Volume Output for Construction Analysis

[Sam Dudley]

Hi,

I am working with a tendering team that uses 12d to complete the road design and volume analysis to price the job.

We had issues with the 12d outputting the heights in integers of 10 (0, 10, 20 etc.) but due to the way 12d handles the surfaces the volume output could be in any integer (0, 2.7, 7.2, 10 etc.).

Our team was spending days hard typing the volume information in to align the two outputs to ensure that data is correct.

I have written a program to handle the output information from 12d to consolidate both the volume and height data in integers of 10 without loosing the accuracy of the output.

Is this something that anyone would be interested in using or does 12d already have these features built in?

Regards,
Sam

[Matthew Monk]

ur team was spending days hard typing the volume information in to align the two outputs to ensure that data is correct.

That doesn't sound right, but it's hard to say what the problem could be without knowing exactly which volume calculation routine they were using or how. What volume quantities were you trying to determine?

For what it's worth, I haven't had problems with the volume calculations in 12d Model, but perhaps I haven't had to break it down in weird and unusual ways.

[Glenn Coppard]

As Matt said:

That doesn't sound right...

The Estimators/QS's need to be clear to the modelling team, what quantities need to be calculated and how the should be derived.

We have been through this recently, and had to use many of the weird and wonderful ways to calculate volumes on a large road project using 12d Model without any hassle.

[Sam Dudley]

Hi,

Didn't get notified of these responses and I should have been clearer on the issue.

See below for example:

Road heights (12d outputs in integers of 10):

chainage exist rl design rl diff

0.000 720.280 720.280 0.000
10.000 720.738 720.628 -0.110
20.000 721.075 720.976 -0.099
30.000 721.383 721.324 -0.059
40.000 721.620 721.590 -0.030
50.000 721.614 721.624 0.010


Road volumes:

chainage- ------sectional information------ ------intermediate information---- ---------accumulative information-------
---------- ---cut area --fill area ------------ ----cut vol ---fill vol -cut volume-- -fill volume- ---balance---


0.000 -0.868 0.314 -6.039 1.272 0.000 0.000 0.000
5.637 -1.275 0.138 -2.420 0.241 -6.039 1.272 -4.767
7.500 -1.323 0.121 -3.408 0.296 -8.459 1.513 -6.946
10.000 -1.405 0.118 -3.598 0.270 11.867 1.808 -10.059



As you can see above the volume output can be in varying integers of road chainage. I've been told that this is to increase the accuracy of the reporting. For this example 0, 5.637, 7.5, 10. Our estimating team (and I'd assume others) likes to deal with the cut/fill volumes in 10m chunks simliar to the chainage so if we'd like to use this data they would have to go in and manually select all the volumes from 0-10 then 10-20 etc. etc. and add them together.

When we are looking at jobs 100-200km we could be talking 50,000 entries not to mention the potential errors!

And back to the original question. Can 12d already do this for us, if not in everyones experience would a program that takes a potentially week long job with huge potential to introduce errors and turn it into a couple of clicks and 20-30 mins of computing time be worth while?

Hope this makes more sense.

[Matthew Monk]

Ah, ok. I think I get what you're saying. It's the chainage interval which is 10 m not the volume values themselves. The volumes report has results at the extra chainages because these are likely to be critical geometry points (e.g. tangent points).

Is the 1st report- showing the delta RLs- needed or just here as an example of the different chainage intervals?

You just want the volumes report to list results only at the regular interval?

Do you know which particular option was used in 12d Model to generate the volumes report? It's an end area report, but there are various different ways of calculating and reporting such volumes.

[Lucien West]

I have written a program to handle the output information from 12d to consolidate both the volume and height data in integers of 10 without loosing the accuracy of the output.

If its a 12d macro and you want to share, it can go on the macro forums
macros.php

ther file types would need to be uploaded somewhere else and then you can post a link.

[Lucien West]

I see you are also on the Practice Version General discussion, so perhaps you don't have access to the rest of the forums.

This volumes issue has been discussed before with the only options being to use excel to process the data to the required chainage intervals or a macro.
viewtopic.php?t=4360&highlight=vol+volume+interval
viewtopic.php?t=1417&highlight=vol+volume+interval

[Sam Dudley]

Thanks Lucien, unfortunately I do not have access to those forums you listed as I only have access to practice version as you mentioned.

@mathew - correct - we want the volume report to list at regular intervals however as you mentioned becuase of the critical geometry points it does not output that way.

I talked to our designer he said he was using end area method as we cant use exact method - does this make sense?

[Robert Routley]

Could you not just filter the cross sections.