Modelling Railway Track

Hello,

I have 3D linestrings representing the running edges of a railway line.

I would like to turn them into 3D rails.

BUT My linestrings have too many vertices - I would like to reduce to about a third the number of vertices.

AND extruding the rail profile along the linestrings takes for ever and makes the file unmanageable (solid by extrusion)

Can anybody help me  ?

Three things :

Reducing vertices in linestring.

Modeling rails - is extrusion the correct way to go ?

General advice about modelling railway track.

Thanks

  • Another caveat, my background is building design, so not as familiar with rail type projects. Thanks!



  • Hi Fraser,

    I hope that the Wiki that Paul refers to below will help you to simplify the line string you are using to generate the rail.

    Regarding your additional questions above - no, I cannot personally help with Open Rail since my focus is on AECOsim/Building products.   I only mentioned it since Open Rail was designed for the purpose of modeling rail so could offer tools and functionality beyond what's available in AECOsim and/or MicroStation. I would do the same if one were to inquire about modeling a large piping system for a chemical plant (OpenPlant) or a complicated electrical raceway system (Bentley Cable and Raceway).

    To some extent the same applies to your question about reducing the number vertices for an existing line string, mainly because modifying 2D linear elements isn't the type of thing that the building support team would normally handle.  I do understand though that it can sometimes be difficult to know which Bentley team (or Community in this case) would be best suited to help.  AECOsim, like most other Bentley "Power" products, includes the same set of base MicroStation functionality. 

    Regarding your last question, I am curious myself!    Has anyone reading this thread ever modeling railway using AECOsim or plain MicroStation? 



  • I'm sure what I did here is really simplified compared to a real project. So I have to have a disclaimer that I haven't used this methodology in a real world project. I simply think about a modeling solution for a design. I often think of some 'out-of-the-box' modeling in ABD as a sculptor creates sculptures from marble, for example, and use the tools in that fashion.

    Note that Family and Parts can be created for these components. 



  • Hello Fraser,

    Try this method to remove vertices from a linestring: https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/microstation__wiki/22208/remove-collinear-points-or-vertices

    You don't have to turn on the copy setting in the Tool Settings.

    I see in your subsequent post you are in V8i Ss6. Solid by Extrusion would be the tool I would use. In CONNECT Edition we have a place profile tool, which of course doesn't help in V8i Ss6.

    Maybe after the vertices are minimized the extrusion method doesn't take so long and make the file size unmanageable.

    This might be overkill but a linear form could be modeled, basically a rectangular form, and then create a shape or linestring of the 'negative space' of the profile of the rail shape. Then use the Cut Solids by Curve tool to 'sculpt' the rail shape out of the linear form.  

    I'll post a video.