Design Sophistication
GEOPAK is used for roads and highways, railways, and public works projects as well as commercial, industrial, and environmental land development. The software provides a greater level of design sophistication than standard tools through the application of design rules. Users are able to work in multiple views and dimensions. For roads and highways, Bentley’s unique Roadway Designer provides an all-in-one visual tool for 3D parametric design of the complete road corridor.
Project Versatility
GEOPAK is used for all types and phases of civil projects, large and small, by users of every level of expertise. The software integrates all aspects of the civil project, from corridor studies to final design and production of construction deliverables. It handles a wide variety of complex tasks such as interchange design, roundabout design, survey data reduction, site development, sanitary and storm water network design, and production of construction staking reports.
Flexible and Configurable
GEOPAK and MicroStation deliver all the drafting and drawing production capabilities needed to complete your project. And the strengths of GEOPAK are enhanced by Civil AccuDraw, the civil-specific version of MicroStation AccuDraw – an intuitive, precision drafting tool that anticipates the user’s intent, reducing the number of mouse clicks and other actions required to achieve drafting tasks. Civil AccuDraw streamlines the drafting process by supporting civil-specific drafting conventions with options for station and offsets, bearings and distances, azimuths, and more.
GEOPAK offers users the flexibility to work in ways that best suit their specific needs. The software is fully configurable, enabling users to customize the GEOPAK environment to meet project standards or personal preferences. Roadway libraries streamline repetitive tasks across projects and promote rapid evaluation of design alternatives for critical decision making. GEOPAK automates the production of a complete array of design deliverables. Embedded project management capabilities help users stay on top of all project components and deliverables – capabilities that are tightly integrated with Bentley’s ProjectWise project collaboration system for connecting people and information across project teams.
Working With Field Data
GEOPAK offers a full complement of functionality that enables users to work automatically with survey, GPS, LiDAR, Point Cloud, and other forms of field data. The software supports the leading devices and formats, handling a broad array of existing topography information. Adjustments are calculated using any of the industry-standard methods. Users can modify and process the data as needed and, when the design is complete, upload design data to data collectors for stakeout or automated machine guidance for site preparation.
Integrated Mapping
GEOPAK contains a comprehensive set of mapping and GIS data compilation and editing tools. These tools allow the engineer to combine engineering and GIS data for better decision processing in preliminary design, account for sensitive issues like wetland mitigation, and even publish maps for public approvals. The design process expands to enforce business and topological rules and adhere to administrative restrictions. By combining engineering and mapping tools, Bentley brings CAD and engineering design accuracy, ease-of-use, and efficiency to GIS. Overall, users make better-informed decisions through analysis, visualization, and presentation and better communicate through stunning maps and intelligent PDFs.
Surface Modeling
GEOPAK enables users to create 3D surfaces. The software uses triangulated surfaces to represent terrain – for both existing ground and proposed design. Digital terrain modeling (DTM) lets users incorporate features such as roadway centerlines, pavement edges, or ditches in the surface model. These can be random features for non-uniformly occurring points or breaklines that represent features connected in linear segments – as in the case of ridges, edges of pavement, and curbs. Interior voids (hulls) or holes represent building footprints, lakes, and so on. Exterior-boundary features can be placed around surface areas to maintain cut-and-fill lines in proposed designs.
Flexible Geometry Creation
The full complement of coordinate geometry (COGO) and advanced alignment design capabilities of GEOPAK enable fast creation of precision horizontal and vertical alignments as the three-dimensional roadway is developed. Elevation profiles display surface information as well as vertical alignments associated with horizontal alignments. A combined, true 3D alignment constructed from the horizontal and vertical definitions can be displayed in the plan view. The software supports unrestricted viewing with unlimited geometry editing and manipulation either graphically or with precision key-in.
In-context Road Design
GEOPAK offers in-context, smart design of 3D road corridors with Roadway Designer. This tool streamlines the complex development of every aspect of the roadway in a single, parametric presentation. Users can move rapidly along a corridor at controlled intervals, viewing and dynamically designing all roadway components in concert. The software automatically computes dynamic volumes to balance cut and fill. Users can design interactively in plan, profile, cross-section, and superelevation.
Roadway Designer displays four-port views of the design – plan, profile, cross-section, and superelevation. Users see immediate visual feedback in all views as the work progresses. The roadway is easily modified by direct manipulation of parametric graphical components or by precision input in context-sensitive dialog boxes. Roadway Designer’s unique capabilities enable users to target known existing features. This allows the model to conform to on-ground demands. Color coding shows potential problem areas as the design develops. Users can test design decisions before applying them.
Roadway Designer offers state-of-the-art design automation. From horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, and surface information, the software generates 3D models of the full corridor using predefined typical sections. The software automatically ensures conformance to standards as it speeds the corridor development process. When widening roads, Roadway Designer automatically creates transitions in numbers and widths of lanes in accordance with user design criteria. Users can interactively edit superelevation on the fly. End conditions can be computed at any point in the process.
Users can easily modify and create design-intelligent components – without programming – and apply design constraints that offer sleek control of the 3D parametric modeling process. Components can be open or closed shapes and include curb and gutter sections, sidewalks, asphalt layers, aggregate layers, medians, barriers, slopes, and ditches. Roadway Designer automatically creates surfaces for use in creating cross-sections, performing volume calculations, and aiding visualization and rendering. Users can also merge components to create a single design surface or create a model of the entire corridor.
Visual Design Verification
GEOPAK allows users to virtually drive through the 3D corridor model and inspect it for any design deficiencies or conflicts. In 3D QA, engineers can view road features from all angles to identify gaps or misalignments, look for utility conflicts, and check clearances. They can also evaluate sight distance, pavement marking, and signing as well as try out multiple aesthetic treatments to reach the desired result. Using GEOPAK with MicroStation’s rendering features – for example, color fill, shading, lighting, and backgrounds – improves the design at any phase and adds a level of assurance in project constructability.
Comprehensive Results Evaluation
GEOPAK provides flexible creation of cross-sections from any baseline. Custom cross-sections can be cut at skewed angles or broken-back sections, singly or in multiple groupings. The software annotates each cross-section as determined by the user. A full array of civil components can be included in the cross-section, including surface features, storm and sanitary structures, and roadway components.
Users can choose from a variety of volume calculations that greatly enhance accuracy over traditional methods. Sophisticated end-area volume calculations let users determine the level of accuracy based on the frequency that cross-sections are cut. Using this method, GEOPAK also recognizes components in the cross-section and accurately computes component volumes. The software offers the flexibility to process volumes based on straight-line or curved alignments as well as surface-to-surface calculations.
GEOPAK handles multiple surface types – existing, designed, and substratum – and can ignore or void surfaces for calculation.
Site Design
For site design, GEOPAK includes Bentley’s dynamic Site Modeler, enabling engineers and designers to create and manipulate models relative to one another. The dynamic setting allows users to move, rotate, and edit individual models and see the impact to adjacent models or to the entire project model. Additional site design tools are tailored to the specific requirements of site engineers, offering interactive site feature modeling within the intelligent terrain model.
The software accounts for lots, parcels, boundaries, property takes, right-of-ways, and other aspects of land ownership. It automates design for a full range of site features – including ponds, drainage ditches, building pads, and cul-de-sacs. Sophisticated surface-to-surface analysis helps users accurately balance earthworks and pinpoint best case construction scenarios.
Storm and Sanitary Network Design
A comprehensive application for surface and wastewater collection systems rounds out GEOPAK. GEOPAK provides the ability to interactively create a 3D associative model relative to the existing and design ground models as well as road and site geometry. Users can manipulate networks in plan or profile views, displaying not only the GEOPAK drainage model but also other utilities modeled in GEOPAK. This allows users to plan for clash avoidance and identify potential problem areas before they occur. Users can model, analyze, and design complete storm water and sanitary sewer networks, replete with inlets, culverts, channels, catch basins, manholes, and pipes.
A robust set of computation tools account for the full array of surface runoff conditions and perform design checks to ensure conformance with minimum and maximum requirements. Industry-standard hydraulic methods are used to analyze and design the systems. Rational, Modified Rational, and Soil Conservation Service unit hydrograph modeling and pond-routing routines calculate hydrologic impacts for pond sizing and out-flow characteristics. Users can create the full set of hydrographs, drawings, and reports.
Project Deliverables
GEOPAK provides geometric and surface data in XML industry-standard format for data exchange. Project data can be used in multiple formats, including Excel spreadsheets, HTML or text files, PDFs, printable documents, and other output. Reporting tools automate the production of a variety of standard reports, including horizontal and vertical alignments, quantity takeoffs, clearance reports, stakeout, legal descriptions, surfaces, and more. GEOPAK provides full support to create legal descriptions. The software outputs standard formats for Trimble, TOPCON, and Leica for machine-controlled grading and machine guidance.