Its funny how the more you build data, the more you do individual steps of building data without even realizing it. It becomes automatic. While this holds true for everything from playing football, to cooking to how to react to contact right, I have found that it has become especially true with building data. You get so accustomed to dealing with the same design issues or procedures that the potential solutions and steps flow instantly. I have found that this is especially true for what I consider to be the most consistently similar project types: heavy highways. While each highway is going to have something that makes it unique, they all share so many similarities that make working with them uniquely consistent. As you would imagine, building highway data has therefore boiled down to such a specific routine for me that I do not even pause to think 'What's next?'. Its automatic. Once I finish getting the plans sorted out, and putting together my horizontal control, its time to tackle the vertical control.

Before we get into talking about profiles, let me point out that this article is a continuation of my series of articles on building data for heavy highway. Incase you missed the other two, I will say again that I by no means consider my method the end-all-be-all of building data for heavy highways. From talking to a number of data builders I have found that many either have no method or a very young method of dealing with them. So the way I figure, anything is better than nothing, so hopefully my series will at least get the ideas flowing for someone out there. As such, these articles are intended not to give a specific and detailed step by step procedure, bur rather I hope that they will help cover the major aspects and potential pitfalls of building data for heavy highways.

Back to profiles, your vertical alignments (VAL's) should not take long to find in the planset. The main roadway VAL(s) should be located right along the plan sheets, but not necessarily on the same sheet (ie. they sometimes have their own profile sheet). While working with getting my horizontal alignments (HAL's) sorted out, I counter check station ranges of roadway length against those shown on the profiles and cross sections. That helps move things along at this stage because I have already been working with the profile sheets and am familiar with them. Once you get to actually recreating the profiles, you are going to want to confirm that the engineer has included at least the majority of the bits and pieces that you need to properly build, and equally important double check, them. The really convenient aspect of profile labels is that the major design software's have a default method of labeling profiles. This default method gives you the majority of the information that you will need. So unless the engineer purposely eliminates some of that information, you will have all the data you need to accurately recreate the profile. Specifically, you are going to needs the PVI's for all changes in the profile, curve data for all vertical curves and so on.

As for which profiles you need to be concerned with, my rule of thumb is simple: if the engineer included a profile in the planset, I need to recreate it if possible. Obviously this is going to start with the roadway itself. But, one must take care that they do not overlook other profiles in the planset. Profiles for ditch flow line, top of wall, curb returns, back of sidewalk or perhaps even the daylight itself can be included on the roadways profile sheets, or even their own sheet hidden somewhere in the planset. As I mentioned above, the main highway profile is likely detailed out, but these secondary profiles are usually not. For instance, many engineers will provide on the profile sheets a specific profile for the right and left ditch. However, the majority of times it will not be labeled. And since you are likely working with half size plans, scaling is not recommended. In this case, your only other good hope is the cross sections. If it is a competent design engineer, the cross sections will include a specific ditch flow line elevation each station. These can be used to create your ditch profiles. Regardless of how you find them or create them, I can not stress enough that *every* profile the engineer has included in the planset needs to be included in your work.

With the profiles hammered out, that brings us to everyone favorite: super elevations. Ah the fond memories of watching civil engineering students who have survived four years of calculus struggle to understand super elevations. I will by no means try to give a detailed explanation of how to create them - that a series of articles on its own. Much like profiles, if there are supers in the project, you *must* include them into your data. You can not fake it either. While each design software is unique, they each will need you to manually enter the correct transitions for super elevations throughout the project. Many governing agencies don't require the design engineer to include specific super elevation transition information or diagrams in the planset. You may go through the entire planset and only find the max super listed on the curve layout. Do not assume that since the engineer did not provide a super diagram, they do not exist in the project. Unless that four lane highway is straight as an arrow, trust me, there are supers. Make sure you check throughout the plans though, they can show up in odd places such as the cross sections. If the engineer slacked off and did not include any information on them, then you guessed it, you get to design the super elevation yourself. Which highlights once again the need for data builders to be very experienced in engineering design, not just converting contours. When recreating super elevations on your own, make sure you communicate that fact to your client since like all other engineering design, there is some wiggle room in each states regulations of design criteria. Regardless of whether you have to create them yourself, or you get them from the engineer, you need to ensure that you correctly and accurately recreate all super elevations in your project.

Much like your HAL's, profile are very critical to your roadway project and *must* be correct. Any mistake on your profile will ripple through your model something fierce. You must double check them as often as possible to ensure completeness and accuracy. If done correctly, exact profiles keep your model precise from start to finish. And while they can sometimes be a burden to build, super elevations will also ensure that your model exactly matches the engineers design. Which is what your job is to do after all.

 Read Chad's articles