Menu Options
N4ce Professional
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n4ce Professional Design Options
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In most normal circumstances you will be measuring detail and creating models with a DTM, Contours and possibly sections. All these facilities are provided in the n4ce Lite edition and are discussed elsewhere.
With the Professional edition tools are introduced that allow you to create your own strings, models and hence designs. Backcloths are used here, including the Dedicated CAD Backcloth. Feature strings from one Model can be copied from the Backcloth of another.
In the picture of a quarry, shown opposite, someone has to design the Bench and Battering. The basis for most designs are strings of points. This includes Profile Templates, where a cross-section is swept along an alignments and interface strings where zero isopachytes (height difference models) are identified. These and much more can be achieved here. |
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Options are available when creating New Models, including Merge and Point Grid. In the former, you will be invited to create a combined DTM model by burning one model into another, with the base model having both strings and triangles replaced by the footprint of the second model.
The Point Grid model is a regular spacing of points that is created by overlaying a mesh on top of an existing DTM model. Levels are taken off the DTM. |
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The options starting with Parallel in the Features menu relate to Design options, and in general generate new strings, or modify existing strings.
The Densify option for example allows you to create additional points along a string with options to calculate new points where strings intersect with DTM edges.
A Heights option allows you to re-calculate levels of points to a DTM or simply raise them by a fixed amount. What is really useful here is the use of the pick options Element, Rectangle and List.
The Chainages, Bearings and Radii options use the Dimensions to store details of points along a string. These Dimensions can then be used in Text Macros and Tables. |
The last two options in the above menu are linked to Alignments. Alignment Projection allows you to project sections from a string with chainage and bearing dimensions onto other feature strings to calculate intersects. The originating string could come from a Bentley MX GENIO import or our own alignment tools.
Profile Strings use pre-defined section Templates to sweep out strings parallel to a seeding string. If the seeding feature is the centre line of a road, this is a very quick way of generating a simple carriageway, or a retaining bund for flood protection. |
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Note the fan angle smoothing out the corners.
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Two options that you may find most useful for bund creation or bench and batter creation.
Parallel allows you to generate strings parallel to an existing feature. This can be along the whole length or just part. Heights for the new string can be calculated in a number of different ways, as indicated below:
Batter is useful if you're creating strings that need to interface with other surfaces. In some ways, it's a manual version of the Profile Strings, where instead of using predefined Templates you are introducing individual strings. But of course there are further options, as shown below:
| Surface Intersection defines the Cut/Fill balance line. This is the Zero Isopachyte between two surfaces. However, we go one stage further and take into account Group Depths, if you've used them for depth of construction and Formation surfaces. See Dedicated CAD Backcloths and Tools for more details. |
