Chapter 8: Assemblies and Subassemblies
Create a typical road assembly with lanes, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks. Most corridors are built to model roads. The most common assembly used in these road corridors is some variation of a typical road section consisting of lanes, curb, gutter, and sidewalk.
Master It Create a new drawing from the DWT of your choice. Build a symmetrical assembly using LaneInsideSuper, UrbanCurbGutterValley1, and LinkWidthAndSlope for terrace and buffer strips adjacent to the UrbanSidewalk. Use widths and slopes of your choosing.
Solution
1. Create a new drawing from the DWT of your choice.
2. From the Home tab’s Create Design Panel, select Assembly Create Assembly.
3. Name your assembly and set styles as appropriate.
4. Pick a location in your drawing for the assembly.
5. Locate the Basic tab on the tool palette.
6. Click the LaneInsideSuper button on the tool palette. Use the AutoCAD Properties palette, and follow the command-line prompts to set the LaneInsideSuper on the left and right sides of your assembly.
7. Repeat the process with UrbanCurbGutterValley1, LinkWidthAndSlope, and UrbanSidewalk. Complete this portion of the exercise by placing a final LinkWidthAndSlope on the outside of the UrbanSidewalk. (Refer to the “Subassemblies” section of this chapter for additional information.)
8. Save the drawing for use in the next Master It exercise.
Edit an assembly. Once an assembly has been created, it can be easily edited to reflect a design change. Often, at the beginning of a project, you won’t know the final lane width. You can build your assembly and corridor model with one lane width and then later change the width and rebuild the model immediately.
Master It Working in the same drawing, edit the width of each LaneInsideSuper to 14′ (4.3 m), and change the cross slope of each LaneInsideSuper to –3.08%.
Solution
1. Select both lane subassemblies. Be sure these are the only two elements selected.
2. Click Properties.
3. In the Advanced Parameters, change the width to 14′ (4.3 m). Note that width will be listed twice. The topmost width reports the default value. You will change the second occurrence.
4. Change the slope to –3.08%.
5. Save the drawing for use in the next Master It exercise.
Add daylighting to a typical road assembly. Often, the most difficult part of a designer’s job is figuring out how to grade the area between the last engineered structure point in the cross section (such as the back of a sidewalk) and existing ground. An extensive catalog of daylighting subassemblies can assist you with this task.
Master It Working in the same drawing, add the DaylightMinWidth subassembly to both sides of your typical road assembly. Establish a minimum width between the outermost subassembly and the daylight offset of 10′ (3 m).
Solution
1. Locate the Daylight tab on the tool palette.
2. Click the DaylightMinWidth button on the tool palette. Use the AutoCAD Properties palette, and follow the command-line prompts to set the DaylightMinWidth on the right side of your assembly.
3. Press Esc on your keyboard to complete the command. Select the right daylight subassembly.
4. From the context Ribbon, select Mirror Subassemblies.
5. Click the outermost left point on the LinkWidthAndSlope link. You should now have daylighting subassemblies visible on both sides of your assembly.