Autodesk CAICE VISUAL ROADS 10 User manual

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CAiCE Visual Roads 10
CAiCE™Visual Roads®software is a comprehensive design tool that enables you to
interactively create design models for transportation projects of all types. You can use it for
projects ranging from simple roads to complex highways and interchanges, as well as
railroads, airport runways, canals, and dikes. The software’s powerful capabilities are well
suited for complex jobs with intricate details and large data sets, and its unique fragment
technology makes it completely customizable to any level of detail. CAiCE Visual Roads is
easy to use and provides robust engineering and modeling capabilities for every phase of
the design process.
CAiCE Visual Roads comes with the CAiCE Project Manager, drawing import/export capability
(DWG, DGN, and others), basic drafting tools, and main graphics engine. It also includes
the following components:
•Coordinate Geometry: Full-featured COGO functions including points, alignments,
curves, spirals, intersections, cul-de-sacs, and many other functions.
•Digital Terrain Modeling: Complete DTM creation, editing, and display, including
draping of raster images. CAiCE Visual Roads software’s DTM methodology is optimized
for large data sets such as those encountered in transportation projects. Provides all-in-
one value package optimized for your surveying process.
Primary benefits include the following:
•Adaptability to Client Design Standards: Every design organization has unique,
detailed requirements for roadway design. You can customize CAiCE Visual Roads to
support detailed local design standards, such as alignment design constraints,
superelevation application, profile constraints, and cross-section details.
•Interactive Design: The creation of alignments, profiles, superelevation specifications,
and design models is completely interactive. The design utilities include built-in user-
definable design tools that automate meeting design requirements such as minimum
radius and spiral length, superelevation application, and sight distance on vertical
curves.
•Design Modeling: CAiCE Visual Roads software’s unique fragment technology provides
a customizable method of modeling standard roadway components required for both
simple and complex road design. The parametric nature of the technology provides
flexibility for various types of projects. You can easily modify fragments to adapt to any
design criteria.
Features and Benefits

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•Earthwork and Volume Computation: Powerful yet easy-to-use earthwork
computation capabilities enable you to classify and compute volumes for different
material types.
•Scalability and VBA Customization: To meet the needs of small businesses and large
organizations, CAiCE Visual Roads can be customized to meet your standards for coding,
plans production, operations, and CAD.
CAiCE Visual Roads Features and Benefits
Feature Function Benefit
Fragments A fragment is a user-definable macro that
either inserts surfaces into the cross-section file
at a station or performs an intermediate part of
the process of inserting surfaces. You can use
fragments to analyze the surfaces in a cross-
section file to produce reports, such as a milling
and pavement overlay report for a contractor.
Each fragment can have user-defined input
parameters that determine their dimensions
and behavior in particular situations.
Fragments respond flexibly, based on existing
conditions and design parameters. They can be
customized to match your organization’s
specific components. Setting the slope criteria
enables fragments to respond to specific
conditions and automatically blend into your
design.
Using fragments, you can
assemble a typical section
model as a series of connected,
standard, predefined roadway
components. This provides an
easy way to design a roadway
by plugging in ready-made
components such as raised or
depressed medians, travel
lanes, shoulders, ditches, catch
slopes, berms, and benches.
This technology saves time and
simplifies roadway design. It
also provides interactive,
component-based modeling for
easy adaptation to changes in
conditions (profile grade, width,
cut and fill, superelevation).
Fragment technology also
enables you to develop design
models interactively. Rather
than repeatedly running a batch
process, analyzing the results,
and tweaking the input, you can
interactively develop a typical
cross-section design at one
station, save it as a template
that can be applied to other
stations, move to different
stations to graphically modify
the results, and then save the
entire job as a design file that
you can rerun as needed.
DTM modeling
and viewing
Powerful and fast DTM algorithms mean your
systems perform well even with large DTMs.
DTM features include the following:
•Ability to easily handle large data sets such
as USGS DEM (digital elevation models)
•Ability to drape single or multiple USGS
7.5-minute quad maps onto a DTM surface
model
•Simplified point and breakline editing
Extremely fast DTM creation,
viewing, and editing help
increase your productivity.

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Feature Function Benefit
•Cross-section construction
•Tagging of obscured areas
•Easy loading and construction
•Curved breaklines
•Viewing, rendering, and editing
•Freehand cross sections and profiles
•Terrain and DTM visualization
•Color by elevation
•Breakline crossing resolution
•Ability to easily combine existing and
proposed surface models
•Accurate earthwork computation using
surface-to-surface volumes
•Ability to view aerial photographs at correct
location, scale, and orientation
•Ability to drape aerial photographs onto
DTM surfaces
•Ability to map images to real-world
coordinates
•Realistic, on-the-fly renditions of survey
data
•AVI files for drive-throughs, reviews, and
client presentations
Coordinate
geometry,
including picker
controls
Powerful interactive COGO commands include
•Point editing and creation
•Intersection of geometry objects
•Street intersections
•Cul-de-sac creation
•Best-fit curve and alignment
•Manual traverse entry
•Parallel offsets, including spiral offsets
•Curves and compound curves
•Spiral, spiral-curve-spiral, and compound
spiral elements
•Point location by bearing and distance, or
angle and distance
•Ability to store curves by one, two, and
three points or by definition of any two
curve components
•Ability to store concentric, nonconcentric,
and best-fit curves (and many others)
•Graphical and interactive intersection
commands for all geometry elements
(points, lines, curves, chains, and spirals)
All COGO commands are
graphical and interactive. Picker
controls provide access to
alternate COGO commands
within other COGO commands.
You can stay in a single
command to perform multiple
COGO operations and avoid
jumping from command to
command.

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Feature Function Benefit
Profile definition •Use numerical input and interactive
graphical methods to create profiles
•Calculate vertical curve lengths to pass
through a known station and elevation
•Calculate best-fit profiles through points
surveyed on an existing centerline
•Automatically check for sight distance
criteria and overlap
•Use custom profile table with k-sag and
k-crest values
The profile definition command
offers added flexibility with tools
for interactive layout and design
consistency checks of design
profiles. It uses tables that you
define to quickly specify design
speeds and k-crest and k-sag
values.
Surface modeling
for grading plans
•Define 3D surfaces from user-defined
shapes
•Easily design building pads, retention
basins, dikes, retaining walls, ditches, gore
areas, bridge end-fills, interchanges, and
other 3D surface shapes
•Develop special grading for intersections
The 3D visualization tools in
CAiCE Visual Roads provide a
fast and interactive way to
transform existing and proposed
DTMs for site design,
commercial land development,
and complex or special situation
road design scenarios (bridge
end fills, building pads, inside
roadway corners, and so forth).
Cross-section
design
•Define proposed cross sections with a
customizable library of fragments
•Define any criteria and methodology for
milling, leveling, resurfacing, and widening
•Use design surfaces that automatically
adapt to different conditions such as low cut
and fill, high cut and fill, guardrail widening,
additional lanes, rock and special material
excavations, and changes in superelevation
•Hook design components to chains and
profiles for automatic widening, slope
changes, and ditch definition
•Use partial templates to apply reoccurring
portions to different types of roadways
•Use multiple alignments and profiles
•Develop designs interactively, with a batch
process, or a combination of both
The software’s flexibility helps
you quickly and easily define
proposed cross sections with
customizable fragment libraries.
You can also design multiple
alignments and roadways
simultaneously for increased
productivity.
Superelevation
definition
•Customizable superelevation and runoff
table files
•Support for multiple slope and special
shoulder superelevation
•Automatic resolution of overlapping
transitions on short tangents
•Support for manual definition of
superelevation, or manual overriding of
calculated superelevation
•Support for various runoff transition rules
•Allows tangent runoff distances to be fixed
or extrapolated
You can automatically compute
the superelevation transition
stations based on user-defined
superelevation and runoff tables
that adhere to regional, state,
or organizational standards. The
ability to control the pivot
location (centerline, inside edge
of pavement, and so forth)
provides greater flexibility.

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Feature Function Benefit
Drainage tools •Analyze and view surface slopes, water flow
directions, and catchment areas
•View cut slopes, fill slopes, ditches,
embankments, and limits of construction
with user-defined colors and symbols
Using your roadway design
data, you can quickly and
efficiently design accurate
drainage support systems for
your proposed design.
Earthwork
analysis
•Define roadway models and earthwork
classification tables that produce quantities
not only for excavation and embankment,
but for pavement, base and sub-base
materials, gravel fill, topsoil stripping, rock
excavation, milling, leveling, overlay, and
any other materials
•Calculate volumes for all project phases
using average end-area method
•Produce quantities for asphalt and concrete
surfaces, structural shapes, surcharge, and
any other material types
•Produce detailed, customizable volume
reports
•Define material exceptions for run-ins, run-
outs, and bridge gaps
CAiCE Visual Roads provides
fast quantity estimates that are
flexible and detailed, improving
your productivity and reducing
errors.
Quantity
estimating
•Produces detailed quantity tabulations from
a user-defined database of pay items
•Links pay items to specific feature codes in
the project database
•Tabulates quantities for all or any part of
the project
•Summarizes any selection of pay items
•Calculates quantities from user-defined
formulae based on the number of items
found, total length, total area, and total
volume
•Tabulates in ASCII reports or to Microsoft®
Excel spreadsheets
The software provides a fast
and easy way for design items
to be associated with a standard
feature and pay-items table so
that you can compute detailed
pay-items reports based on per-
item, length or area. Costs can
be associated with the pay-
items computed.
Mass haul •Tabulates mass haul reports
•Draws mass haul diagrams
•Calculates free haul, dead haul, and
overhaul distances
The enhanced plotting of mass
haul diagrams provides more
detailed comparatives with split
screen capabilities for viewing
both the plan and diagrams.
This feature also creates
accurate mass haul estimates,
enabling you to better monitor
construction and cut costs.
Stakeout reports •Creates roadway stakeout reports directly
from design cross sections
•Supports customized report formats using
ASCII text files, Word documents, or Excel
spreadsheets
You can save time with CAiCE
Visual Roads software’s user-
defined reports for construction
stakeout and easily upload to
the data collector.

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Feature Function Benefit
•Exports stakeout information directly to
industry-standard data collector formats
•Produces customized stakeout reports
through Microsoft®Visual Basic®for
Applications (VBA) macros
Redesign •Easily modify design information and run it
in batch mode
•Make individual modifications interactively
following a batch run
•Use command strings to store interactive
utilities and rerun them in batch mode
CAiCE Visual Roads enables you
to visually change design
parameters and apply the
changes in a batch mode to
automatically update the
appropriate geometric and cross
section database objects,
increasing productivity.
Custom reports
and plans
Using integrated VBA functionality, you can
create a variety of reports and drawings in any
format you choose. For example, you can use
VBA to create customized alignment and profile
descriptions, cross-section surface reports,
quantity estimates, milling and overlay reports,
stakeout reports, and cross-section drawings.
With VBA you can produce custom reports and
drawings that best suit your individual
requirements.
•Create customized reports for pay item
quantities, alignment and profile
descriptions, pavement milling, and overlay
tabulations
•Use VBA to link your project database to
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft
Access, ArcView™, and other programs
•Create Visual Tugboat®(VBA) macros—
step-by-step workflow wizards—to help new
users learn the software quickly
VBA customization offers a fast
and easy way to make CAiCE
Visual Roads adhere to your
workflow standards and
requirements. This reduces
training time and increases
productivity.
Drafting and
plans production
•Plotting—plan, profile, cross sections, and
plats
•Text manipulation, editing, and labeling
•Customizable annotations of alignments
and profiles
•Intelligent labeling of station-offset-
elevation information that automatically
updates with design modifications
CAiCE Visual Roads minimizes
drafting cleanup time, so you
can focus on data quality
instead of on data presentation.
Translators and
CAD
compatibility
•Ability to import and export data from other
civil software packages
•Complete compatibility with AutoCAD®and
MicroStation®software
•Dynamic links to AutoCAD and MicroStation
through Visual CADLinks technology
Import and export capabilities
allow the reuse of existing data
in other formats, easing the
transition to CAiCE Visual Roads
software.

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Feature Function Benefit
Database
properties
•Database designed for surveying, terrain
modeling, and roadway design modeling
operations
•Double-precision storage for all values
•Full geodetic support for state plane zones,
Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) zones,
and grid-to-ground conversions
Full 32-bit precision eliminates
dependence on the accuracy of
a CAD drafting tool and ensures
accuracy and integrity of all
digital design data.
Visualization,
graphics, and
imaging
•View contours, wireframe grids, slopes, and
drainage information in 3D
•View background files
•View aerial photographs at their correct
location, scale, and orientation
•Drape aerial photographs onto DTM
surfaces
•Use JPEG, TIFF, BMP, CMP, KODAK, and
other major formats
•Map images to real-world coordinates
•Display realistic, on-the-fly renditions of
proposed road
•Create and play AVI files for drive-
throughs, design reviews, and client
presentations
Visualization is done in real time
directly from the project
database and does not require
extensive preparation. As a
result, design modeling
becomes a visual process with
highly realistic renderings of
existing and proposed
conditions. Problem areas and
conflicts are easy to see, and
you can instantly see the results
of modifications.
In addition, visualization tools
help to make your presentations
even more effective.
FHWA IHSDM
ToolBox
You can analyze horizontal and vertical
alignment data against various safety models
defined by the Federal Highway
Administration’s (FHWA) Interactive Highway
Safety Design Model (IHSDM) software.
The software’s IHSDM ToolBox
provides the tools you need to
ensure your designs are safe as
defined by the FHWA. The
ability to quickly and accurately
perform safety checks for
impacts against proposed
design scenarios that include
design consistency, intersection
reviews, and crash predictions
is invaluable.
Autodesk, Inc.
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Tampa, FL 33619
USA
Autodesk, AutoCAD, CAiCE, Visual Roads, and Visual Tugboat are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in
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