Rail track design: Corridor modeling

Autodesk Support

Aug 24, 2019


What

In the world of BIM, railway designs are developed as 3D models. Within such a model, a standard corridor object uses alignments, profiles, and assemblies. Corridor design includes switches, turnouts, platforms, and calculations for the cant of a track.

Who

Railway engineers, Engineering service providers, Designers, Project engineers.

How

With Autodesk Civil 3D, you can easily build the model of a rail track corridor with the level of detail you need. Use alignments, profiles, assemblies, and at least one surface for the topography.

Create a corridor by selecting the following:

  • An alignment or a feature line for the horizontal geometry
  • A profile line for the vertical geometry
  • An assembly for the volume (structure and materials)
  • A surface for the terrain

Assemblies and subassemblies are available in the Civil 3D library (Tool palette).

Note: For detailed instructions on building a corridor, see the Corridors Tutorials.

Advanced Civil 3D functionality for building corridors

Civil 3D includes powerful capabilities for editing, adapting, and optimizing corridors. You can create an optimum model of a corridor according to the context and the needs of your project.

  • Design criteria for road and rail
  • Offset alignment
  • Target (surfaces, width or offset, slope or elevation)
  • Regions with different assemblies
  • Base line from alignment and profile of from feature line
  • Multiple base lines corridor (alignment and profile and/or feature line)
  • Subassembly Composer to create custom subassemblies and assemblies
  • Corridor surfaces
  • Extracted corridor feature lines used as targets    

Note: See Corridors in Civil 3D Help for complete documentation.

Civil 3D tools for managing specific rail constraints

Civil 3D tools help you to manage specific rail constraints and create corridors optimized for a rail project:

Why

Given the demands of population growth and transportation challenges to cities, rail provides efficient mobility with low environmental impact. Civil 3D and the AEC Collection provide tools to create accurate rail corridors and manage BIM rail projects.

What next

In addition to the specific rail modeling functionality in Civil 3D, local standards are available in Country Kits to give easy access to the geometric rules for efficient rail design.

Link a railway corridor created in Civil 3D to platforms and rail stations designed in Revit using platform edges and surface sharing.

Use Dynamo for Civil 3D to add equipment to railway corridors, such as sleepers, power lines, catenaries, and cable ducts.



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