Excellent command, one of my favorites. Big help with productivity. Below are two suggestions that I believe will further the productivity of the command.
Can you explain the selection set one to me?
On the Reverse line - I get why you are asking for that - is that better than a reverse offsets button - that way you dont have to reverse the line and then reverse it back again - I like to have my lines going the same way down a road that way I just know which direction they are going - I doubt it makes much difference - what do you think? Maybe both?
Alan
Reverse line: I see you point on the reverse line. As long as the outcome is the same, whether reversing the offsets, or the line itself, wouldn’t really matter to us. So whatever seems best for all would likely work fine for us.
As I’m sure it is the case with many, we use the command mainly for the clipping of plan contour lines around the curb lines. We typically work with the face of curb line and clip 0.1’ on the pavement side to 0.75’, or more, on the backside. As most of our work is large logistic sites, there’s lots of curbing in both road and parking lot arrangements. The direction isn’t really much of a concern for us until we need to setup machine control for the slipform machine and that is only to make using the Copy-No Edit feature of the Create Sideslope command all that much easier to use.
Keep selection set: the intent of the workflow is to clip all contour lines for all the curb lines. Unlike road only projects, while site projects do have some long continuous curb sections, there are also many many non-continuous alignments. Plus, breaking or keeping the alignments broken at corners has many advantages down the line i.e., the slipform model and offsetting the line to use the Vertical Design feature to raise the back of curb. If we were to have a “Keep selection set” option, we would only need to pick the “Lines to crop” once during that command secession (plan contours in this case} as we progress through the many curb alignments of the site.
So the workflow I’m imagining dealing with 50+ individual curb segments:
Select the line.
Set offset distance 1 (once)
Set offset distance 2 (once)
Select target lines (once)
Set “Keep selection set this session” (make sticky please)
Apply
Select next line.
Reverse offsets/line if necessary.
Apply
Select next line.
Reverse offsets/line if necessary.
Apply
Select next line.
Reverse offsets/line if necessary.
Apply
etc
etc
etc
As you can see, this is much more efficient in with dealing with large amounts of clipping for non-continuous segments as opposed to having to reset the offsets (or running another command to reverse the line) and re-picking the targets for each segment.
After thought: The more I think about it, in addition to your point, reversing the offsets seems the better choice as reversing the line will also spur a surface rebuild should the line be included in a surface set to auto rebuild, etc. And we all know that multiple surface rebuilds will slow you down… way down.
Thanks for considering the suggestions.
I like it Richard - thanks for the clarification and we are all about making you more competitive - so a good fit i think and likely not a major development effort for a pretty good return in productivity
Alan
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Done and Done - plus a couple of other bonus features as well - looking forward to how you get on with the changes
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Just had the opportunity to put this command to the test on a good size job with lots of curb and contours. Gotta say kudos to the RPS team! Worked like a charm with no redundant clicks/selections. 10 outa 10!!!
Awesome and thanks for the write up Richard - we are trying really hard to make our tools uber productive and trying to keep those clicks and points to a minimum as well as trying to move settings to more global capability so you make them once and you are all set unless you need to modify for some reason.
You guys need to beat on me if you ever see us step off that mission as I know first hand how painful extra clicks can be
Thanks again
Alan
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Great addition. Thank you
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