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Draping Surfaces for Drainage Grading
Hands-on: Use Draping Surfaces to Warp a Parking Lot for Drainage
Engineering Task: Grade a Parking Lot with a Cross Slope and then a warp to ensure positive drainage.
Dataset:: Draping Surface dataset (zip file)
Most Appropriate Pre-requisite: Non-Corridor and Site Modeling course.
Video: Creating the Draping Profiles.mp4
Imagine a fairly straightforward grading requirement, but a complex curbed parking lot with lots of islands and detail work.
Computing appropriate slopes along each element would be ridiculously difficult. An easy and intuitive technique is to create a "draping surface". The draping surface provides a simple intutive - and easily changed - terrain that design elements get their elevations from.
- Category: Grading
Digital Twins - Inevitable!
Are Digital Twins really the next Industry Transformation?
Yes^n
What exactly are they - in the Highway and Site Design fields?
I don't really know yet. I'm trying to understand and I'm documenting that journey here.
Bentley is dedicated to becoming THE Digital Twin Company. A couple of years ago I asked Keith Bentley why he is not out living on a sailboat somewhere. "Digital Twins / imodel.js / iTwins Services."
Nothing makes you want to be #1 more than being #2 for a long time. This is his shot at redemption.
I've drunk the Digital Twin Kool-aid. It's coming, it's inevitable.
I've been in the industry over 30 years. OpenRoads was the biggest transformation I've seen - by far - in that time. This is bigger.
What's different about Digital Twins versus the OpenRoads Transformation is that OpenRoads occurred within the industry, Digital Twins is about integrating with every industry.
OpenRoads: look inward; Digital Twins look everywhere.
What's this mean to your company: your Total Addressable Market just became unlimited.
The challenge I'm having with Digital Twins is:
- Earthwork - the bulk of Roadway and Site Design - is at the tail end of this transformation. Other industries are well into their transformation.
- For 30 years, I've been focused on transforming Design. Much of the Digital Twin opportunities lie in Construction and Operations. "Outward" has a LOT of directions.
This sub-scope of the site is about me sharing the information that helps me understand the inevitable Digital Twins tsunami of opportunity.
- Category: Digital Twins
Site and Drainage Grading Overview
Grading
Road and Site Vertical Geometry is the Same
The Vertical Design tools found in the Vertical group of the Geometry tab encompass both "traditional" roadway geometry tools and the "detail grading" tools under the same philosophy and architecture. They are not separate technologies, they do not have separate philosophies. The tools play by the same rules and provide the same CONNECTed Results, including honoring your Design Intent.
Site Layout tools
The new Site Layout Tools do, actually, differ in their underlying architecture. The Site Layout Tools automate horizontal layout and optimize grading very quickly. Once a Site Concept is "finalized," the tools build a model using the "traditional" Bentley Civil horizontal 3D geometry. You get a model very close to a final design, except for detailed grading such as for drainage. If you need to grade to inlets or otherwise warp the design, the "traditional" Civil Geometry tools can be used to provde precise design.
Master Just Two Tools
- Category: Grading
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