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Chapter 3 Working with Profiles and Vertical Alignments
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Overview of Working with Profiles and
Vertical Alignments
Use the Profiles commands to create existing ground and finished ground
profiles. You can sample a surface, a file, or cross sections to obtain surface
data from which to generate the existing ground profile. You can create a
full profile with a grid and labels, or you can create a quick profile without
vertical grid lines or station elevations. You can also create profiles that
represent subsurfaces.
After you create the existing ground profile, you can design the finished ground
profile by drawing tangents and vertical curves to represent the finished ground
centerline and/or ditches and transitions. Then you can define these tangents
and vertical curves as a vertical alignment.
After you define a vertical alignment, you can edit the alignment from within
the Vertical Alignment Editor. The vertical alignment data is used with the
horizontal alignment data to define the finished ground cross sections.
Where the Alignment and Profile Data
Are Stored
The alignment folder (c:\Land Projects R2\<project name>\align) contains all
the files for the horizontal alignments in the project. Each alignment that has a
profile or cross sections has a unique folder under the \align folder. This
subfolder contains all of the profile and cross section files for the alignment. For
example, if you have an alignment called MAIN ST in the project called P101,
you can find all of the profile and cross section files in the \P101\ALIGN\MAIN
ST folder.
The files that are stored here include the following types: *.dcn, *.err, *.icn,
*.sed, *.smp, *.tcd, *.tcp, *.tdf, *.vrt, *.xsd, *.xsp.
Each profile, when inserted into the drawing, contains a profile block. This
invisible block contains attributes that are necessary to locate, draw, and read
information from the profile. If you wish to view the attribute block, use the
AutoCAD command ATTDISP (attribute display) to turn on the invisible
attributes and zoom in to the lower-left corner of the profile.
NOTE
To see the block, you may need to zoom in tightly because this block is
very small.
Additional profile settings are located in the <dwgname>.dfm file; this file is
located in the \<project name>\dwg folder. The profile settings contain the
drawing defaults for profile layer names, scales, and label increments.