Finish Strong Friday: "The Disappearing Curb" - Using Offset Assemblies for Perpendicularity

For this week's post, I decided to pull out a crowd favorite from my previous blog and share on Civil Immersion.

The problem is simple:  how can I model a curb and gutter shape around a curb return that maintains perpendicular to the return instead of the baseline horizontal alignment.  The answers are many:  intersection wizard, manually building your own "intersection wizard-like" regions, multiple corridors, or grading objects.  I'm sure there are more, but you get the point.  Offset Assemblies give us an additional option and allow us to model a simple intersection in a single corridor region.  You need an alignment to control the horizontal of the Offset Assembly object-which isn't a problem since you will generally have the curb return geometry.  The trick is controlling the vertical position of the Offset Assembly...

Check out the video below to see this workflow in action.

-Alan

Comments

[Joan Martinez Serra]

Another way would be extracting the corridor Feature Line and using it as a new BaseLine in the same corridor (new in 2018) instead of using Offset Assembly.

In fact, Offset Assembly doesn´t work fine when the alignment of the BaseLine doesn´t have curves. Corridor Feature Line as BaseLine resolve this. (similar when you creates a retaining wall).

[Alan Gilbert]

Thanks for the comment Joan! While I mention this could be done using another baseline in the video, I should have mentioned the new 2018 functionality that allows feature lines as baselines. I will add this to my list of future posts (and will give you full credit for the idea :-)). Take care,
-Alan