Cross Sections - Annotating Alignments and Stationing with OpenRoads tools

Hi Johnny,

I have two methods to offer you; Annotate Cross Sections (automated) or Drafting Notes (manual).

Using the Annotate Cross Sections command, you can enter the name of your alignment as the Prefix for the Station Object within Features (based on your image, select curb & gutter as feature to annotate).

Drafting Notes can be used by creating a new Cross Section Note, adding Alignment Name and Station from the Geometry Computed Values.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Sanders

I tried your first solution.  All it did was modify the prefix value and then give the station of the entire cross section rather than the station of the frontage road for this particular cross section.

Where is the drafting notes tool that you give as a manual way of labeling things?  I can't find it but it sounds extremely helpful.

Johnny and anyone else looking for this functionality,

I was able to get OpenRoads to correctly label my frontage road stationing to reflect the differences due to them not being always parallel with the main lanes.

The tool you are looking for is Annotate Cross sections using the feature station.  Only it isn’t very straightforward.

1. Open the annotate cross sections tool.

2. Tell Feature station to plot.

3. Select the feature that corresponds to your geometry alignment file and run the labeler. Something repeated twice with a period separator comes from your geometry file.

4. You’ll notice that the stations show up and they are different from the main lane stationing but they don’t seem to be correct.

1. OpenRoads help isn’t useful at this point as it only says “the station along the feature (essentially length).”
2. A little math will reveal that they are off by precisely the difference between the beginning of your main lane stationing and the frontage road station at which each frontage road profile starts.
   1. My main alignment starts at ML sta 945+50
   2. EBFR profile starts at EBFR sta 1031+10
      1. Labeled stations are off by 103,110 - 94,550 = 8560

• WBFR starts at 1013+00 WBFR sta 1041+65
  1. Labeled stations are off by 104,165 - 94,550 = 9615

1. You could go and add these differences to each label…
2. Or you can automate it.
   1. Create a separate alignment file for “frontage road stationing”
   2. Copy your current geometry line work and profiles into this file

• Create a dummy profile that starts 8560’ and 9615’ sooner than the original profiles for EBFR and WBFR respectively in my case.
  1. I had to extend my horizontal alignments before I could extend the profiles.
  2. The actual profile doesn’t matter; only the station that it starts at is important.

1. Attach this “frontage road stationing” file to the model that sections are being cut from
2. Re-cut sections and go back to step 1.

Let’s hope that whoever programmed this functionality makes it a little more logical in the next release of OpenRoads.

This solution no longer works. Are there any other solutions out there?