy to create, manage, and maintain in our site design project.

Yes. Civil 3D production work is always a Project.

Corridor Code Set Styles allow us to effectively produce the managed Sets of Feature Lines. We need both the Code Set Styles and the companion other Styles to make the processes and our design choices easier. The Framework for Civil 3D can help.

Manage the Lust for Detail

For many Civil 3D users, it appears that it is way too easy to get sucked into detailed surfaces from Corridors too quickly.

Many Civil 3D users tend to add details into the initial stages of the complex and multi-step design process that Corridors best are adapted to deliver. The quantity of detail that is potentially available from a Corridor model often can become simply overwhelming.
That can certainly get in our way.

The video above clearly demonstrates that the Frequency properties inside our Site Design Corridors is particularly important for us to learn to manage effectively. All too often more application of more applied Assemblies with their collection of Subassemblies and resultant Feature Line output creates unnecessary complexity problems for us.

If you find yourself weeding extracted Corridor Feature Lines all the time, you might want to consider showing some restraint.

We don’t necessarily need or want lots of them right now and right away. Here I mean both the number of Feature Lines and the Point Code related detail in them.

The wisdom of when is just as significant as the know how to do it.

Mission Critical Point Identification Benchmarks

We want our design Assemblies applied in the most important and significant design locations. These are important for Civil 3D users to learn to identify quickly in grading site design.

No one said we must simply abandon tried and true grade by points heuristics (method and practice) only because Civil 3D so strongly favors linear methods these days.

An Assembly Never Works Alone

Assemblies always seem to run in packs in case you never noticed. See the recent Civil 3D Assembly State Management post.

Replaceable Sets of Assemblies are important design production tools we need to develop and maintain. Ok. We also need to learn the skills to replace them in our Corridor Regions on-demand as the current design and/or publication need requires.

A managed project evolution from simple Sets of Assemblies to the more detailed Sets of Assemblies should become a new Civil 3D site design norm for Corridors.

The Power Beyond the Code
Get the Framework for Civil 3D Release 8

 

Grading with Site Corridors Posts