Alignment Features new to AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2011

In the newest release of Civil 3D 2011 we have new tools to allow us to more accurately manage and design our lane transitions and our widening based on design speed and wheel base length of particular vehicles. This has traditionally been handled graphically but we will take a look at how we can now design and control this with the new tools available to us.

Above you will see that we have our centerline alignment accompanied by an offset alignment. We will pick on the offset alignment to activate our contextual tab that will allow us to use these new features.

As you can see when the offset is selected we can then see the ribbon change to accompany our selection. This provides us with all the tools available to edit and design our lane transitions.

Once we choose the automatic widening tools we will be presented with dialog allowing us to preset all of our requirements and then simply choose where we would like to see them applied.

Once our details have been specified we can execute this to make sure our widening has taken place. Now this has been dramatically increased to show how effective the tool is but when widening based on certain criteria there may be very little modification to the offsets based on what criteria you plan to use.

Automatic is one way to go about creating your alignments but there are also tools that will allow us to manually fine tune exactly what we want in our transitions and widening. Let’s take a quick look at those.

Now we can also choose curves and areas along our offsets and specify what we need with visual aid.

As you can see above we have selected a curve to place a widening. Now through our User Specified option we can choose what type of transition we need and all of our values.

As you can see as we populate the dialog with values our graphical data that is being changed is doing so right in front of you and is easy to work with due to the visual aid in highlighting.

These are tools that will greatly enhance our productivity as designers and also cut down on converting mathed out polylines to achieve the accuracy we are looking for in our radiaii in our lane transitions both in and out and also give us greater control over exactly how long or short our transitions are by providing us with detailed tools to help us become more accurate and reduce the chances of having to rework.

For those of you planning on attending our Civil 3D What’s New Webcast you will get to see these in live action!