How to Convert Intersections to Roundabouts in Seconds
This June, Autodesk launched a new release of its flagship preliminary design software tool for AEC professionals, InfraWorks 360 (we profiled all the great new features in our earlier blog: 4 Exciting Features In The New Release Of InfraWorks 360). One of the biggest changes with this release is the ability to convert regular old intersections into roundabouts with only a few clicks.
Why is this important? Well, roundabouts offer a number of benefits to both the AEC community and the public at large. For example, roundabouts are a critical asset in maintaining public safety. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 40% of car accidents are intersection-related. Roundabouts are widely considered to be a much safer option than traditional stop sign or signal-controlled intersections, resulting in a 37% decrease in overall collisions, 75% in injury collisions, 90% in fatal collisions, and 40% in pedestrian collisions.
Additional benefits include a reduction in vehicle fuel consumption; air pollution; travel delays; and construction and maintenance costs (saving $5,000-$10,000 a year in intersection power and maintenance costs).
Up until now, InfraWorks 360 only included standard intersection design, but with the introduction of roundabout design you can now convert existing intersections into a roundabout in seconds. Simply take an existing road and convert it into a design road in the software.
Next select the intersection, right click and convert it into a roundabout based on industry standard roundabout configurations.
You can also explore design alternatives such as the size of the roundabout relative to the surrounding roads, vehicle types, etc.
Traditional roundabout design can be extremely time consuming, because changing any design parameters could take an engineer several hours (in Civil 3D, for example). With this new release of InfraWorks 360, you can get a geometrically accurate roundabout in the design context that can be used during the preliminary design phases.
If you're interested, you can take a free trial of the new release of InfraWorks 360 here.
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