Modelling complex road networks

[Paul King]

Hi, I want to find a way to put a camber in a complex roading network, with radiused road intersections, variations in road width etc as you move along (i.e. a strictly linear/extruded solution wont work)

Basically I need to start with a slab, that follows the road edge boundaries, and bulge it upwards between the edges

Essentially, imagine a piece of Swiss cheese, with a slab defining the outside edges and holes in the middle, and now attempt to smoothly bulge upwards between the slab edges and holes.

Attempting to do this via contours on a mesh is prohibitively time consuming (and it crashes my machine after a while).

What do others do to emulate lofting or bulging in non linear perforated elements ?

[Paul King]

Hi thank you for all your effort there Ejrolon!

You are showing the same sorts of faceting problems I hit when trying.

Sadly there is no civil data - as this is just a visualization project - but it also represents a long standing frustration for me that I have never found a way to make a smoothly rounded realistic looking road intersections for my visualizations.

I think I will surrender for this project, but maybe someday an 'obvious' technique will occur to someone on here! If so, please post it!

[Laszlo Nagy]

I would probably use Complex Profile Beams for the Curbs, because Complex Profile Beams can be curved, or they can follow a 3D polygonal path and the beam segments would now join properly.
For the road between the curbs I would probably use the Shell Tool as it can be composite, it can have a Ruled surface and also a Shell can have a boundary polygon defined for it which could handle the changes in road width. Plus, the 2D of a Shell is a true 3D representation so on Floor Plan the boundaries would be correct.

[sinceV6]

Sorry to hear that. And sorry to be kind of late. Weekends are for the family

So this is a quick 5 minute test. From sketchup to archiCAD. It can be done, but there are some things that have been already said.-
1. If this is a visualization project, and spans a whole city... AC is not the tool for that. AC will help with the super fast modeling of buildings (to any LOD), but roads and such will not be as easy to do, at least not to the detail you are trying to accomplish in AC.
2. I don't think anyone will ever come up with a workflow that covers what you need inside AC with the current tools. As long as AC doesn't change its core modeling algorithm (eg, ditching GDL for NURBS) the tools will just go to a certain extent.
3. The budget part can be solved using free tools, such as sketchup or blender, to model the rest of the visualization elements, but the time issue won't if you don't know any other tools besides AC.

Best regards.

[sinceV6]

And, as you probably have already tried, like you said, using a single mesh might be the better option, with a user defined edge for the center of the road and the necessary additional hotspots for control. Just don't mind the road ends... in AC it will need to be as efficient as possible for the whole model to work considering this is visualization only.

Best regards.

[Paul King]

Thanks V6 - that gives me some hope!

Sadly you are right - I don't have time to learn Sketchup , but that looks like an elegant solution.

The mesh approach with center ridge you show - yes that was what I tried, then converted o morph with the aim of using edge smoothing function - but could never get it to work for some reason

Maybe next time!

Cheers, and thank you everybody for your suggestions !