MOT Construction Staging in OpenRoads (GEOPAK)

How can construction staging be modeled in GEOPAK SS4?  Before OpenRoads, we typically had plan sheets and typical sections to show staging for lane shifts, temporary pavement, crossovers, etc.  Quantity calculations were quite cumbersome for each phase.  How can OpenRoads make this more efficient?  Would each phase be modeled as a separate corridor?  Each with its' own terrain model?  

Thanks in advance,

Brian

  • Brian,

    What you are asking is quite a "age-old" issue. Here is one older solution (SS2, pre-OR) that would have to be modified a bit to work in OR, and would not get you anything but final design broken into pieces. The temporary detours, etc would still need to be created as individual corridors, but that was true both pre-OR and now.

    The one spot where OR could be leveraged as a benefit over SS2 would be with corridor clipping. Let's say you are doing partial construction and only half of the road will be built in Ph1. Well, you could reference the overall design into your Ph1 file, then clip out the part not being built. If you needed a temporary end condition along this edge, you would need to create a linear element that uses the proposed pavement (or FG terrain) as its vertical, then run a linear template (or corridor) along that element. This is just one example, there are probably others as well.

    I will also add that the good news is that Bentley is fully aware of the difficulties involved with this process and are looking into more efficient solutions to provide our users.

  • Brian, this is very helpful. Being that its being two years from this response, have you found a more efficient way of stage construction in inroads?

  • I've found that the corridor clipping tool is the best way to develop staged cross sections.  Those staged sections can then be used to run earthwork calculations.

    I develop a complete corridor, then draw shapes using the stage construction lines as boundaries and add them as necessary to the corridor's clipping references.  Once clipped, cut sections and run earthwork.

    So far, so good.

  • Is this just as simple as laying out a shape in the plan view and clipping the corridor to it? When I run the quantity report it reflects the whole corridor and not just the unclipped portion.

  • Right.  When you get the corridor quantities, the clipping is not taken into account (I think there's even a disclaimer on the report), so you will get quantities for the entire corridor.  In most cases, this is perfectly fine, we are only using corridor quantities to confirm our quantities as calculated otherwise based on the final/proposed condition.  However, we always require earthwork by stage, and running cross sections from the clipped corridor, and then running the earthwork gets staged earthwork volumes.