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Zen Illuminations is a periodic issue offered to our readers on our mailing list, to give them extra helpful tips and pointers not found anywhere else.

Over the years as project engineers, consultants and instructors, we've discovered common threads to the confusions experienced by someone not yet proficient with the software. A lot of these questions stem from a lack of understanding of one or more key basics. Without a thorough understanding of these fundamentals, higher levels of application can appear confusing and remain out of reach.

Our guides are the result of our work with InRoads since its official entrance into the civil marketplace in the late Eighties. Our intent is to present the subject of InRoads in down-to earth, common terms that you can absorb with relative ease, and with enough detail that you will understand what you are doing when you do it. It was brought to life by the insistent questioning and prodding of many of our students who wanted more material than was available in existing InRoads documentation and within the software Help.

Please take a moment to view our back issues.

Issue 77

September 29, 2010
In the recent versions of InRoads (V8i) an Autosave mechanism has been added under the Options (now called Project Options and moved from the Tools menu to underneath the File menu). On the General tab at the bottom is the Autosave files every ___ Minutes option. As usual in InRoads, a value of 0 (zero) means ignore this setting. Any other value is the number of minutes between file saving. The file is saved with an added ‘back’ tagged onto the file extension and a ~ (tilde) on the front like ~MySurfaceName.dtmback. The first time it autosaves your files you might experience a delay in the software if you are mid-stream a command, but subsequent autosaves are relatively disruption free. Of course this is very dependent on the size and number of your files. If needed later, the backup files can be renamed and opened just like a regular InRoads file. The location of the back-up file is determined by the location of the original file. If the file is brand new then the location of the back-up is driven by the InRoads Project Default settings if they are defined. If not then it uses the Windows Temp folder if it exists, and finally the main Root folder if all else fails (or is undefined). The file will continue to autosave until you save it manually. Over ten years ago an option like this used to exist, but this version has been significantly improved. Try it out!!

Issue 76

July 12, 2010
Survey Coding, Part 2 Remember from the last issue that the InRoads Survey Control Codes, DNC and RND may not produce the exact results that you expect when used along with certain field feature codes. (DNC is used to code a field shot as “Do Not Contour”, and RND is used to ‘Include as Random”.) The unexpected behavior continues to apply when using these codes in conjunction with point feature collection. When field collecting a valid random point feature coded with a DNC the rule is simple - that single shot (for example a fire hydrant FH DNC) will be excluded from the resulting surface model when created from the fieldbook. It doesn’t matter when it’s collected since single shots are considered independent from one another. When that feature, or features, is added to the DTM from that fieldbook, all the shots that are valid are grouped together. The shot, or shots, that were excluded will have a suffix of DNC like this, FHDNC. This “DNC suffix” is true for any point feature that is excluded from triangulation. There is nothing really unexpected here. When field collecting an ‘excluded’ point shot coded with an RND (for example TREE RND) the expectation would be that this shot would now be included in the DTM. This is not true. In this case absolutely nothing different occurs when the fieldbook is exported to the surface. From the testing that I have done using InRoads SS1, and described here, it is my opinion that the RND Control Code is not working properly. This Control Code does not react as you might expect on either breakline or random data. This behavior will be logged with Bentley in order to determine if this Control Code is working properly. In conclusion coding an RND onto either a linear series of shots, or point shots, produces no effect on the construction of the resulting DTM. Coding any single shot along a linear series of shots as DNC will exclude that entire feature from the DTM, not just the point coded with the DNC. Coding any stand-alone single shot with a DNC will exclude that shot from the DTM.

Issue 75

June 9, 2010
Survey Coding, Part 1 The InRoads Survey Control Codes, DNC and RND may not produce the exact results that you expect when used along with certain field feature codes. (DNC is used to code a field shot as “Do Not Contour”, and RND is used to ‘Include as Random”.) When field collecting a valid breakline feature coded with a DNC - The rule is that when any single shot along a linear field code (that is identified as a valid breakline) is coded with a DNC, that entire feature will be excluded from the resulting surface model when created from the fieldbook. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first shot, a midway shot, or the last shot along that chain of shots. That entire feature will be excluded, not just that single shot as one might expect. When field collecting an ‘excluded’ breakline coded with an RND - The rule is that when any single shot along a linear code (that is identified as an excluded breakline) is coded with an RND, that entire feature will still be excluded from the surface model, but the point Type on that Feature will be changed to Random. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first shot, a midway shot, or the last shot along that chain of shots. That entire feature will still be excluded and nothing DTM-wise is affected. In conclusion coding an RND onto a linear series of shots produces no effect on the construction of the resulting DTM. Coding any single shot along a linear series of shots as DNC will exclude that entire feature from the DTM, not just the point coded with the DNC.

Issue 74

March 31, 2010
InRoads can use a “degree of curvature” entry in the radius field. In other words if InRoads is looking for a radius, you can type in “d12” for example and InRoads will display “477.46” which is the radius associated with a degree of curvature of 12.

Issue 73

February 3, 2010
You can change the drag point for a template by left clicking over the point you want to be the new drag point in the preview window While zooming in/out with the mouse wheel, holding down CTRL will zoom only in the X-direction, and holding down SHIFT will only zoom in the Y-direction

Issue 72

October 7, 2009
In the Create Template dialog box if you have a complex template but it does not appear like all the components are showing up then be sure to toggle on the Display All Components box in the Display section of the Create Template dialog box. InRoads has the ability to convert distance units on the fly. If you are working in English units you can type in “33m” for a key-in distance for example, when you tab out of the field InRoads will display “108.27”. Use ‘m’ for meters, ‘mm’ for millimeters, “ for inches. You can also add, subtract, multiply and divide in any numeric field. And this also works during the conversion process like this: 10mm - 8” + 2m. Don’t use any spaces, just string the math together with the unit suffixes.

Issue 71

August 24, 2009
Projection systems have been added to InRoads Survey which were defined and used in Microstation GEOGRAPHICS. This only works for InRoads Version 8.09 , SP-2. The Text Import Wizard allows the importing of ASCII data for surface feature, cogo points, Horizontal alignments, Vertical Alignments, Horizontal and Vertical event points, and Horizontal Regression points.

Issue 70

July 27, 2009
Average End Area Volume may be annotated automatically in when creating cross-sections. Go to Evaluation>Create Cross Section and under the Include tab check on Annotation and Volumes. It will use the text settings defined in the Annotate Cross Section Command. The View Surface>Annotate feature command will now display the slope arrows showing the direction of the feature in the DTM. You define a Cell/Block to represent the slope arrow and may have it displayed at every vertex or specify the distance to place the cell/block.

Issue 69

June 15, 2009
InRoads has a Sight Visibility Add-In which calculates and graphically displays roadway sight distances. The command exist in Application Add-ins and can be found in Evaluation>Sight Visibility>Roadway Visibility or Surface Visibility option. The Roadway Visibility produces an ASCII report of Station, Offset, Elevation and Obstruction based on setup parameters. The Surface visibility will let you select a point in the surface and a target point and tell you if the target is visible or not. In InRoads 8.9 SP-2, Additional parameters have been added for Annotation in the Profile>Annotate Profile command. They include options to annotate Curvature, Horizontal and Vertical Slew, Cant, Speed and Rail Elevations in the Profile.

Issue 68

March 6, 2009
In InRoads 8.9 SP-2 the Audit trail file in InRoads Survey will now include the Field book name in the file. To turn on the audit trail file in InRoads Survey go to Tools>Survey Options and under the File Options check on Add/Edit Audit Trail. In InRoads 8.9 SP-2 the Survey feature filter will now honor select ranges for numeric coding. Go to Fieldbook Data and select Survey Style Filter and change the Properties to Numeric Code.

Issue 67

November 24, 2008
Map Check report has been added to the XML report options for InRoads v8.9 SP-2. Go to Tools>XML Reports>Map Check and select the alignments to create the XML file for. Alignments may be open or closed and the output precision and direction may be specified. The XSL file may be found under the MapCheck folder in the InRoads Report Browser, and only one XSL file is listed there called Mapcheck.xsl In InRoads 8.9 SP2 the Import Survey Data>SDR33 has added the ability to specify the coordinate sequence of Easting/Northing on import by using the Tools>Variable Add-in Manager in the Formatting Section. They have also increased the number of characters for the description field to 31.

Issue 66

September 11, 2008
Map Check report has been added to the XML report options for InRoads v8.9 SP-2. Go to Tools>XML Reports>Map Check and select the alignments to create the XML file for. Alignments may be open or closed and the output precision and direction may be specified. The XSL file may be found under the MapCheck folder in the InRoads Report Browser, and only one XSL file is listed there called Mapcheck.xsl In InRoads 8.9 SP2 the Import Survey Data>SDR33 has added the ability to specify the coordinate sequence of Easting/Northing on import by using the Tools>Variable Add-in Manager in the Formatting Section. They have also increased the number of characters for the description field to 31.

Issue 65

August 21, 2008
Parametric labels can now be input into an ASCII text file and bulk loaded. From the Roadway Designer>Tools>Parametric Constraints press the Import command to load the ASCII text file. The file format of the text file should be Label | Type | Start Value | Stop Value | Start Station | Stop Station. Asterisks may be used as comment lines, fields are separated by |. *Label |Type |Start Value |Stop Value |Start Station |Stop Station *------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thickness |Distance |- 0.05 |-0.10 |10+23.00 |26+45.00 InRoads 8.9 SP-2 will now allow the triangulated surface to show in the cross-section display window for the Roadway Designer. Go to Roadway Designer>Tools> and check on the toggle option in display for Triangulated Surface.

Issue 64

July 30, 2008
InRoads 8.9 –SP2 will now allow a direct method of producing reports from the Roadway Designer. In the Roadway Designer go to Tools>Design Input Report.ird. This will create an XML file which will utilize XSL style sheets created in Roadway Design. Defaults style sheets provide for Corridor List, Roadway Design Super elevation to Event points, Roadway setup, Template drops, and Template Drop Constraints. InRoads 8.9 SP-2 will now allow the annotation of drafting notes for Pay Item Name, Code and Description for surface features.

Issue 63

May 22, 2008
When viewing InRoads 8.9 SP2 XML reports, a "cookie" is stored on your machine. This cookie contains information regarding the last browser reporting session. These items include the Format Option settings, the last source (XML) file retrieved and the last format file (style sheet, *.xsl) used. You can delete your cookie from the temporary internet files and the options will revert to the default settings. When using InRoads 8.9 –SP2, Any InRoads Group command that manipulates the view will now maintain the current active z. The display depth will be fitted as before, and then expanded to include the active z if necessary.

Issue 62

May 19, 2008
InRoads Version V8.09 Service pack 2 is now available from Bentley. This version has added new commands such as the Horizontal Curve Set > Table Editor which allows edits of a horizontal alignment within a table format. This command only works with simple alignments containing linear elements, simple curves, and/or Spiral-Curve-Spiral curve set elements. In the Tools> Variable Manager> you can check on the Tools – Simultaneous Tracking option which will allow you the ability to track the active horizontal alignment and the active vertical alignments at the same time when using the Tools>Tracking>Horizontal or Vertical Alignment commands.