A Lower Shelf On Which The Cookie Jar Could Rest
In my recent wanderings of developing a workflow for retaining wall geometric layout sheets, I stumbled upon these words in FHWA’s OpenRoads Designer manual,
“Saved Views are convenient for the creation of Exhibits and One-Off Plan Sheets because the Design Scale and size of the Plan View can be modified. This differs from PLAN Drawing Models or PLAN Named Boundary elements, which are relatively static and difficult to adjust after creation.”
(Chapter 14C.2, page 14-53)
Now, that is a technical mouthful but I was intrigued by the fourth word, “convenient”. Convenient? Why, I like the sound of that! The sheet workflow I was partially following from the FHWA used these saved views for their plan views.
Hmmm, I thought, could these be used for another way in producing plan sheets?
I still do not know the clear answer to that, but after thinking on it, my current answer is: I think so.
A Mental Exercise Of Sorts
Let’s go back to when many people hand made their plan motifs for the plan view layout sheets. They used various means to determine the desired station limits and rotation for each sheet. One thing in common with all the means and methods was that it was all manually manhandled. Another thing in common was that none of their users ever seemed friendly to trying the automatic method in PowerGeopak, but enough about not using helpful tools and features. Let’s move to the idea.
If you had a generic rectangular shape acting as a plan motif, you could place it and its copies along your project’s alignment to determine the orientation and location of all your sheets. So far, this is very similar to the old method, as there are no fancy Named Boundaries.
Next, create a number of sheet models, with proper sheet borders but no references.
Have a DGN displaying all your desired information for the desired plan view sheets. Select “Fit to View” to see your entire project within your window. After making sure you have everything toggled off/on that you need, create a Saved View. Make it a Civil Plan type of view.
Here’s where my mind is indecisive. Could you, in your sheets, with your motifs established, reference in your Saved View and adjust it to work with your sheets? Is this method better than the normal Named Boundary method? I am skeptical, but with a very small project, as in half a mile long, could it be an acceptable method?
There are many people still adjusting to how the plan sheet workflow is supposed to go in OpenRoads Designer and I wonder if an allowance for this workflow places the cookie jar on a lower shelf, so to speak. In other words, I wonder if this is an acceptable compromise for small projects with teams that are just starting to pick up on the new software but lack the budget/time to figure out the Named Boundary method. I think the Named Boundary method is superior but even the quote from the FHWA at the beginning acknowledges that it is hard to work with them once you make them. A short Google search shows me the main object people despise in OpenRoads Designer is the plan production. While I strongly disagree, maybe this can help them better than the Named Boundary method. I’m sure this will develop as time goes on and I will probably revisit the subject later.