NCOT is basically paying for the roadway design 3 times. We have a design unit or PEF do the main design. When the contract is awarded, the Contractor building it, if they need a model for machine grading, they hire someone to make that model for them. Then our construction department makes another model in Tremble Business Center to lay out the project and check the Contractor’s model.

Exporting elements to XML files only does so much. These XML files exported from ORD will import directly into Access (Tremble surveying program that works with TBC) on our Data Collectors normally with no problem. Elements created in the corridor can be exported as an XML like the alignments. These corridor elements, when imported into Access, are independent from the alignments. For example, a proposed EOP will start with a station of 0+00 while alignment will start at 10+00, and the corridor may start at 11+04. The stations from corridor elements do not line up with the alignment. This limits what these files can be used for.

The alignment XML files import into Trimble Business Center normally without problems. The XML files with the elements from the corridor will usually not import into Trimble Business Center. Even if the corridor elements could be imported into TBC there would still be a lot of work that would need to be done for these files to be used for project layout in the field.

We need a simple and streamlined way to get the ORD models and information into Trimble Business Center for our construction surveyors use to be able to lay out the designs in the field in a way that is consistent and will reduce or eliminate errors that can occur by recreating the original ORD design. It would also be good if this way would work with the industry standards to work with machine grading programs as well.