How to automatically calculate volumes for multiple soil layers in OpenRoads PowerCivil?

 I have 3 stacked terrain models (1. Existing Ground, 2. Topsoil Stripped and 3. Mountain) and a corridor cutting through all three terrains. When calculating End-Area Volumes, is it possible to automatically calculate/devide the Cut volume into these three soil-types, based on the terrain-models?

Parents Reply Children
  • I am currently using ORD version 10.09 and trying to approximate the workflow discussions in this thread.  My geotechnical technician has brought in the old gINT data and built the subsurface meshes per the Learning Path "QuickStart - gINT Civil Tools" but it does not provide a workflow for pulling out earthwork quantities by material type (needed in this case to determine what material is suitable for which fill application).  I'm assuming it is the generate cut-fill volumes command, but this command is ignoring the subsurface meshes created by the geotechnical workflow.  This intro video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YohJqGCVMDE) describes volume calculations using those meshes, but I'm not finding any further methodology or workflow on how to accomplish that.

    I've attempted to determine how to create a terrain from each of the meshes, but so far have found nothing.  The tool create from design meshes seemed promising, but I think that is looking for a corridor-generated mesh, etc. or otherwise didn't work for this application.  

    Other than tracing the top of each strata, or trying to copy the meshes and drop them to components, or some other method of breaking up the mesh and creating a terrain from those elements, is there another method for doing this? I'm hesitant to go through all that effort, in no small part because I'm still not certain if this will even do what I'm trying to get it to do...

    Or is none of this useful, and this functionality is still really not available in ORD two years after this post?  Any videos on related workflows someone can recommend?

  • Hi Josef, I've recorded this video that might be useful: https://youtu.be/BQ7eUMZu_cY It's still a WIP so there is no audio but the workflows is quite straightforward.

    From the gINT Boreholes, create the Terrain Models. If they don't cover the whole area of the project you may need to add some interpretations. Then create the closed meshes (new functionality in 2020R3) between these TMs with the right feature definitions and you will be able to calculate the volumes for each substrata.