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Michael Kinnear/5 min read

Creating a Design Profile with Tangent to Tangent Width Curves Method

Design Profile Workflow

1

Create Profile View

Profile and Section Views > Profile View Wizard.

2

Draw Design Profile

Profile Creation Tools > Draw Tangents With Curves.

3

Set PVI Locations

Click PVIs at grade break points.

4

Add Curves

Vertical curves at each PVI smooth transitions.

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This tutorial walks through creating a design profile with tangent to tangent width curves method, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

In this video, we're going to go ahead and create a design profile for our branch alignment, and we're going to go ahead and use the tangent to tangent width curves creation method. So to do that, we're going to go up to our profile drop-down, we're going to select profile creation tools, we're going to select our view window, and then from here we're going to go ahead and leave the name the same, go with our alignment dev branch, we're going to do a design profile and a complete label set.

I'm going to go ahead and click OK. Inside of this window, my buttons are working again. But if yours aren't, go ahead and save, close and reopen and then join us as we move forward.

So from here, we're going to go ahead and use this draw tangents with curves option. So the first thing we have to actually do is do our curve settings. So inside of our curve settings, you have the options for which type of curves you want to do parabolic, circular or asymmetric.

I always use parabolic curves. So I'm going to go ahead and run with that. From here, we have the options for what our crest curves are and what our sag curves are.

And you have the options for changing either your length or your K value for what you're going to be basing your design on. I prefer to use length, and I'm going to go ahead and leave these as 150. So I'm going to go ahead and click OK.

But just so you know, if you needed to change your curve lengths, this is where you would set your curve lengths before you go into your tangent with curves creation method. So I'm going to go ahead and click OK. I'm going to drop down.

I'm going to select draw tangents with curves. Now, one thing we didn't talk about yet is we didn't talk about all the other options that we have inside of our profile layout tools bar. So what we have in here is we have the creation of a point of vertical intersection or a PVI.

We have the deletion of a PVI. If you have too many tangent sections and you don't want to have an intersection of those tangents, you can delete that PVI and remove it from your drawing. You can move your PVI or, like we've done before in the previous video, you can grip at it and move.

So you don't have to come into this profile layout tools to move that PVI. You have the options for drawing in your lines as single lines instead of doing tangent to tangent. You have the options for drawing in your curves.

You have your orientation or convert. So this one's converting AutoCAD lines and splines. Then you have your inserting PVIs using a tabular method.

Then you have raise and lower. You have copy profile data. Then you have how you're going to go ahead and build your profile.

Is it going to be PVI based or entity based? So most often you're going to go ahead and use PVI based, but if you wanted to do an entity based design, you would select entity based. From there, we have the options for selecting PVIs. We have the options for extending your entities, which these are options that we had in our grip edits, deleting.

And then we have our single entity or our profile layout parameters. And then we have our profile grid view. So in the next video, we'll talk about profile grid view.

But for now, we're going to jump back all the way to draw tangents with curves. So from here, we know that we're going to be working in this profile view window because we selected it. We're going to go ahead and zoom in here and we're going to start by snapping on the endpoint of this terrain profile.

So I'm going to go ahead and click. And then from here, I'm going to go ahead and draw this profile. And as you can see, the terrain has this natural curve up and then the curve down and then come back up.

So what I'm going to go and do is I'm going to try and mimic this terrain profile. So I'm going to pick somewhere up above this curve, kind of where the crest might be. I'm going to come back down, come to the bottom of where this sag might be.

And then I'm going to go ahead and try and snap onto this endpoint down here. And I'm going to hit ENTER. And so from here, what we can see is we have this profile.

And we have three tangent sections and two vertical curves, we have a crest curve and a sag curve. So I'm going to go ahead and close this profile layout tool. And in the next video, we're going to start editing this profile using the grid editing method.

But first, I'm going to save. And then I'll meet you in the next video.