Civil Engineering Design functions

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microelly2
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by microelly2 »

eccio_loste wrote:
At this point import_osm command works and the pop-up window shows up.
But it remains stuck at 0% forever.

How can i fix this?

Thank you
Regards
Francesco
Do the other testcases run on your system?
What happens when you press the run values a 2nd time?
what is the output in the report view window?
what is in your .FreeCAD/geodat directory?
eccio_loste
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by eccio_loste »

Predefined locations work perfectly.

I placed geodat in the following directory under windows 7 C:\19_FREECAD\FreeCAD_0.17.10490_x86_dev_win\Mod\geodata
geodata_folder.JPG
geodata_folder.JPG (26.43 KiB) Viewed 2706 times
My apology, I don't know why, or how... but it is now working with my random location! It never worked before.

It's probably the double click on the "Run values" that makes the trick!

Thank you.
Regards
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Kunda1
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by Kunda1 »

So what would be good examples of to overlap QGIS and FreeCAD using this new functionality ?
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microelly2
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by microelly2 »

Kunda1 wrote:So what would be good examples of to overlap QGIS and FreeCAD using this new functionality ?
I have paused the work on this domain because I first needed better tools to generate parametric curves.
meanwhile there is a good sketcher bspline support , so building of roads, bridge or underground structures should be easier.

I work at school on a 3D model of our city
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbFLpeI7vk
we have the slice mdels and start cutting ...
next year we start the bridge.
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Joel_graff
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by Joel_graff »

Hello,

I'm a licensed professional engineer in the US and I am currently helping implement 3D cad into our highway design workflows at the state Department of Transportation, using Bentley Open Roads.

I've had a lot of exposure to Microstation and I understand State DOT design workflows. Personally, I don't believe Bentley's software is sufficient for engineering design in transportation, and from what I can tell, Civil3D is no better.

That said, I'm really excited to see this initiative. Being an experienced C++ programmer and open source, Linux user, I'm really interested in adding the functionality to give Free CAD parity with the current commercial options for the transportation engineering domain. I think we can do it better, personally.

Anyway, I'm happy to lend my skills to the cause.

Joel
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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Kunda1
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by Kunda1 »

Joel_graff wrote: Anyway, I'm happy to lend my skills to the cause.

Joel
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Joel_graff
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by Joel_graff »

Greetings! Please feel free to jump in and get proactive :D
I'd love to, but FreeCAD seems a bit complex, so it looks like I've got a little homework to do. Since I'm interested in developing better support for transportation engineering, it'd be nice to have a few ideas of where we're at and where we'd like the project to go. I mean, I've got my own ideas, but I'd sooner defer to someone else's vision for the time being...

I'll pull the source, get a build running and start going through the wiki, but I'd appreciate a little discussion if there's any to be had.

Thanks,

Joel
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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yorik
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by yorik »

Hi Joel

In any case, it would be interesting to hear your ideas about the kind of functionality that you would think necessary... This thread is a big pot where everybody is throwing ideas, at some point we'll be able to build a good roadmap out of it
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Joel_graff
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by Joel_graff »

I get the feeling that it may be a bit beyond FreeCAD's scope to really be able to support transportation / highway parametric modeling if only because it demands functionality that goes beyond typical CAD needs.

In any case, here's a small laundry list of features I think FreeCAD would need to support for 3D highway design production:

1. Importing raw survey data
2. Importing horizontal and vertical control geometry
3. Geospatial coordinate systems like Lat / Long / GPS, NGS, etc.
4. Alignment geometries (horizontal / vertical) which completely describe alignment curves and tangents as well as supporting stationing and station equations
5. Generate roadway elements that are built from a predetermined alignment and can arbitrarily intersect with the surrounding terrain
6. Integrate standard highway design practices and polices into the 3D design process. For example, I must be able to describe my elements using highway design-specific parameters and elements (slopes by percent or ratio, 2-center, 3-center and spiral curves, etc.)
7. Construct a library of basic roadway design elements that can be paramterized to fit most situations, reducing the need for additional elements to accommodate edge cases.
8. Perform complete volume calculations for project material quantity estimation - average end-area calculations are not good enough.
9. Generate cross-sections at specified intervals both on demand and for final project documents
10. Generate 2D views of the project
11. Export final model to 3D formats that can be used for highway construction
12. Provide workflows of interactive and static 3D renderings of the project

There's really quite a bit of ground to cover, there. And it may not be appropriate to provide functionality for the entire highway-design / construction cycle. But being able to address those key components and, at very least, identify what other software / tools will fill in the gaps, is critical. I would like to see an opensource workflow that makes the idea of 3D highway engineering possible without requiring the use of Civil3D or Microstation OpenRoads.

Understand, my interest is really born of my frustration with trying to use Microstation OpenRoads to do highway engineering. They've covered a lot of ground and have some really neat stuff, but the software is buggy, slow, and simply cannot do what Bentley claims can be done.

Probably my chief problem with Microstation is that it approaches a 3D problem from a 2D vantage point. By that, I mean you can't actually interact with the 3D model in a 3D environment (like you can in Blender). In order to interact with it, you are constrained to 2D views and 2D toolsets. It greatly complicates the workflow and, I think, makes it nearly impossible to accomplish certain tasks.
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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yorik
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Re: Civil Engineering Design functions

Post by yorik »

Interesting... Thanks for sharing. Indeed there is quite a lot of stuff there that is quite far from what FreeCAD has at present, but nothing is impossible. The basic operations (construct profiles, construct guide paths that obey certain rules, extrude the profiles along the paths, calculate the intersections between the extruded shape and terrains, etc) are exactly what FreeCAD is good at.
And as FreeCAD is very "pluggable", some other open-source software might exist to help filling some of the gaps. The interesting part is that it converges with other things people have been saying earlier in this thread. The difficult part is to turn all these ideas into a feasible and "codable" roadmap. But we'll get there!
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