Revolutionizing Site Design: Harnessing the Power of Civil 3D Corridors

SHELBY L. SMITH: Welcome to Revolutionizing Site Design-- Harnessing the Power of Civil 3D Corridors. I'm Shelby L. Smith, and I am an Autodesk CIM manager with JMT. JMT is a multi-disciplined engineering firm with over 50 offices throughout the United States. I've been working with JMT for nine years as a site design engineer with their Special Projects Department.

And recently, in the last year, I moved into our Design Center of Excellence as the company's Autodesk CIM manager. I'm sure we've all heard of BIM manager before, but I am CIM manager. So while BIM is on the vertical, I deal with the horizontal, working to help our project teams with best practices, workflows, and how best to model their designs.

So who am I, and why am I speaking with you today? I was recently honored by Autodesk to join their Expert Elite program. I am very honored to be a member of the Expert Elites, this very prestigious and elite community. I was appointed to the AUGI Advisory Board just last year. I am a member of the Autodesk Customer Advisory Board for Infrastructure Design and a Certified Civil 3D professional.

In my spare time, I love blogging for Autodesk with the Autodesk Community Blogs and the Autodesk Community Tips. Recently, I began hosting a bi-weekly webinar with Autodesk for the C4C3D User Group, where we talk about collaboration and other types of hot topics in infrastructure design. My background in education is a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering, with a minor in architectural history. I have over 13 years of experience working as a design engineer in infrastructure and over 20 years working with Autodesk software.

As stated in the session catalog, here are your key learning objectives for this course, and we want to make sure that we target these. You're going to learn about the inspirational corridor-centric approach, gain practical insights of using Civil 3D corridors for nonlinear design, and discover how to optimize those model to coordinate with others.

The agenda. We're going to go over a brief introduction, talk about the challenges with traditional design approach. Why corridors for site design? What are the workloads and tactics for corridor design that I've been using with this workflow over the last five years? Model Coordination. And, finally, lessons learned, challenges, benefits, and value.

So why did I start utilizing corridors for site design? Well, when I joined JMT nine years ago in the Special Projects Department, I was working for two trained highway engineers. When I started approaching my site designs with the typical traditional workflow of utilizing feature lines, they didn't understand why I was controlling my design in this format.

They were really desiring to see those alignments, and profiles, and cross-sections that they were accustomed to with their traditional highway design approach. They would want me to easily be able to change those slopes. I'm sure all of us have experienced that before, where your manager comes to you and says, hey, can you make this design change?

And it should be relatively easy. But it wasn't always that case. I was looking for a better way to calculate my quantities for cost estimates and do my volumetric calculations to provide a cut-fill analysis to the contractor.

Additionally, I have been working on public transit facility headquarters and transfer stations working with a Revit team. I felt like I was an island all by myself being the only Civil site designer, an entire Revit team of architectural, structural, and MEP.

I felt like no one cared about my design, and I was unable to coordinate with the rest of the design team. I felt left out, not being able to share my data and live in that same space as them. I really wanted to figure out a way to make it that I could better coordinate with the rest of my design team and share my models with them. So let's get into it and start talking about how we're going to use corridors for site design.

Is this going to be an end all for every project [INAUDIBLE] determine the rate of investment for this design flow and whether or not it makes sense for your project. It may not be the best solution for every project that you have coming forward. I spoke with a few Expert Elites last year at Autodesk University. And we really got into an interesting discussion of whether or not this was the best approach to site design. We all had differing opinions, and that's fine too.

I want you to allow this workflow to help you think outside the box and reconsider what you're doing. As we move through this presentation, I am going to discuss several projects that I've been working on the last few years. And it is a steady progression and evolution of this design method. Not every project is fast paced, and some of these projects took several years to develop. Please keep that in mind as we move forward.

What are the goals that we are trying to achieve? Well, number one is that design efficiency, making sure that we are designing in the most efficient way possible with a model that can be easily and effectively changed and modified throughout the design process.

Being able to coordinate with multiple disciplines. I spoke in the beginning how I felt left out. But it's not just working with the Revit team. It's also being able to coordinate with the disciplines within the infrastructure world itself on the horizontal plane. Whether it be utilities, water resources, stormwater, all of them need to come together.

That volume analysis and material quantities. We all need to be providing this data as part of the project, whether to the contractor, to our manager, or just part of the client requirements, to be able to provide what are the volumes and materials that we're planning to use as part of the design.

The time and budget savings on design changes. Design changes are inevitable. They always come, and they always happen, so to be able to effectively do these so that they don't take a hit to your budget and your project schedule.

And then finally, that modeling and visualization. We are moving into a different world where we're no longer delivering a 2D plan on paper. We're moving into that model-based design and being able to visualize what that looks like in real time.

So what are those challenges with traditional design approach? Well, this is a project I designed back in 2015. It was a project that had all types of things happening. There's a parking lot, access drive, retaining wall, different elevations.

There's a plaza, landscape area, but yet I'm only seeing a top surface. I really only have that top level of everything being designed. Although I have all those different entities of pavement, and concrete, and landscaping, where are they? Can we see them? Can we see those different elements?

When I need to coordinate with the rest of my design team, the Revit team tends to hate this TIN surface. They would constantly ask me to extract contours and provide them to them rather than taking my TIN surface. They didn't like the appearance inside of their own space. So they would take my information and rebuild it, really kind of disjointing that coordination process.

Although I had a very solid design with this project, that control of elevations and slopes and then finally the analysis, being able to easily and quickly calculate the volume of materials just was not feasible. I had a top surface that I was comparing to my existing grade.

I wasn't taking into account all the excavation necessary for my pavement sections, my sidewalk sections, the depth of curve, the topsoil removal, and then being able to calculate those materials. Additionally, outside of that cut-fill analysis, I was not able to easily quantify the materials that I needed for my cost estimates. Let's move into a little bit more detail about this.

That traditional site design with feature lines, it tends to control everything from the perimeter. Yes, you may have another feature line or two or the end of the parking stalls or down the center of the access drive. But, overall, this is how we would set up a feature line for this type of parking lot design.

You're setting up your feature line on the red line that I have highlighted around the perimeter boundary of the parking lot, trying to control it from the outside in. Even when I'm setting up those slopes, it's a little bit difficult and hairy the way that you're approaching it, trying to control the center of the access drive with a 2% along the red line.

Additionally, we're trying to control from all these separate PVIs, as you change where the red X's are shown. As you're trying to change these elevations, it's like a domino effect. You start to chase one after the other, as seen in this elevation editor.

Once I start to change one elevation, it's going to change the slopes for all the continuing PVIs that follow, causing me to chase it down through the elevation editor to effectively make the modification and change that I'm seeking. And even though we can see those even slopes in this elevation editor of 1%, 2%, 3%, it's not always reflected in our TIN surface.

This is a slope arrow on that same parking lot. And although I have a 2% grade that I'm trying to achieve, it's still not showing that information accurately in the way that I'm seeking. It's showing a 2.12 as opposed to the 2%.

Finally, it's monochromatic. We talked about the different design components and elements and how it's not translating and conveying the design intent. It's not showing where those different elements are actually in place. It's very monochromatic, and it's not visually appealing. It's not allowing somebody who's not involved in the design to truly have grasp and a picture of what's happening.

So why corridors for site design? This is my most recent project that I've worked on. And this is our goal. We want to achieve something closer to this as a visual and model output, as opposed to that TIN and monochromatic surface.

What are the project outcomes that we are seeking? Well, being able to effectively communicate with our client and ensuring their satisfaction in the final output. Translation of design across the disciplines, being able to share your intent of design with your fellow infrastructure designers and that vertical team.

That vertical team seems to have a high opinion of what that model should look like. And let's raise the bar and try to meet them. Let's try to get to that point where we can accurately convey our design intent to them.

That construction cost analysis. We know that these projects are going to get to a construction. That's the goal, to have these constructed.

So in that process, we need to be able to provide a cost analysis of what the material cost is for these projects. And then the project schedule efficiency to maintain your project schedule and ensure that we are on budget and that we are effectively meeting our deadlines.

Let's look at a comparison. This is the same project. These are the same model space, the same surfaces essentially. It's the same design. You have the traditional approach on the left and the corridor-based design on the right.

This is my most recent project, which we will refer to in this presentation as a bus transfer station. On the left is that traditional monochromatic surface. There's so much detail happening here. But I don't know about you, I can't see what's happening. I can't accurately see those curved lines, my ADA ramps, my driveway slopes, or where the pavement and the curb are meeting. It's a little bit jumbled, and I can't accurately visualize all of the different elements and components.

But on the right-hand side, where we're looking at the same design but with a corridor surface, I can accurately see where the pavement is, where those curb lines are, the ADA ramps, and even my landscape areas. I can clearly distinguish all of the different components that are consisting of this design.

So what are the workflows and tactics that help us get to this design workflow for site design? Well, there are three components to a corridor. We have alignment, which I will sometimes refer to as a horizontal baseline, profile, which we'll call a vertical baseline at times, and, finally, an assembly. These are the three main components of a traditional corridor. But let's dig into some other considerations, with code set styles and Subassembly Composer.

Although these aren't the building blocks of what we think of when we consider a corridor, they are truly essential in ensuring that we can control the corridor in the way that we want. I have several code set styles to affect the display of how my corridor is showing up with different styles for cross sections, typical sections, the plan view, a rendering style.

And then Subassembly Composer allows me to take that one step further. If you're not working in Subassembly Composer yet, I highly encourage you to check it out. It allows you control over what the codes are that you're using in your code set style. It allows you to have different codes for different types of concrete.

For one of my most recent projects, which we'll get into in a minute on the next slide, we're going to call that a bus transit facility headquarters. On that project, I had a heavy duty concrete, a low volume concrete, a sidewalk concrete, and a curb concrete. Having all those different types of concrete, I wanted to be able to separate them out as they had different load ratings.

Being able to separate them out allows me to more effectively prepare those cost estimates. So getting into Subassembly Composers just allows you much more control over the end product of your design. Let's take a further look.

Here we have that bus facility headquarters. This is one of my more recent projects that I had. But I've learned a lot along the way since I've started this project.

In red, encircling the perimeter of the building, we have a baseline A, we'll call it. And then through the parking lot on the left, we have baseline B. This bus facility headquarters stores buses under roof with a maintenance circulation zone and administration facility. To support those administration facilities, we have a parking lot on the left.

Although this is not a linear design, it has a lot of linear components to it if you start to think about it a little bit differently. I use the baseline B through the parking lot to establish my corridor there connecting to baseline A that encircles the perimeter of the building. This is how I set up the original structure to start my site design. The second piece is that profile. This is a profile that I used for the parking lot. As you can see, it's much different than controlling from the outside in.

I did calculate from the building through the plaza and then the curb drop and also through the parking stalls to the middle of the access drive what those elevations were that I wanted to hit. There is still calculations involved.

But once you do, you have the ability to have less information you're trying to control. I'm able to have a 2% grade and even add vertical curves to be able to have smooth transitions from a positive slope into a negative slope, and be able to reflect that in our design just makes it a lot more like that highway design that we talked about versus what we considered a traditional site approach.

In the panorama down below, we have the profile entities showing all of our control points that we have for this profile. It's a much shorter list than what you have for your typical Elevation Editor with feature lines.

In this profile view, you may also see the red lines and the green lines. These are my offset profiles from my offset alignments that I had, helping me to better control and superimpose other parallel alignments into my design. We'll talk about those a little bit more in a second.

The final component for corridor design is assemblies. I cannot stress enough to keep your project assemblies as simplistic as possible. Back in 2023.2 version of Civil 3D, they released the ability for corridor transitions. Having corridor transitions allows us to have fewer assemblies but change the slopes or change the curb heights through transitions.

But before transitions were released in 2023.2, I started utilizing what I refer to as dimension control. This was something provided to us by Jeff Bartels on his YouTube page, and I'm providing the link to that YouTube tutorial in your handout. You can go ahead and build that dimension control in Subassembly Composer and then bring it into your drawing. It functions very similarly to corridor transitions.

The red dot in this image is showing you where I've inserted those dimension controls. You can then profile the values and put it into the parameters for your subassembly, allowing you to control the values with one profile.

Here's a closer look at that. You can see in the middle of the assembly those two red dots controlling the pavement sections. It's allowing me to have a 1%, 2%, 3% of my pavement slope without having different assemblies.

What are the tools that you can leverage as part of the workflow for incorporating corridors into site design? Well, number one is those corridor transitions. If you're working in Civil 3D 2023.2 or more recent, you have those corridor transitions available to you. I highly recommend that you leverage them to minimize the amount of assemblies you have for your project and have a more cohesive design. But if those are not available to you-- and there's a caveat.

Although we love those corridor transitions, they are not functional in offset assemblies yet. That's where that dimension control comes into play. Once again, that link is provided to you in your handout. You can use that dimension control for previous versions or if you're using those offset assemblies. I love offset assemblies and the power to connect to separate horizontal baselines and vertical baselines to one another.

The other thing you can start leveraging is feature lines. They're not all bad. Feature lines are very powerful as well, especially when used in conjunction with corridors. Corridors allow you the ability to extract feature lines from the corridor build, which I use as targets.

Also, you can set a feature line to the surface of your corridor at relative elevation, and that can become a new corridor baseline for you, really leveraging the tools so that you're not going through and editing everything yourself manually. As much as we can automate this process, the better.

Let's talk about those offset alignments and offset profiles. You saw those lines in our profile of the offset profiles that I had. Using offset alignments and profiles on my bus facility headquarters, I was able to create a super elevation, transitioning from a positive 2% to a negative 2 and back to a positive 2.

This allows us to control the grade without providing additional transitions or additional assemblies. I had worked on that project starting in version 2020 and into 2022. When I was working on that project, the transitions weren't yet available, and that's where those offset alignments and offset profiles really came in handy for me.

And, finally, once again, we have those offset assemblies. Those offset assemblies really allow you the power to leverage Get Mark Point and Set Mark Point, connecting your offset assembly and your primary assembly. Those Get Mark Point and Set Mark Point are only available when leveraging offset assemblies.

And, finally, we have that custom subassemblies and output parameters. I really took it upon myself to start creating all of my own custom subassemblies that reflect the details that I'm providing as part of my design. This allows me to code them specifically for what I want, but also have very similar geometry to what my details are that I'm providing as part of my project.

Additionally, I really discovered the ability to provide output parameters. Once you start creating your own subassemblies, you can take the slope for your pavement section and create it as an output parameter. If you have a parking lot, for example, and you have it broken up into different subassemblies, say your access drive, your parking stalls, another access drive, but you want to maintain the same slope across them, you can use the output parameters to push it from one subassembly to the next.

Therefore, if you change your slope from a 2% to a 3%, you can change it once, and it pushes through the rest of your assembly. What's better than to only have to change that once and automate that process for you, letting the software work for you.

Here we have that bus facility headquarters. As you can see, I've nearly blanketed the entire site with corridors. Is it perfect?

No, this was part of my evolution of my design and figuring out how to leverage corridors for site design. But there's still a lot of coverage here, and this has been successfully constructed. So it's a win. But there's a lot happening here. I was able to cover the parking lot and all of the surrounding areas with those corridors.

I additionally took a feature line and set it to the perimeter of the parking lot. That then became another corridor for my curb and sidewalk. This was the first phase of my leveraging corridors and starting to layer them. I began this process of setting a base corridor and then building additional corridors on top of it, allowing this automated process that it was extracting information from one corridor to make the next.

Here is that same corridor design in Object Viewer. As you can see, there's a lot more difference in how the information is being presented. I can clearly visualize where are my curved lines, where's the pavement versus the landscape area. I can see that green demonstrating landscaping. It's giving me far more information already about this design, allowing me to translate that intent to others.

This is my most recent project. We saw a clip of it in the beginning. This is my bus transfer station. This was the peak of my layering of corridors. Although this is a more simplistic site, there's a lot going on here. Let's start to discuss it.

I have an access drive, and we're going to call that baseline A. I constructed baseline A, and that is the base of all my site design. I was able to extract the top back of curve and use it as a target for baseline B. Baseline B is running down the center of my parking lot. It then targets that top back of curb to connect baseline A and baseline B together.

Then I drew an alignment around the perimeter of the building and set it to the finished floor elevation. I was able to extract the top back of curb from baseline A, and that became the target for offset and elevation for my plaza. I set the slope for the plaza to 1.5%.

To maintain that, I played around with the slope on the right-hand lane of baseline A to ensure that I was meeting the grade that I wanted to. Once all three of these were built, I had a surface from it. And I then created the sidewalk corridor. I set the baseline for the sidewalk to the front face of curb for the existing road that I was tying into.

I then created an alignment at the back of sidewalk. I set it to the grade of baseline A, B, and plaza, pulling those elevations and creating those as my target, being able to create my driveway access and all of the ADA that I needed.

Let's look at that again. This is all of those corridors coming together in one space. I had to rebuild them in a certain way. I had to rebuild A before I could rebuild B or plaza.

And last of all always had to be sidewalk. If I build them out of order, they will error out. It's a very specific design process, but, truly, I am having such a wealth of information provided through these corridors.

How do we do that corridor layer targeting? Well, once again, on the left-hand side, I show you how to pull that feature line from your corridor. Then we have our corridor properties and parameters where we can enter into the corridor target mapping and set those target offsets and target elevations. That's allowing us to pull that information and having it automate between them.

We talked about the wealth of information that corridors can provide. As working with those trained highway engineers, this is something that was being asked of me, to create typical sections. When I began working for them and I was creating my projects from feature lines and creating just a top surface and needing to create these typical sections, it was a single line that was going through the cross section for all of the materials, for the wearing course, the subbase, the concrete sidewalk, the curb.

I was hand drawing everything with polylines and hatches. By leveraging corridors, everything you see on the screen right now is automated except for the dimensions and the call out bubbles. All of the materials shown here are from the corridor section, as are the slope labels.

I have a building on the right, which you'll see in a few slides, that I pulled in from the Revit model and projected it into the section view. Additionally, I took feature lines. Remember, they're not all bad. Feature lines can be extremely beneficial. And I projected those feature lines into the space for the property line and the fence line and added automated labels for them.

This is allowing us to provide more clarity in communication with the contractor. To provide a view like this is not something that we traditionally provide as part of a site design, but it's become common practice with the department I was working with. We were providing these to show the intent of design with our contractor.

And leveraging those code set styles allows me to control the view. As you saw in the assemblies, they look very different from what we're seeing here. Having those different types of code set styles allows me to present the information in different ways. As far as cross-sections go, I now use them as a design review tool.

Although providing cross-sections is not part of the project submission, I typically cut them on every project I work for now to see if I'm achieving the design I want with my cut-fill, my cut and fill, if I'm able to do my curb transitions the way that I'm intending. By cutting those cross-sections, it's allowing me to check on my design, and is it working and functioning properly?

With using corridors for site design, we're having actual depth of materials. We're providing that concrete. We're providing curbs and depth of topsoil. We have pavement.

That is actual information that we can extract. We can start analyzing what are those materials. We can start calculating what is the volume of the wearing course? What is the volume of the topsoil? What is the volume of the subbase that we're providing?

And remember how I said those code set styles and creating your own subassemblies, how that can come back into play? Remember the heavy duty concrete, the low volume, the sidewalk, the curb? By coating them separately, I can start to calculate their volumes and materials separately as well. And that allows me to more efficiently start preparing those cost estimates as part of the construction process.

We all know that we are asked to provide what are the cut-fill volumes as part of the project. Well, when you're dealing with that monochromatic TIN surface, you only have that top level. You're comparing your finished grade to your existing grade. Or if you're taking it a step further, you might create bounded volumes with offsets for certain areas to help you calculate what the datum is.

By utilizing corridors, we can automatically create a datum surface that follows along the bottom of all the corridor sections, from the topsoil depth, to the bottom of curb, to the bottom of subbase. And it's going to draw a line to the bottom of all of them. We can then take that datum surface that we create as part of the corridor and analyze it against the existing grade. That's providing us a more accurate volumetric calculation on what the excavation actually is in comparison to the existing grade.

What are some tips to remember as part of this? Well, leverage those transitions whenever possible. Those transitions are really going to be able to help you to create a more effective and efficient design.

Utilizing Set Mark Point and Get Mark Point with offset assemblies allows you to create a much more comprehensive corridor with different horizontal alignments and different profiles, but allowing them to talk to each other and especially if there's this varying area between them that you can create a grass area that really varies in width by allowing one corridor to target another or one assembly to target another assembly within that assembly structure between the main assembly and the offset assembly.

Create transitions with dimension control whenever those transitions aren't available. Currently with 2023.2, 2024, and 2025, we don't yet have the ability to create transitions in offset assemblies. I know that that's essential in part of that design process.

So thank goodness that Jeff Bartels has created that ability to create a dimension control and allow us to profile those values and translate it into the parameters of your subassembly. Employee Subassembly Composer and output parameters leverage the ability to control and provide your own coding and output. I've created my own daylights that analyze different situations.

I now only use one daylight for most of my projects because I have built it out that it has the ability to have three different types of cut, three different types of fill. I set the width of what it should be. If it can achieve that, it starts putting in retaining walls. The sky is the limit when you start building out your own subassemblies and start realizing the possibilities and potentials of how you can leverage the software.

And then, finally, develop those code set styles for multiple applications. I have different code set styles for the various ways in which I want to present the information to the receiving party, whether it's a simple cross-section providing a typical section with a little bit more information, showing a rendering view of that corridor. Allowing your corridor to work for you and just simply making small adjustments to those code set styles presents the information in various ways.

Let's talk about model coordination. At the beginning, I talked about how I felt left out. I could not connect to the rest of my design team. Model coordination is so essential as part of our design process. We need to be able to convey that design to others.

This is that bus transfer facility in Civil 3D. This is the Civil 3D view space with my corridor showing in 2D wireframe. And I imported the Revit model 3D solids into my Civil 3D space as we leverage shared coordinates on this project. We set up the shared coordinates so we could translate our design between our various spaces and coordinate everything together.

Looking at this view, I can already see the different components that are consisting of my design. I can visualize those curves where my plaza is, the different pavements that are happening. But perhaps this view is difficult for you to read for whatever way. You can change the way the information is being displayed.

If I move to this slide, this is simply changing from 2D wireframe to a realistic view. I've done nothing else. This is in the Civil 3D space itself, and I can see the pavement.

My parking lot is a different view than the access drive as I have a bituminous pavement versus a concrete pavement. Along the back edge, I can see that grass strip and the daylight that's happening. I can very easily visualize my design and also translate and tell others by just sharing this picture with them.

What is my intent of design? You're able to more effectively communicate that by showing them a model, by showing them something that's not just a flat 2D surface on a sheet of paper. This is effectively communicating your design intent.

Take it one step further. I told you how my Revit team did not like the surface I was providing to them and they rebuilt it in their own space. Aside from the volumes and the materials and all the other aspects I've stated that really make corridors a beneficial tool to be leveraging, you can also extract the solids.

Here I've extracted the solids from my Civil 3D corridor into one space and then provided it to my Revit team. My BIM manager was so kind to help me out with this and import the corridor solids into our Revit model.

Here we can see my design in Revit itself. When we were extracting the contours and the Revit team was rebuilding, they were missing so much information from my design. When you're working around a building with door elevations, you need to meet those ADA restrictions of less than 2%. That is such finite grading that they weren't accurately seeing what was happening in my grading design.

And as someone who loves grading as much as I do, it was disheartening. I wanted to find a better way to be able to communicate my design with them and feel like I was involved, that the Revit team for structural and architectural were really considering my design as part of their design process as well. Here, they're able to see that design intent. And they're able to visualize in their own space where they're comfortable, what is the intention, and are we having any issues or conflicts?

Next, if you are working with project managers, many times they do not the software. So let's take this into the cloud. Let's go into the world of ACC, Autodesk Construction Cloud, and utilize model coordination to be able to better communicate our designs. Here, we're able to bring all of our models into one space.

By leveraging corridors, I was able to create container files and push them up into model coordination and have my models in place with the rest of the Revit team. This is a space where the entire design team can go to check for issues and clashes, including those who don't have the software on their own computers. This includes the project manager and other stakeholders of the project and even perhaps the client.

In this view, you can visualize where those driveway ramps are happening. There's a partition on the right-hand side of the building. When I brought my model into model coordination, I noticed that there was an issue that the partition wall was floating up in space as I had a slope in my sidewalk, I was able to coordinate that with the architect and effectively make that change way before we got to construction, allowing us to hit head on a potential issue before it became a problem.

What are the lessons learned, drawbacks, benefits, and value? Well, major alignment shifts are complicated. I'm not saying they're any worse than utilizing feature lines and having to make a design change late in the design process.

But with alignments being the core and base of every part of your design, when you start to move them, even small amounts, those are significant changes. Even though they're complicated, everything is still interconnected. You have your alignment, but the profile, the assemblies, everything is talking to one another. So you can rebuild it and then start making those adjustments.

Sometimes a combination is better. On that bus facility headquarters, I leveraged both feature lines and corridors together. There are certain instances where it just doesn't seem feasible to achieve your entire design with corridors. I hope I can keep advancing as the time goes forward, but it's OK if you feel that you need to use a combination of the two entities together. It sometimes is the most reasonable and practical way to approach your design.

Parking islands are frustrating. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't yet. Sometimes I create an alignment and an offset alignment to help control my design, and then I target inward to the parking islands. Maybe that'll work for you. You just need to figure out your own design process.

Transitions are limited. Although transitions are such a wonderful tool for us to be used in 2023.2 and forward, unfortunately, they aren't available to us in the offset assemblies yet. And then those custom assemblies are far more flexible and powerful. I cannot stress to you enough to get into Subassembly Composer sooner rather than later and start leveraging the ability to create your own designs.

What are some of the challenges that we face? Well, this is a time-consuming initial setup. You have to examine what is your rate of investment, and is it worth it on your project? Many times, these types of designs took me about three days at minimum to begin setting up and effectively creating a grading plan. Although it's time consuming, most of the time, this was really paying off in the end because I was easily and effectively able to make design changes.

It requires advanced corridor knowledge. This is not something you're going to ask your fresh out of college graduate to start attacking. It requires an in-depth knowledge of corridors and the different building blocks that you have available. However, I was able to teach one of our young engineers how to effectively utilize this design when he only has about 2 to 3 years of experience. He's been learning this design process and leveraging it on his own projects now.

It's challenging to apply to all situations. This is not the end all, be all. I'm really hoping it helps you to think outside the box. But if you have a very small project that only needs a basin or very minimalistic grading design, this may not be the best solution for you, especially with that time-consuming initial setup.

Curb islands. There's no way around it. They're super challenging and frustrating, and I hope that Autodesk continues to advance the tools available to us to make these easier for us.

And then, finally, we have that industry resistance. Anytime you're breaking from traditional methods, there's going to be some resistance and questioning of why. Well, as I have shown you throughout this presentation, there's so many benefits available by leveraging corridors.

You have the ability to more easily and efficiently provide volumetric calculations and material quantities, translate and show your designs, show the value, show that value and relay that to those that are resisting. I think that if you can demonstrate the payoff and why this is going to be valuable to the design team, then you may win them over.

What are the benefits? Well, it's a model-based design. We're moving away from those 2D plans. You're no longer having a 2D plan that you're printing out on paper and submitting to a design review. We're moving into that model-based world where they want to see something in real time that we can move around and visualize.

You can easily cut those cross-sections. You can have typical sections, as I was sharing with you, that I provide for my projects, but also utilize it as a design review tool. You can more effectively see what is occurring in your design and if you have any issues before you get too far along in that design process or even construction.

Clash detection. I spoke about that partition wall. It was floating up in the air. It wasn't matching my grade, that we were able to address that way before we got to the end of this design process.

You're able to see if there are any issues. Are there conflicts with the structural foundations? Are there issues with your utility coordination? By utilizing model coordination, you have the ability to leverage clash detection in that web interface as well.

Analyze and share that data. You can calculate your volumetric and material quantities and share that data out, whether with the project manager, the client, the contractor, or even the reviewing agency. And, finally, you can experience your data. You may be wondering, what the heck do I mean by experience your data? Well, let's take a look.

This is my model from the bus transfer station and our in-house expert Jamie Gant putting on the Apple Vision Pro. This is our JMT proprietary software JMT Advantage that we can leverage to show our model in the real world. Jamie is our augmented reality and virtual reality expert.

And you can see him in the bottom right-hand corner as he moves through my design. He's in a parking lot and projecting this in that space. He's able to look around and see my design as if he were in it.

He's walking down the access drive and looking around, checking out my curb lines, my site, and how it's able to relate to the building, seeing how this design is going to function in the real world before we ever even get to the point of construction. It's very cool to be able to bring your model to life and visualize it in the real world.

So what is the value? Well, it's setting the stage for digital delivery. We're able to start providing those more digital models and information that is needed as part of that digital delivery. You have a wealth of information with that metadata. You have so much data that can be extracted from the corridor in so many different formats and ways to share with others. You're saving project time and budget.

On my project for the bus transfer station, my boss came to me late in the design and said, hey, can you change the slope on the parking lot from 1% to 2%? He's like, is that a big deal? I'm like, no, not at all. I was able to open up my model file, change the slope in my assembly, rebuild the corridor, and have a new plan to him in less than 20 minutes. I'm able to easily and effectively make those design changes without a lot of hassle and effort.

Coordination. You saw those different coordinated models, being able to bring the Revit model into Civil 3D, taking the corridor into Revit and then also utilizing that model coordination space. It's allowing us to effectively communicate the intent of design and the potential design issues with the entire project team, project managers, clients, and community, if need be.