Odd behavior when editing complex profiles in Open Roads Designer

The only thing to add to the great feedback Mary and Eddie provided is to always keep an eye on your Explorer dialog (OpenRoads Model tab) and the "tree" of said profile element.  This will better break down the hierarchy of elements whether 2D or profiles.   Also note this dialog doesn't quickly update in some cases.  Simply close and reopen the Explorer dialog to refresh. Element Properties will also show this list of parent/child elements in the upper portion of the dialog. 

Version actually can make a difference, because there have been many iterations. Each one introduces new capability and bug fixes (and bugs). You can always go to the Keyin Browser, type VERSION and hit Enter to get the exact version number.

Thanks for the reply! I believe the version I'm using is ORD 10.8.1.33. I think. I haven't figured out how to check what version I'm actually running yet so I'm just going off of the installer. (Aside: I'm sorry if this a dumb question, does the version of the software significantly change the output/behavior of civil geometry in ORD?)

To answer the other question, I did not create the profile in the proper location. The section of road I'm working on is rather long but I have an existing surface. I used the "define profile by best fit" tool to get started with something that is sort of what I wanted my profile to ultimately look like. Then I started moving pieces and refining the complex element that was generated from the tool. My question came from the result of trying move the complex element with the element handles. I though it was odd that sometimes those elements seen above were left behind (or perhaps were underneath?) and sometimes they were not with no obvious reason. Just for reference, those "ghost" elements were not generated by me. I had no linework before using the best fit tool.

I'd like to understand better how the features that make up the profile, and the profile itself are linked/connected/related? Could you point me to some additional reading somewhere? Is this all a result of how the "define profile by best fit" tool works?

Thanks again for the reply!

The "ghost" (grey) elements you see are actually the base elements that were used in the profile development. What you are left with after edits are called intervals. These are essentially children of the base elements. To edit the intervals, you need to edit the base elements. This is because the intervals are more or less "ruled" to the base elements.

A good example to understand this is to think of just two simple civil lines that do not touch each other. These are your base elements. You go to extend these until they intersect each other, now you have two intersecting civil lines, which are intervals of the original base elements. Say now you want to change the bearing of one of the lines. You need to adjust the base element, and then the interval will update automatically as well. When you select the interval you will see grey text that you cannot edit, so simply click your reset button while hovering over the element and it will take you to the base element's properties, which you can then edit. 

Hopefully that all makes sense, unfortunately it is a little easier to show rather than explain.   

What version (specific version number) of the software are you using? There have been probably a dozen releases of ORD.

"Move that geometry out of the way"? What are you doing, and why? Did you not create your profile in the proper location? Are you trying to make a copy of it? I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish, so I'm not sure if this is a "Works As Designed" or something else.

Complex profiles are developed based on rules applied to the basic elements. While I have no idea what you are doing or seeing, I suspect that it may be related to those original ruled elements. ORD retains relations and constraints between features so that as one feature changes, any geometry relating to it will update automatically. You may be "moving" the complex profile, but that may not change the original features. The complex is derived from the features, it doesn't control them, as far as I understand.

Hopefully someone with deeper knowledge than I will be along to better explain what you might be seeing.