ABSTRACT
Highway projects are very expensive, so proper planning and design are very important for a correct estimation of the cost. The selection of appropriate software is the key to achieving successful and correct project preparation. Numerous, commercially promoted, road design software programs are available on the international market, many are well known for aggressive publicity but not in the respect of comprehensiveness, quality, and simplicity, with a straight forward approach. The software used for the tutorials of this book is comprehensive in terms of features targeted to all possible facets of highway engineering and project preparation. Starting with conventional processing of “text data files” for each individual design task in advanced CAD “workspace” based design, which enables the user to handle all tasks related to the processing of topo survey data from satellites, to create the digital terrain model (DTM) with ground contours, roads, at-grade intersections, multi-level interchanges, pavement and drainage designs with land drawings, and land record management. After the initial design, any modifications can be done easily by updating the entire workspace in a new folder by fast re-processing in “batch file” mode of the “project data file” modified by workspace design, and by using the same associated survey data file.
