28 Jul Handling Existing Services Data
GIS and underground utility mapping services can accurately identify existing services but the challenge for the infrastructure designer lies in consolidating and using this information effectively. An incomplete design model that does not incorporate all the proposed services and does not take the existing services data into consideration may require a significant amount of additional collaboration, correction and verification at a later stage in the project cycle resulting in unplanned delays.
Information about potentially conflicting utilities, often provided in varying formats, must be easy to import and decipher. Proximity and collision or crossing service issues in the layout drawings and on the longitudinal and cross section plans need to be immediately visible and the process of generating a realistic design which accommodates the existing entities must then be intuitive and logical.
Civil Designer software allows the designer to work effectively with survey data or with drawing entities. ASCII files and other formats of drawing data can be imported directly into the auxiliary services database and drawing entities can be added graphically in an editor tool.
Multiple databases of auxiliary services information such as wastewater pipes, stormwater culverts, water networks, electrical layouts and telecommunication cables can be created. This information will be interrogated by the program such that unacceptable proximity positions and clashing points of utilities on road, sewer, storm, water and terrain string long sections, as well as on road vertical alignment views will be indicated. Each auxiliary service can be displayed with distinct colours, line styles and annotations
Civil Designer can automatically generate skew cross sections for every auxiliary service and allows the engineer to step through the chainages of a road and view the associated cross sections in the cross section editor. It is also possible to step through the auxiliary services themselves, rather than each chainage increment, which is particularly useful for long road designs.
Interaction Between Existing and New Design Elements
Civil Designer maintains design integrity by replicating all the pertinent aspects of a project, in a single geo-referenced model where all new and existing infrastructure elements have an immediate spatial understanding of one another. At all times a realistic simulation of the project elements at hand is upheld on long sections, layout plans, sub-surface 3D fly-throughs as well as in the vertical alignment control panels.
Potential clashes with existing and other new services can therefore be avoided early on in the design, saving time and money on site.
“The software allows me to design platforms, analyse pumping mains and pipe clashes. I can model the road segment in my treatment works and design stormwater drainage easily while factoring in all the existing services.” Izadri van der Merwe, Gibb Engineering & Architecture (Pty) Ltd.