From the course: InfraWorks 2017 Essential Training

Creating roads - InfraWorks Tutorial

From the course: InfraWorks 2017 Essential Training

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Creating roads

- [Voiceover] There are a lot of ways to get started redesigning your world in InfraWorks 360. But new roads are often the most natural way to do it. Let's take a look at how to create new roads in your model. I'm in the Chapter Three Lynda Heights model, and I've selected a proposal called create roads. I've also restored a bookmark named Lynda Heights. Now, if you're continuing from Chapter Two, you might be thinking that this model looks a little bit different than the previous model. And the reason is that it's created with different data. This model was created using Model Builder. And it uses a different set of data sources than what you used in Chapter Two, which was some GIS data that you downloaded from the National Map Viewer, as you may recall. The reason I chose to go with the Model Builder data, is because it's much leaner. The size of this model, the file space that it actually takes up in your hard drive, is much less than the model that we built out of the GIS data. So Model Builder is not only really fast, and it allows you to create models earlier in your project, with very little effort and time, it's also really efficient. So rather than moving forward with a larger data set, I'm going to move forward with a smaller, leaner one, that takes less time for you to download, and actually performs a little better because the file size is smaller. We've got a nice hilltop here, which currently is being used for agricultural purposes of some kind, maybe vineyards, maybe orchards. Not sure. But we want to turn this into a beautiful, residential subdivision. And folks living up here are going to enjoy the ocean view to the west, and the mountain view to the east, and it's just going to be a fantastic place to live. So as we look at this hilltop, we kind of have to plan out how can we optimize this space? How can we get the most use of it, and carve out the highest number of lots, so that our developer can sell as many lots as possible, and make as much profit as possible? But then we have to balance that with making the space easy to move through for people and vehicles, and just nice to look at. So there's a lot of balancing going on here, and that's typical I think of any kind of design. So here's what I'm thinking we can do. Let's create three roads. The first one will follow right down the heart of our hilltop, along this ridged line, and will tie from this existing road, to this one. Then we'll create a second road that skirts along this edge of the hilltop, and ties back in to our center road, and then another road that does the same on this side, kind of skirts the edge of the hilltop and ties back around to the center. So that's the plan. And the beautiful thing about InfraWorks 360 tools, is that they're so quick, and so visual, we'll be able to see very quickly whether we think this is going to work or not. So to get going, we'll need to launch the roads tool. And to do that, I need to expand my InfraWorks 360 core tools. Now, there is a more sophisticated road tool, actually a set of them beneath this icon, and we'll talk about that near the end of the course, when we get into the more engineering oriented commands. For now we're just interested in the road sketching tools that doesn't get into engineering principles like horizontal curves and vertical curves, and spirals and things like that. This is quick, and easy, and visual. But as you'll learn near the end of the course, very easy to make the transition from this kind of road, to the engineered type of road. So don't think that you're going to have to throw away any roads that you sketch in, we can actually convert them very easily to engineering roads, and continue on with that type of design. So I'll launch the roads tool, which by the way is the very first tool in the list of creation tools in the software. That kind of gives you a hint that most designs start with roads. And I'll click that tool. That brings up the Select Draw Style asset card, where I'll choose the style for my road, and I'm going to choose this one here called Sidewalks with Lamps. And it's in the street subset. So I'll click that style, I can go ahead and close the Select Draw Style asset card, or I could leave it open if I have lots of screen space. I don't so I'm going to close it down, and then I'll start clicking points to create my road. Now, I'm not super concerned with accuracy, except when I'm tying into another road. So this very first point, I want to create an intersection with this existing road. So I'm going to zoom in a little close to this road, and just make sure that my first point is on this center line. So I'll click about here, and then I'll zoom back out, and just like we discussed, I'm going to follow this ridged line. Just click a few points, making my way around, and then I want to try to make 90 degree intersections, so when I get to the existing road, I'm going to make a bit of a hard turn. And if I zoom in closely, I'm kind of looking for both of those red lines to touch the white line, that gives me a good visual indicator that I'm creating a 90 degree intersection. And I also want to make sure that my cursor is kind of jumping to that center line. You can see it doing it right there. When I see that, I'm on the center line, I can double click to end the road command, and that's a typical practice with InfraWorks 360 commands. When you get to the end, the last point, double click. And that lets the command know that you're finished, and it won't prompt you for any more points. So there we have our brand new road. It's a very nice residential style, you can see the extreme detail, individual bricks and the grains in the curb, the individual pavers and of course the light poles. You may have noticed when I first created the road, it started out looking something like this. It was highlighted in yellow and we could even see these little markers called gizmos. All I did was hit escape a few times to clear that, and give me a nice natural look to the road. As you can see, we've got a really nice intersection at this end. Let's check the other end. And we've got a nice one there as well. All right, so let's work on the other two roads. I'll click the roads tool again, it remembers my style from last time so I can actually close down the Select Draw Style asset card. And to get started here, I'm going to start on my new road about right here. And come out and around this way. So I'm following the edge of this hilltop here. In some areas I'm kind of following an existing trail or road of some sort. And then when I get to about here I'm going to turn, and do a 90 degree intersection with my road. And that looks about right there. Double click to end the command, and it will create the intersection. Hit escape a few times to clear the selection of the road. And now I'll create the third road in much the same way. Don't need to worry about style, it remembers it from last time. Unless I want to change it of course. And for this road I'll start about here. I'm going to jump across this ravine. Follow this ridge top for a little ways, and then jump back over. And this time when I create my intersection, I want to try to create a four-way intersection. So I'm going to very carefully place my cursor where the two roads' center lines would intersect, and actually, InfraWorks 360 knows where this point is too, so if you get your cursor close to it, it will jump into that point. And when you're there you can just double click. And if you pick the right point, hit escape a few times, you'll see a beautiful four-way intersection, where those roads come together. So just like that, in a few minutes, we've built out the roads for our subdivision, and we can get a really good look at how this is going to work out. And maybe even pick out a few areas that we're concerned about right off the bat. I know there are some pretty steep embankments in some areas that I'm a bit concerned about. We've got a deep cut through the middle of the subdivision that's probably not going to work out very well. And we've got a very steep set of embankments here where we're cutting across this ravine, so we might want to do something with that. And that's one of the great things about InfraWorks 360, to be able to create this kind of design, so quickly and so visually, that you can really start to get an idea of the implications of what you're designing, immediately.

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