Any way to reflect surface analysis in Profile view?

[tntdraftsol]

Greetings all!

I have an end user that has a project where the engineer is requesting to label the existing grade profile where the slope is greater than 10% for segments longer than 15'. At first I did not think there was a way to accomplish this except by hand and that would be a very tedious process. Then a thought occurred to me that in a plan view we can run a slope analysis on the surface and use a color scheme to denote the different areas of the surface based on whatever range we put in the analysis. Does anyone know a way to reflect that analysis in a profile view? If not, does anyone know of another way to depict this condition, or should I suggest to the engineer that a plan view of the surface with the analysis layer of the style turned on is the best we can do? any and all suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks for reading!

Mike

[MMccall]

Greetings Mike,

The 15' limit can be done by just setting a weeding value for the profile line labels.

The 10% limit can be done by making use of line labels styles ability to not show negative values. Instead of using the 'tangent grade' for the label component we're going to make one of our own using an 'expression'. This expression with first check the slope of the line, is its slope is more than, or equal to 10%, then it will return the current value of the line, if its less than 10%, it will return a value of -1. The -1 will not be labeled as the component is set to not show negative values. To deal with negative slopes in excess of -10% we'll set the expression to use the absolute value of the slopes. Once the expression is made it will become available as a component for the label.

Attached is a simple dwg with a profile to illustrate. I named the expression 'Grade'.

[tntdraftsol]

MMccall,

Thank you for your response! That expression is quite slick. The only hiccup I had was that for some reason when I used a weeding factor greater than 2', no labels would display. The only reason I can think of for that to happen would be because it is an existing ground profile and there are so many grade breaks it gets confused, but your expression does get me a lot closer. when the weeding is set to zero, (see image) I can see the sections of the profile where I have a slope greater than 10%. I can then use some form of annotation to denote the areas of interest. It may not be ideal, but it is still better than just going through by hand.

Thanks for your help.

Mike

104625

[MMccall]

Hmm, yea, the short segments derived from a surface. A label style would need to span multiple segments that exceeded the slope and then decide if it was more than 15'.

Is the purpose to just draw attention to those areas? If so, I have an idea. Edit the expression to return a value of 100% if the slope is over 10% and 0% if its not. Now make a label style with just a line component that will overlay the entire length of the segment. Give this line a distinctive color and then use the expression as the percent length of the line component.


Revision: This did't work. The percent length won't accept a value from an expression.

New attempt: Use a fixed length line, anchored to the segment 'start' and use the expression to define the length ... having trouble defining the expression formula to return the right length as it changes based on the slope of the line.

Newer Idea: In the Profile Properties you can set up Design Criteria. Set the max tangent grade of 10% and it will display the warning symbol on all the segments that exceed 10%. The set up looks just like that for an expression. Be sure to use the absolute value of the slope.