Topic: Do you have ideas for land development calculator

[nobody]

I'm building a simple application to have various calculations for land development / design.  I plan on including manning pipe calcs, earthwork cut/fill calc, vertical curves and roadway transitions. Anyone else have ideas that would be good for this?

Thanks! 

[huiz]

what does 'simple' mean?

[nobody]

Just basic algebraic equations.  I'm not a Lee Mac (aka math genius)...my major was in computer graphics lol.  Typically we calc vertical curves based on K value, easy to add.... earthwork will just be entering an area and cut/fill height to get a basic / quick estimated volume, the manning pipe calcs have been reinvented a million times on the net so I'm just duplicating the tools I like... and the transitions for roads are fairly straight forward in our area as well.

[huiz]

You do not use Civil3D? If you try to program all those things you might better buy a Civil3D and use that.

At the moment I work on an application that does surface creation, volume calculating, sections of surfaces, profiles from 3D polylines, and so on. It is quite a lot of work, especially the math to calcultate intersecting triangles and the height difference. The application is meant for BricsCAD users and AutoCAD users that don't need a full Civil3D.

You can't create all these things in a few hours, you need weeks or months of develop time. There are also cheap or free earthwork programs you can use. Maybe that is an option?

[nobody]

gotcha.... we have civil 3d. I'm just creating quick tools to help design sites.

[huiz]

Well, explore the Civil3D API to see what functions you can use. There is a lot of potential in it. A lot of the math can be done with that.