Parking Lot Surface I

This post demonstrates one way to create a parking lot surface. The 2D linework for a partial parking lot is shown below.

The first step is to create a feature line at zero slope. The cross slope will be determined by the angle of the line to the low point. The small white square is the planned inlet location. A grading object is then created using the grade to distance option. The grading object will be used to derive elevations for the feature lines for the curb outline.

So now that the temporary grading object is created, the curb outlines will be turned into feature lines and the elevations assigned from the grading object or associated surface to the grading object. Make sure the curb outline feature lines are assigned to a different site than the grading object to remove the interaction between them. When assigning the elevation make sure that the Insert Intermediate grade break points is unchecked. If you want an elevation point at a specific point add a PI or elevation point.

So now create a surface and add the curb feature line to it. Later I'll check out the other options, but for this time I'll use the default settings.

Looking at the image below we can see that the grading object's surface and the parking surface contour's are the same which is good kind of. We still need to offset the curb outlines to model the top of curbs will cause problems since we used the default value of 1.000'.

The pictures below show the top of curbs created and added to the surface. As you can see the contours doesn't follow the curb like it should if it is modeled more correctly. Can't really say it's wrong because we indicated to the program that this is the way we want it modeled.

In a follow up post I'll go over how using a smaller Mid-ordinate distance can cause problems and ways we can model the surface to alleviate some of these problems.

Related Posts:
Parking Lot Surface I
Parking Lot Surface II
Parking Lot Surface III
Parking Lot Surface IV
Parking Lot Surface V