Note: Please see 'Design Rule: Linear Feature Crossing' which explains this design rules other functionality.
Design Rule Purpose
This design rule allows Optioneer to deal with situations where the route is following a linear feature. A common example of this is onshore cables and pipelines being installed in roads to traverse densely populated areas.
This feature allows Optioneer to identify crossings and road following as separate characteristics of a route.
To do so, Optioneer detects if it follows a linear feature within a user-specified distance. If the majority of the feature falls within this distance, it will be ignored - any crossings with this section of route are removed from the final count. If the feature isn't entirely within the distance, Optioneer will determine that a linear crossing is required.
How to Configure
The design rule uses the 'linear features' dataset and requires the user to specify 'distance within which Optioneer should consider a linear feature as followed'. and which linear features should be taken into account.
Important notes
This design rule might sometimes accidentally remove actual crossings. Sometimes linear features consist of 'sections' which might be very short - often happens when the position of utilities buried in a road is denoted with only the section that is in the road.
If the entire crossed feature falls within the 'ignore crossings if linear feature is entirely within this range', the crossing will be ignored. There is a simple remedy, however - try to make the drawing of new alignment more precisely follow the centerline of the linear feature and decrease the 'ignore' range.
If you actually do want to cross the linear feature that you also want to follow, such as 'getting a cable to the other side of the road', or have two crossings over a small distance, follow the best practices examples below.
Input / Output Summary
Input parameters
This design rule requires a 'linear features' dataset.
Name | Example value | Unit |
Distance within which linear features are considered as followed | 100 | meters |
Output parameters
This design rule will return 'length of path following linear features' for each route.