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Vertical Alignment

Updated December 15, 2021


This article applies to:
  • RoadEng Civil
  • RoadEng Forestry
This Knowledge Base article is an excerpt from one of our tutorial files. The files referenced in the article, as well as the full tutorial document, are available in our Tutorial Installer.  

This exercise follows on from the previous. You must create a horizontal alignment before you can create vertical alignment.

In the following steps, you will create a vertical alignment by creating vertical intersection points (VIPs) with the mouse. VIP editing in the Profile window is similar to IP editing in the Plan window.

Note: Refer to Getting Started section for file install folders (<RoadEngCivil> and <Defaults and Layouts>).

  1. File | Open <RoadEngCivil>\Location\Align stage 1.dsnx in the Location Module. This should look just like your design at the end of the previous exercise.

  2. View | Retrieve <Defaults and Layouts>\training\training Profile.dlt.

This will set up your screen to look like the figure below.

Figure 1: No Vertical Alignment, Profile Window Shows the Ground Line Only

  1. Right click in the Profile window and select the Add/Edit IP tool .Click anywhere to the right of station 0+00 to create a new Vertical intersection point (VIP). Move the captured point to a desired position and click again to anchor the point.

  2. As in the previous horizontal alignment exercise, use the mouse to:

    1. Create a new VIP at the end of the existing alignment.

    2. Edit an existing VIP.

    3. Insert a VIP between existing VIPs.

    4. Delete a VIP.

There are a few subtle differences between editing in the Plan and Profile windows:

  • In the profile, you can’t have a backwards segment (if you insert a point between two existing VIPs, you are restricted to that station range).

  • In the profile, you can insert a point no matter where your mouse is (in the Plan you must mouse over a segment).

  • Profile editing is constrained by the length of the horizontal alignment (if you remove one end of your horizontal alignment, you will generally remove some vertical alignment).

  1. Continue editing the Vertical Intersection Points until you have a design similar to the one in the figure below.

Figure 2: Vertical Alignment before Curves Applied

  1. File | Close. Do not save changes, so the following steps behave correctly.