Civil Accudraw Issue

I'm starting to get a better understanding of the civil tools but I'm having some difficulty using Civil Accudraw with horizontal elements.  In a 2D plan view rotated to my baseline (not North), I'm trying to draw a transition taper using horizontal geometry tool line between points.  The line needs to be 200 feet long with a 5.5' offset to go from the centerline of the road to the back of left turn lane.  I set Civil Accudraw to DX DY.  When I click to the back of my left turn lane, I hit V to rotate the civil accudraw compass to my view.  I then type in 200 feet and 5.5' offset.  It places a graphic in that looks correct for the transition taper (pictured below). 

When I click to accept it places the line at a different location off in space (pictured below).  It appears to take my inputs and adjusts them based on the north orientation.  Has anybody ever seen this before and is there a way around this?

  • If I had to guess, even though your axis is rotated, it is positioning the point according to the primary axes.

    For what you're trying to do, I would consider using a different tool. Do you have access to a tool called Variable Offset Transition? You might be able to use that for what you're trying to do. Also, try using dStation and dOffset (or just dStation and Offset) instead of dX and dY.

    Answer Verified By: David Neidig 

  • David, you are on the right track but incorrect option in civil accudraw.  Derek is correct in stating that with Civil Accudraw X,Y always means X,Y regardless of screen rotation.    DX,DY would fail for your workflow if the alignment was curved, anyway.

    To do what you want you could use the Variable Offset Transition tool as Derek notes and this is probably the most efficient method for what you are doing.

    In Civil Accudraw though, there is a DSta,DOffset method.  It is not configured out the box but you can add it to your preferences in the Civil Accudraw preferences.  Works similar to DX,DY.  You will want to spend a little time practicing since the mouse clicking is a little more complex.  When using DSTA and DOFF you must define the alignment used for the stationing but yu must also define a point for the delta measurements.  Thus, the click sequence for defining origin goes like this

    1. O shortcut or click Origin in the Accudraw toolbox to start the process of defning origin
    2. Pick the alignment used for station and offset
    3. Then click a point (usually snap to something) from whence the delta station and delta offset are measured.

    Robert Garrett
    Senior Product Engineer
    Bentley Systems Inc.



  • Has anyone been able to reproduce this erratic civil-accudraw behavior? Our office has many issues with civil accudraw's behavior, mostly it's inability to properly interact with accusnap. I would love to here that these issues are being worked on and we can look forward to a better experience in upcoming releases.
  • Here we are at the end of 2022 (6 years after this post) and Civil Accudraw doesn't work one bit better.  InRoads had a "locate intersection" tool.  Typed in station and offset and in the 20 years and 4 million, 937 thousand, 678 times I used that tool, it never messed up one time.  It had 100% functionality.  In OpenRoads, using Civil Accudraw is a complete toss up.  It MIGHT work 1 time out of 100.  Bentley, you really messed up and not only did you miss the bull's eye, you missed the whole wall that target was mounted to.  Thanks for making our jobs as designers so much harder and making us want to just become ranchers instead of dealing with this crap every day.