Starting to pull my hair out here. I'm using Inroads XM version 08.09.01.45
It seems everytime I make new cross sections or try to update old ones I am having all kinds of various problems. I usually can't get all of the components to display, sometimes I have to tell them to display twice before certain ones show up. Also the "Refresh" option is usless for updating Components. I have to remember to turn them off before I make changes or I end up having to delete them out of the cross sections inorder to display the correct ones.
I have some sections cut through the crossing drainage structures for my project and a few are skewed sections. Last week they seemed to be working fine but now I can't get anything to work on the skewed sections when using the "Update Cross Section" tools, it seems to ignore them. Surfaces won't display and I can't get the projected features to show up on the skewed sections. I tried recreating them and the skewed sections are initialy created fine with the selected surfaces on, but when I try to add the projected features or if I make proposed surface changes the skewed sections are ignored when I refresh.
Are the cross sections really this buggy or am I just doing somethings incorrectly that are causing problems?
Some of your problems may be related to how you are creating your proposed surface. There are options in the Create Surface tool within the Roadway Designer that can have a huge impact on the final surface.
First, some theory. When you create a surface in InRoads it gets assigned a GUID. The name is there for your benefit, but the ID is what InRoads uses to identify that surface. If you were to delete a surface and create another with the same name, it may appear to be the same surface to the user, but to InRoads it is not because the new surface gets a new ID. Any data from the old surface that is displayed on profiles and cross sections has become orphaned and cannot be changed or removed with InRoads tools. The same rules apply to features with surfaces. When you first run the Create Surface tool, InRoads creates a surface (with an ID) and them populates that surface with Features. Each feature has it's own ID (and name for your benefit). You could display this surface and feature data on profiles and sections as you see fit.
Now, the problem. The proposed surface is never exacly right on the first run, so you go back to the Roadway Designer and tweak the template, add or edit overrides, or change your grades, or whatever. Now it's time to update the proposed surface. In the Create Surface tool, if you enable "Empty Design Surface", all features, triangles, and components within the surface are destroyed and re-created with new IDs. If you haven't turned off the original features in your profiles and sections, then the old data becomes orphaned and cannot be removed by InRoads after the fact. If you don't use "Empty Design Surface", then further down the dialog you'll have the option to Replace, Modify, etc the proposed surface features. If you Replace, the old features are destroyed and new ones created (with new IDs). If you Modify, the old feature IDs are maintained but the feature points are re-defined accoring to the new roadway design. Using Modify, the links to the previously displayed profile and section data is maintained. My understanding of components is that they are not stored with coordinate data. They are defined as an association or relationship between features. If a feature is destroyed, then any components that reference that feature are also destroyed.
Hopefully, this helps more than it confuses. I tend to use Modify in the later stages of design and Empty Surface in the earlier stages. I will not put any effort into annotating sections until I switch to Modify.