Autodesk CAICE VISUAL ROADS 10 - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, CAiCE Visual Roads 10 Using Manual

CAiCE Visual Roads 10

Questions and Answers

1. General Product Information

1.1 What is CAiCE Visual Roads?

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CAiCE
interactively create design models for transportation projects of all types. You can use it for
projects ranging from simple roads to complex highways and interchanges, as well as
railroads, airport runways, canals, and dikes. The software’s powerful capabilities are well
suited for complex jobs with intricate details and large data sets, and its unique fragment
technology makes it completely customizable to any level of detail. CAiCE Visual Roads is
easy to use and provides robust engineering and modeling capabilities for every phase of
the design process.

1.2 Who uses CAiCE Visual Roads?

Civil engineers with consulting firms, county and municipal agencies, and departments of
transportation use CAiCE Visual Roads for transportation projects of every type, including
simple roads, complex highways and interchanges, rehabilitation and widening, and
subdivision and site development.

Visual Roads® software is a comprehensive design tool that enables you to

Many state departments of transportation (DOT) currently use CAiCE Visual Roads software,
including Caltrans, Wisconsin DOT, Georgia DOT, and Washington DOT.

1.3 Why should I buy CAiCE Visual Roads?

CAiCE Visual Roads eliminates the need to use templates or criteria files for creating typical
sections. CAiCE Visual Roads unique fragments technology provides an easy way to design a
roadway by plugging in ready-made components such as raised or depressed medians,
travel lanes, shoulders, ditches, catch slopes, berms, and benches. This design modeling
approach saves time and simplifies roadway design. It also provides interactive, component­based modeling for easy adaptation to changes in conditions.

Using CAiCE Visual Roads software’s customization tools, you can adjust the software to fit
your workflow requirements and ensure that field standards are being met. CAiCE Visual
Roads helps your engineers work faster and smarter.

1.4 Is CAiCE Visual Roads a stand-alone product?

Yes, CAiCE Visual Roads is a stand-alone system and does not require any other application
to operate. It provides general-purpose automation tools that you can use for all
transportation design projects.

CAiCE Visual Roads can also run with the Visual CADLinks application, which eliminates the
need for import/export translators. Visual CADLinks runs CAiCE Visual Roads and your CAD
system simultaneously, linking the systems together. While you have a DWG or DGN file
open in your CAD program, CAiCE also has access to its own project database. You can use
simple toolbar functions to control whether to produce CAiCE graphics in the CAD window,
the CAiCE window, or both simultaneously. You can collapse the CAiCE application window
to show only menus and toolbars, leaving all the graphics to the CAD system, or you can

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CAiCE Visual Roads 10 Questions and Answers

take advantage of the software’s graphics speed and rendering capabilities for visualization
and drive-through functionality. This combination offers the best of both worlds; the design
modeling capabilities of CAiCE Visual Roads and the drafting capabilities of a CAD system.

1.5 What are fragments?

A fragment is a user-definable macro that either inserts surfaces into the cross-section file
at a station or performs an intermediate part of the process of inserting surfaces. You can
use fragments to analyze the surfaces in a cross-section file to produce reports, such as a
milling and pavement overlay report for a contractor. Each fragment can have user-defined
input parameters that determine their dimensions and behavior in particular situations.

Fragments respond flexibly, based on existing conditions and design parameters. They can
be customized to match your organization’s specific components. Setting the slope criteria
enables fragments to respond to specific conditions and automatically blend into your
design.

1.6 What is the IHSDM ToolBox

CAiCE Visual Roads includes the IHSDM ToolBox, which gives you the ability to analyze
horizontal and vertical alignment data against various safety models defined by the Federal
Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM).

1.7 How does CAiCE Visual Roads manage and maintain project files?

The CAiCE Visual Roads project management system enables project creation and archiving
capabilities as well as many other project-level items, including project unit conversions on
the fly. In addition, you can use CAiCE Visual Roads to create and archive project segments.

CAiCE Visual Roads software can create several types of compression files. The default
format is ZIP using WinZip

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software. Two other commonly used formats are ARC and DSN,
where ARC is the complete database, and DSN is the complete database without the
segment file and folders within the project folder.

1.8 What are feature codes?

CAiCE Visual Roads uses feature codes to control elements such as color, symbology, line
style, line weight, or level/layer for all elements in the database.

A feature code is a user-defined classification of an object. It can consist of up to eight
alphanumeric characters. The feature code plays an important role in automatically
assigning graphical attributes to a geometry object. You can also use it to group objects for
operations such as drawing, describing, and plotting.

1.9 Do the DTMs handle curved breaklines?

Digital terrain model (DTM) technology was developed by CAiCE and restructured over
many years based on real-world experience with large transportation design projects. CAiCE
has excellent routines for generating breaklines and was the first to introduce curved
breaklines, providing the ability to model real-world curved features such as curbs, edges of
pavements, and so forth. CAiCE’s DTMs can handle an extremely large number of points.

1.10 What type of visualization tools does CAiCE Visual Roads have?

The high-speed graphics and rendering capabilities in CAiCE Visual Roads software offer 2D
and 3D visualization with realistic renderings of existing terrain and help you quickly identify
potential design problems. CAiCE’s powerful and easy-to-use visualization tools map images
to real-world coordinates for real-time visualization of proposed designs. You can drape
images onto surfaces and view background files for a realistic touch to flybys and drive­throughs for presentations.

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