RoadMate – Road Design software. The Technocad urban design software is a suite of personal-computer based programs for the design and automated draughting of civil engineering urban services. Incorporated in this suite are software packages that cover all aspects of civil engineering services design such as Roads, Sewer reticulation, Stormwater reticulation and Water supply. All the software has been written with knowledge gained in the civil design office where the need for fully automated draughting, rather than manually manipulated computer aided draughting, was identified as the only way of increasing design and draughting productivity. RoadMate is the urban roads software package of the Technocad urban design software.
The purpose of the software is to provide an intuitive, easy to learn and easy to use graphical approach to roads design and draughting, whereby basic engineering parameters pertaining to the roads design are input by the designer whilst working inside an AutoCAD drawing. RoadMate, the road design software, gives you final working layout, longitudinal section drawings and cross section drawings with the minimum amount of manual input.
Work Smarter
Road alignments are co-ordinated and horizontal layout and longitudinal section drawings are created automatically from parameters chosen by the designer. All horizontal setting out calculations are done for you. Quantities are also calculated, both for areas in Cut situations and in Fill. In addition top soil stripping is also calculated, together with mass haul. Because you are working in AutoCAD, you can easily add extra notes, background images or attach reference files etc. prior to plotting the final working drawings. Let RoadMate do all the previously boring and mundane work!
Horizontal Layout Drawings
The designer simply has to draw lines or polylines representing the centreline of the road(s) in plan in AutoCAD. Curves are input by ‘filleting’ tangents with the required radii.
When you have created your road centrelines, simply show RoadMate the road by selecting the centreline, answer design data questions via an easy to use dialogue box, and the following is calculated and drawn automatically inside your AutoCAD drawing:
- Road edges including horizontal curves
- Kerbs or shoulders
- Horizontal PI’s, BCC’s and ECC’s numbered and co-ordinated to Cartesian or Lo co-ordinate systems in an easy to read setting out table
- BCC and ECC chainages annotated in plan and the setting-out table
- Curve data calculated and annotated in a table with PI co-ordinates including radius, deflection angle, arc length and tangent length.
- Chainages are optionally annotated in plan at selected chainage intervals
- Road intersections splayed using selected radii and chainages of intersections calculated automatically and annotated
Vertical Alignment Longsection Drawings (Profiles)
Longitudinal sections can be drawn of a road with the capability of being able to enter ground profile data from many sources e.g.Digital terrain models (DTM’s), site peg surveys, archive manual drawings, contour drawings etc.
This feature makes it more versatile in that not all designs justify aerial photography, global surface surveys or the digitising in of existing layout drawings.
Features include:
- Extraction of long-section profiles automatically from a DTM
- Preview of ground profile and road centreline prior to choosing of vertical PI (VPI) positions by draughting or typing
- Designer can choose whether to set vertical curve lengths or alternatively let RoadMate calculate vertical curve lengths according to user selected design speed and corresponding K-factors for sags and crests
- Designer can dynamically move a selected VPI (vertical point of intersection) and watch the effect on the gradelines either side of the selected VPI, together with the effect on the vertical curves at the VPI, and the VPI to the left and right of the current VPI. Great for sorting out problems with overlapping vertical curves on complex designs! View changes in grade and vertical curve length update in real-time.
- Vertical curve high and low point chainages and levels determined and annotated on longitudinal section – sort out drainage problems fast!
- Ground and road levels interpolated if required at constant chainage intervals
- Ground and road levels determined at special chainages such as road intersections or pipe/culvert crossings
- Annotation of horizontal curve BCC and ECC on longitudinal section
- Annotation of road cross-section profile description and transitions in profile on long-section based on cross-section information
- Output in high quality final drawing format in AutoCAD. This allows for further editing and enhancement if required prior to plotting
Cross Sections
Cross-sections are taken perpendicular to the road centreline. Ground levels for cross sections can be extracted automatically from the Digital Terrain Model or typed in from survey data.
Designer can determine the distance left and right from the centreline at which existing ground elevations are to be calculated. Centreline road levels are determined automatically from long-section vertical design.
Features include:
- Accurate existing ground elevation determination by seeking out changes in grade
Scaling, spacing and positioning of cross-sections in the drawing is user selectable.
Able to accept varying number of cross section offsets for each section. This allows for the manual addition of any additional changes in grade if required. In addition those designers choosing to type in surveyed cross section data can have different numbers of offsets for each section - User definable road templates varying from simple to complex shapes with transitions between templates. Cut and fill slopes variable by template including batter to edge of reserve
- Cross section template library able to be kept on a ‘per-project’ basis if required
Road layerwork shown on cross section - Road section viewer to enable the designer to view cross-sections step-by-step or in continuous movie style
- Road template viewer and extractor – road templates can be drawn in AutoCAD and simply “windowed” to form data file; relieves tedious typing in of data!
- Ability to move the vertical alignment of the road in a cross-section view and have the new position ‘marked-up’ on the longitudinal section. Great for applying a ‘best-fit’ along your longitudinal section
Volumes
Features include:
- Volume calculated from cross sections
- Sub-grade cut/fill areas and quantities calculated and accumulated
- Mass haul calculated with cut/fill bulking ratio
- Embankment toe positions and elevations reported
- Road left/right edge positions and elevations reported
3D Visualisation
Calculation and the drawing of the road toe line as well as other template lines as “strings” is performed. These strings, as well as the associated 3D faces (in full 3-dimensions) can be drawn onto the road layout drawing.
The designer can then use the strings to modify the original Digital terrain model (DTM), forming a new DTM of the original surface and the designed road merged together. The 3D faces allow for shading of a 3D view in AutoCAD. The 3D model can then be input to rendering software, such as Autodesk 3D-Studio, and photo-realistic images produced of the design.
Toolbox
Also included with RoadMate is the Technocad toolbox featuring lots of useful functions to make your draughting a pleasure! The toolbox is accessible via the pull-down menu or directly from a specially designed toolbar.
Hardware Requirements
- 64-bit: 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 64-bit (x64) processor
- RAM – sufficient to run AutoCAD software; Autodesk recommendation is 8GB, preferably 16GB
- Hard disk capacity – program files need approx. 50MB
- Graphics resolution – recommended 1024 x 768 or greater
- Printer/Plotter – sufficient for your drawing presentation purposes, such as A0 / A1
- Practically all plotter/printers supported as printing performed through AutoCAD
Software Requirements
- AutoCAD® 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 supported. Also equivalent AutoCAD Map 3D® and other AutoCAD based products, such as AutoCAD Civil 3D®.
- Operating systems: Windows 10 (64-bit) and Windows 11 (64-bit)
- SurfMate digital terrain modelling software (for reading ground elevations from a digital terrain model and drawing longitudinal sections (profiles)).
