How to control triangle length when creating a surface in roadway designer - Intersection design

Question

I am creating intersections. I have a mainline corridor, and have enabled end condition exceptions thru the intersection area to use backbones only. I then have a corridor along each corner radii. I am targeting the edge of road and the cross road centerline, and everything looks great when looking at the "features and components". I looked at the contours and see that there is an issue where the three corridors come together. I looked at the triangles made from the 3 corridors, and see that the triangles seem to not be targeting the center of the intersection as expected. We think it may be an issue with maximum triangle length, but cannot find a setting. It may be something else. Any thoughts on how to bring the intersection together would be greatly appreciated. 
 BTW, I have tried creating the surfaces separately and combined and both are an issue. I was surprised that just an individual quadrant has the triangle issue.

The Zen Dude · Accepted Answer

Dawn, I'm not sure what I'm seeing here. Is this a cross section cut along the "main road"? Is the orange line the 'surface', or are those all Components? I'm trying to put this cross section into some orientation to the plan views that you've posted earlier. I'm just speculating here, but it could be that the substrata components are not constrained to the upper level component that was attached to the Point Control, and then those sub-components didn't follow the upper component. ...but I'm just guessing without knowing where this section really is.

Derek Schmidt · Answer

It may be element stroking. You should be able to get to it from element information after selecting the fillet (or whatever curve). I assume the fillet is what you mean by "intersection" in "the center of the intersection" and your later mention of "an individual quadrant". 
 
Stroking indicates the interval along the length at which a new 3D point is established. (Stroking of 2 in a file using feet would construct a 3D point along that line every 2 feet.) In that one quadrant it may be too long or even 0. 
 
It may be an issue of whether it's a break line or boundary, etc. I'm not sure about this, but it might be worth a look, though it's probably already exactly what it needs to be.

The Zen Dude · Answer

Go to the Advanced Reply Editor... 
 
 Then Insert / Edit Media... 
 
 Browse and then Insert after it is selected. 
 
 Repeat as needed. 
 Then Post.

The Zen Dude · Answer

Dawn, it doesn't look like you are creating Transverse Features in your DTM, that's what the triangulation isn't forming correctly. Do you see the option to toggle on Transverse Features on the Create Surface dialog box in the Roadway Designer? That needs to be turned on in order for the triangulation to connect properly in this instance. This snapshot is from InRoads so it might not look just like yours.

The Zen Dude · Answer

Dawn, this is a tricky one to answer in a short post since there are a number of factors that enter into this. In order to draw a component on a cross section all of the Features of that Component have to be 'sliced' through. If you go to Component Properties, select a Component and then List, you'll see that a Component is tied to not only the alignment or path that it was created along, but it also consists of a specific number of Members. If the alignment or Members aren't available where you cut a section then you'll get no Component display because InRoads doesn't know how to construct it. It's not that it's having 'trouble', it's just that in order to display something all of the information that is needed to create the display has to be there ...at that particular section. The DTM is not really that 'independent' when it comes to a surface created from the Roadway Designer and the Components are developed. It needs that alignment in the ALG so it can reconstruct the Component relationships and draw it. It gets even more complicated when you are using Secondary Alignments, since the DTM doesn't store any of that information in it at all. I know this is just a bunch of words (sorry no graphics) ... but each one of these display 'issues' has to be looked at on a case by case basis considering the 'needs' that InRoads has to have in order to display a Component in Plan or Cross Section.