Converting MX Alignments to AutoCAD Entityes Abstract The scope of this document is to explain the user how to convert between

MX alignements and AutoCAD entityes preserving accurate geometric representation. Preamble MX alignements consist of 2 strings, the GEOMETRY string and MASTER ALIGNEMENT string. The GEOMETRY string is a special 12D string, it has 12 dimension and holds complete alignement information both for plan and vertical geometry. It is made of tangent points and between these points mathematic relationship exists. The groups of points and relations between them could be thought of as alignement elements, thus GEOMETRY string is highest precision possible. The MASTER ALIGNEMENT string is a 6D string that is CALCULATED from GEOMETRY string. The MASTER ALIGNEMENT string contains all the points of GEOMETRY string plus the points at specific intervals (chainages, stationing, tabulation), its sort of iteration of GEOMETRY string. During design process MASTER ALIGNEMENT string suffers modifications by addition of points at specific chainages (start/finish of superelevation, widening, etc). Further on I will use G string for GEOMETRY string and M string for MASTER ALIGNEMENT string. The process In order to achieve the conversion, both at least the G string must exist in the model and MXChange, MX and AutoCAD must be installed on the machine. MXChange runs within AutoCAD. First is to select the MX drawing to convert, then the AutoCAD file, the conversion table and the method, all are illustrated in the picture below.

Fig. 1 MXChange main conversion window

In the Selection Criteria frame you have Import Options, and there you can see 2D and Geometry check boxes. Geometry will import just the G string, 2D or 3D will also import the M string. The MX Drawing must be *.DPW, working drawing, when selecting the drawing MXChange offers filtering to help choose between working drawings and picture files (DPW/DPF). DPFs usually contain long sections and cross sections drawings. Next is to select importing preferences, the image below illustrates this.

Fig. 2 Import Preferences Here we can set import units, colors, linetypes and Layer naming. Importing from MX to AutoCAD is smarter using tables. The tables allow standard layer naming enforcement and based on string naming eases the drawing management. To be able to import geometry G strings must be specified in tables to be imported with geometry. This can be achieved following the next steps. First step is to edit the table.

Fig. 3. Editing Layer Table

In the Layer Table we have the strings or groups of strings that we can associate a layer and we can specify that geometry must be imports also. This can be achieved in the following window by selecting Edit in the window above.

Fig. 4 Edit string/string group layer and GEOMETRY import option. Note the Geometry check box, this is where we tell MXChange to import geometry of the string. Conclusion It is possible to import MX alignments into AutoCAD using MXChange and process is highly automated and supports standardisation. The alignements will be imported as lines, arcs and polylines, since transitions are custom objects not supported by AutoCAD and will be imported as polylines. The purpose of importing geometry can be only to facilitate the re-use of geometry data by 3rd party applications. From practical considerations this practice should be avoided since geometry can be shown on drawings without importing the whole G string. Besides importing alignements as elements makes them harder to select for editing purposes. The M string contains sufficient data for representation and setout data can be generated by reports on both M string and G string.

Valeriu Chiorean September 2009