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Two African neighbour states where the technology is
being harnessed for this purpose are Tanzania and
Botswana, where South African civil engineering
software design is being employed in the design and
construction of major road projects.
Among the advanced software being African Roads
Projectused in the road mapping and design is Civil
Designer, developed by Cape-based engineering software
house Knowledge Base. Initially developed to analyse
and design sewage and stormwater networks, Civil
Designer has been progressively developed and refined
to form a suite of fully interactive design modules
which combine to form an integrated data-gathering,
drawing surface-modelling and design system.
Today it’s in use by engineering consultancies,
specialist engineers, municipalities, government and
non-government bodies throughout the country in road
and highway, sewer, stormwater and water reticulation
systems design.
Now it’s being increasingly used outside South Africa.
"It is one of our most frequently used - and most
useful - road design tools," says du Bruyn Jonker of
Kwezi V3 Engineers, an engineering consultancy which
is currently involved in detailed survey and design
work for two new highways in Tanzania and Botswana.
Jonker says the software's survey and terrain
modelling module, which provides interactive
earthworks design and calculations, has been
especially useful in the preliminary design work on
the two highways - a 98 m long road linking the towns
of Mingoyo and Mbwemkulu in eastern Tanzania; and a 32
km long highway between Mahalapye and Kalamare in
Botswana. |
"We use Civil Designer from the start of each
project," Jonker reports. "It is particularly
user-friendly in doing surveys and obtaining and
plotting data about terrain and other factors which we
have to take into account, such as the position of
geographical features, natural obstacles such as
trees, or man-made obstructions such as electricity or
telephone lines.”
Jonker likes the features of the Survey & Terrain
module – especially the variety and ease in creating a
terrace.
“If you don’t like what you’ve drawn you can easily
change the layout or just drag it across to another
position on the dtm – it really is simple. Once you
have completed the design you just merge your terrace
onto the underlying grounds profile to create a final
site model”.
From the Survey & Terrain module the design work moves
to the comprehensive Roads module which incorporates
interactive embankment design and calculations.
“Once we are working with Roads there’s no looking
back” says Jonker. As an example of the software’s
flexibility and ease of use he says that on one of the
highways, which Kwezi V3 is currently working, the
client had requested three separate design speeds
requiring three distinctly different road designs.
“Different horizontal curves and gradients and other
design criteria and parameters were involved in the
three separate special designs. For example, a
higher-speed design involves more gradual curves, a
lower speed conversely allows for sharper curves. All
this and other criteria had to be factored into each
separate design. But it was no hassle. The software
enabled us to design three separate roads in not much
more time than it takes to design one road.” |
