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- InRoads V8i SS2 FAQ

​Engineering Automation provides the Advanced Modules on their 3D Design​ page.

​You can create a configuration on your computer using InRoads: File>Project Defaults...​ These are settings that get recorded in the registry of the computer and will load a specified XIN at launch.

An alternative is to click [OK] to dismiss the dialog and then manually load ODOT's preference file, civil.xin, from C:\ProgramData\odot_space\USERCFG\InRoads.

​Yes. Two ways and these are specific to MicroStation V8i SS4.

1) Use the AccuSnap keyboard toggle of pressing and holding <Ctrl>+<Shift> to turn it on.  When the <Ctrl> and the <Shift> keys are pressed at the same time and held down, you can move your mouse around the screen and see that AccuSnap is now working.  A simple left-click on the mouse will accurately locate the InRoads command.  Then you can release the keys.​

2) Use your MicroStation Tentative mouse button(s) - the tentative snap uses the AccuSnap settings and allows you to preview the location of the next data point before accepting the location with a left mouse click. One right-click allows you to reject the tentative snap point and make another while staying in the InRoads command.

​Use InRoads File>Import>Surface… and the “From Graphics” tab to create features in a surface.  Use the Surface>View Surface>Annotate Feature… command, turning on the annotation of “Line Segments” on the Main tab and checking the “Slope” on the Line Segments tab.​

​I suspect that you have vertically annotated an alignment with a lot of PIs using a preference or style designed for drafting.  When InRoads has to find the VCcircle cell on a server-based workspace and there are a lot of PIs to display, it gets really slow!  If you are just using a right-click View to display the vertical geometry in the profile; use Geometry>Rename Geometry… and assign the style named “ODOT” to your vertical alignment.  (The CL_* styles use the cell and are slow).  Right-click View the alignment again and it will now update much more quickly.  If you have used Geometry>View Geometry>Vertical Annotation… to display the vertical alignment in a profile, use that command again and load the “ODOT” preference set to redisplay the vertical alignment with more dynamic graphics.​​

​It is very easy to accidentally hide the InRoads Explorer by right-pressing in a MicroStation view window and selecting “Explorer Show/Hide”.  It is the second choice on the right-click context menu.  Just select “Explorer Show/Hide” again and the InRoads Explorer will show up right where you left it.​  Note - the right-press option for "Explorer Show/Hide" is only available when you launch InRoads from its desktop shortcut.

​Making your alignment “Read-Write” may be as simple as right-clicking on the alignment name in the workspace bar of the InRoads Explorer window and choosing “Read-Write” from the right-click menu.  Alignments may be viewed, annotated, modeled, and reported on with an access mode of “Read-Only”.  It is recommended that only the designer or surveyor change the access mode to “Read-Write”.  The Default Access Modes in the Project Options for InRoads have been set to Read-Only to discourage non-designers from making inadvertent changes to geometry project files (.alg) stored in a shared location, like a crew share or ProjectWise.  Designers should investigate Access Control of Geometry in the ODOT InRoads V8i User Guide for more information.

If you have made a copy of a geometry project file (.alg) in your own F:\ drive and the alignments show that they are locked by someone else, you can force free them by following the directions in the second paragraph of Access Mode is Read-Only, not Read-Write in the ODOT InRoads V8i User Guide.​

​What is preventing the ALG from loading is a network lock file with the same name as your ALG, with an extension of .nlf. The NLF file is sometimes left in the same folder as the ALG when for some unknown reason, InRoads doesn't clean up after itself.

If your data is loaded from your C:\ drive or a network share - simply delete the NLF file - then load the ALG.

If your data lives in ProjectWise, do these steps: 1) Using IR: File>ProjectWise Organizer... - Free the ALG, 2) Using ProjectWise Explorer, locate the NLF file in the same folder as your ALG and right-click Purge Local Copy on the .nlf file, 3) Still in ProjectWise, Rename... the NLF file and prepend Zdelete_, and 4) Now, Open the ALG using InRoads.

​No, tracking is designed to quickly annotate InRoads information about dumb graphics - it will take a lot of time to copy that information into a spreadsheet.

Make InRoads aware of your graphics, though, and you can harness the power of InRoads reporting.

Create a surface by importing your dumb graphics and triangulate the surface. If you had 2D elements, you can use the Edit Feature Point... command to apply elevations, and triangulate afterwards.

Load the alignment and follow the process shown in the Annotating the Final Ramp Features section of the ADA Combination Ramp Modeling Workflow to:

  • verify slopes
  • annotate all station/offsets
  • create a clearance report with all station/offsets and save as XLSX for importing into a MicroStation table
  • annotate the alignment for contract plans

​InRoads data is extremely sensitive to the presence of special characters, like @ and &, and InRoads performs incorrectly when display names exceed 28 characters.

When a special character is encountered, strange, incorrect and puzzling behavior occurs. Special characters can take a long time to locate - so just don't use them! Use only A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and underscore in fields that call for a NAME. Do not use decimal points or spaces in NAME fields.

When naming corridors, templates, surfaces, geometry projects or alignments use less than 28 characters.

When defining your corridors, use a PI Rounding Tangent value that is small - less than 1.0, is probably best. The pseudo curve that replaces the PIs (when there is no horizontal curve defined) will use a total curve length of twice the PI Rounding Tangent value.  If the value is greater than the distance between your PIs, you will introduce overlap. If one pseudo curve overlaps the next, you are likely to have strange things happen, such as, the active surface line will be mirrored in the cross section view of the Roadway Designer in the area of overlap.

​Yes.  Both the template library (.itl) and the roadway design file (.ird) are written in XML, so you can use the Template Library Organizer.  Load the new project’s template library (.itl), open the Modeler>Create Template dialog and choose Tools>Template Library Organizer….  Expand the folder tree on the left to show the new project’s template folder.  Use the ellipsis button […] on the right side and navigate to the other project’s roadway design file (.ird) – change the filter on the types of files to *.ird.  You will see a folder structure that matches the corridor names and inside each corridor you will see the template drops.  Drag the template that you need from the corridor folder on the right and drop it onto the template folder on the left.  Click [OK] and save when asked.​

​What fixed this situation was renaming the templates to remove the colon symbol from the template names.  A ratio, like 1:4, had been used in the template names and the special character was having an adverse effect on the modeler’s ability to process the template.  The best practice is to use no special characters in InRoads when naming points, templates, corridors, features, surfaces, alignments, etc.  Place those special characters in description fields.​

​The Create Profile>Offsets leaf only allows you to toggle the offsets on or off; it displays the distances and symbologies that are assigned in the properties of the surface.  Select the General leaf and then click the [Properties…] button just below the “Surfaces” list.  That will open the Surface Properties to the Advanced tab where you can set up the offset distances and symbologies for the surface.  Once you click [Apply] on the Surface Properties, those offset distances will appear on the Offsets leaf of the Create Profile dialog.  Offsets are a property of each surface; don’t forget to save the surface after you add offsets.