Alignment Design from RefPoints

Note: New from Novapoint 2022.FP1. Available for both Novapoint Road and Novapoint Railway.

It is possible to let Alignment Design calculate a best-fit alignment based on reference points added to the Alignment Design tool. With this, Alignment Design has inherited functionality from Alignment Design from Points to analyse points and give a suggested alignment in for both horizontal and vertical geometry.

The points to analyse should be added to the Reference Points tab in Alignment Design. The points can be added with different methods, (1) from a coordinate file, (2) selected objects in the drawing or (3) manually added coordinates.

Adding reference points

Method 1 - From a file

Inside Alignment Design:

1. Go to the Ref.Points tab.

2. Select File > Open.

3. Pick a suitable file from any of the available formats (KOF, LandXML (CoGo points), PXY, GTD).

Method 2 - From objects in drawing

Inside Alignment Design:

1. Go to the Ref.Points tab.

2. Right-click on the Ref.Point table area.

3. Select Add from Objects in Drawing.

Valid objects are lines, polylines, arcs, points and blocks.

• Line, Arcs and Polylines will get reference points for a given distance. On the CAD commandline, give the distance when prompted.

• Coordinate from Point and the insertion point for Block will be added as Reference points.

Method 3 - Adding coordinates or picking location points in the drawing

Inside Alignment Design:

1. Go to the Ref.Points tab.

2. Right-click on the Ref.Point table area.

3. Select Add or Add and Pick Reference points.

Performing point analysis

When all points needed are added as Reference Points the point analysis can start, and is started from File > Create alignment from points…

All points in the Ref.Points tab will be used for analysis. Points that are too far away from the resulting alignment will be filtered away.

Now follow the instructions in the CAD-command line:

Number of iterations <50> :

Give how many iterations you want. More iterations can give a better fit to the points, but also many short elements.

Horizontal error tolerance (m) <5.00> :

Give how close to the points you want the resulting alignment to be. Too narrow tolerance can make the analysis fail.

Vertical error tolerance (m) <0.20> :

Give how close to the points you want the resulting alignment to be. Too narrow tolerance can make the analysis fail.

Minimum lift (m) <0.30> :

Lift can be used to make the resulting vertical alignment placed above the points. This is common when analyzing railway tracks.

Minimum straight line (m) <50.00> :

Shorter lines can give a better fit but also many short lines.

Max. radius for transition curves (m) <500.00> :

Biggest radius when clothoids should be inserted by the analysis.

If points for separate rails, enter code for left rail :

When coordinates file contains points for left and right track. If points are the same alignment, give empty answer (Enter).

If points for separate rails, enter code for right rail :

When coordinates file contains points for left and right track. If points are the same alignment, give empty answer (Enter).

After the analysis is done, information about the analysis is shown in the CAD-commandline, listing the number of ref.points used as source, and how many points that are left after filtering is done. A pop-up window also shows.

Viewing and saving the alignment

The resulting alignment is only temporary. To save your alignment it should be attached to a Line task in Quadri. Do this by viewing the horizontal geometry elements and choose the menu Object > Name.

You could also just simply drawn the alignment to CAD, but then it is not available in the collaboration model.

With the Novapoint 2022.FP1 version two new tools are added to the Tools-menu:

• Horizontal Offset Diagram

• Vertical Offset Diagram

They diagrams shows the alignment offset from the reference points.

The diagrams are updated when editing the alignment to help you optimize the alignment design.