An InRoads user posted this question on LinkedIn:

"Can anyone help me with creating colored shapes for cut and fill areas, on a subdivision and roadways? Either with InRoads or Site Modeler? 

Thanks, Ron"

Here is the Zen Dude's response:

Hi Ron!

Too bad LinkedIn doesn't handle graphics. A picture is worth quite a number of words in our visual universe.

So, the way that I colorize Cut and Fill areas is through the use of two tools.

InRoads > Surface > Design Surface > Generate Isopach Surface

InRoads > Surface > View Surface > View Color-Coded Elevations

The Isopach command has two tabs, one for creating the 'delta' or 'differences' surface (Main), and one to control the display of the staking information in the CAD file (Staking).

The Staking tab defines the Mode that this command will use to determine the density and location of the surface 'comparison'. The drop down next to Display Mode controls the way the Cut Text and Fill Text are drawn in the CAD drawing but it also controls the resulting data shoved into the Isopach surface that is generated by this command. I usually use "All" (because this will compare all the triangle vertices from both surfaces to one another). The other mode - "Triangle" is really the "Triangle Center", which is okay, but not really directly based on the surface data. "Grid" is good if you are trying to match a site grading grid on a set of construction drawings ... but it's an estimate and has its limitations. Of course if your surface is massive you can do whatever makes sense for theDisplay Mode ... just realize that it's not just controlling the display ... but the resulting surface accuracy. You can also do this with a Fence but some of the other options are fairly intuitive.

If you only care about the cut and fill colors then toggle off the Cut Text and Fill Text at the bottom ... and just set the Display Mode to All.

The Main tab is super-simple ... just define your existing surface as the "First Surface" and the design as the "Second Surface" and then toggle on "Isopach Surface" and enter type in a name. And you may as well Triangulate Surface during its creation by toggling that switch on.

Click Apply and the Isopach Surface will be created. It's just a DTM like any other surface ... but that surface is a "differences" surface that contains the elevational delta's between the existing and design surfaces. Those 'differences' were all added to a surface model and triangulated. Now that surface can be used to display cut / fill contours, cut / fill elevations .... and color coded displays.

Oh, and once the Isopach surface is created, it's just like any other surface so you may need to add an Exterior Boundary or use the Delete Triangle command to clean it up a bit. This is always needed if there are any concave areas in the surface comparison.

The next command is the View Color-Coded Elevations tool.

There are several tabs on here that you need to glance at.

The Main tab defines the Surface and Color Mode. I would set the Color Mode toCustom so that you have full control over the choice of colors. Otherwise Automatic Mode will use the order of the colors in your attached color table.

You can toggle on the Legend and Report functionality if you feel the need. I use the settings on both of those tabs whenever they add value, and they definitely have their value at times (I won't go into those in this post).

The Color Table tab is the key to the display.

You can play around with this but to get a simple cut / fill map do the following:

1) Toggle on the Number of Colors and type in 2 (Sometimes I'll use a lot more colors than that to get a gradation of cut and fill depths).

2) Toggle on the First to Elevation and type in 0.00 (If you miss this step you can also fix this later once the entries are created in the bottom list window).

3) Toggle the others off

4) Click Generate

You should get something that defines only 2 color ranges.

You can select the ranges from the bottom of that dialog box list window and then Editthem to fine tune the elevational To and From ranges and exact Color used.

Once this command is set up ... Save that Preference so you don't have to set this up again!!!

Then you just have to Apply the command. If you have the Legend set up watch the prompts because it will first ask you to place the Legend and then it will create the color-coded map.

The combination of these two commands is pretty valuable and can create a really nice graphical view of surface comparison.

I hope this helps!!

Civilly yours,  

-zen