When you have developed your initial corridors using penalties, you may want to add more considerations to the analysis. This can be done by adding more design rules to the configuration. Each design rule works slightly differently, so always read the design rule description that can be found in the leftmost column of the design rule.
There are a couple of things to note before you add more design rules to your configuration.
Add design rules in iterations. If you add more than a couple at once and then get undesirable results, it can be difficult to source the root of the problem.
For each iteration of the configuration, create a new one by copying from the latest. This implements version control in your analysis.
Optioneer has inbuilt default values for many of the required inputs. These can provide good estimates but it is up to you to ensure these are sufficient.
Follow the next steps to develop your routing approach.
Decide on a method.
There are two main methods for developing heatmaps. The most appropriate is dependent on your project and should be discussed by the team.
Method 1 - Optimise for a specific objective.
Develop configurations with a different objective in mind and overlap heatmaps to achieve diverse results. Objectives can include:
Environment focused
Technical
Social Impact
Consenting
This will produce a range of corridors which demonstrate the best opportunities and can represent trade-offs well.
Method 2 - Layer constraints from the most critical.
Begin with high classification constraints (class 5).
Review and ensure you are happy with the results.
Then add class 4 constraints and repeat the process. Iterate with class 3, class 2 and then class 1 results.
In general, this will achieve routes which increase in length but improve on constraint avoidance.
Determine which trade-offs you would like to present.
An effective way to determine which design rules you should activate is to consider the required outputs. The outputs provided by each design rule can be found in the design rule description, in the leftmost column of the design rule.
Configure your penalty-based design rules.
Begin with penalty-based design rules following your preferred method (step 1).
Configure the additional design rules that have an effect on route generation.
This will be the design rule that has an effect on the corridors such as technical limits such as:
Minimum crossing angles
This can be configured in the Linear Feature design rule.
Minimum bending radius
Note that, Optioneer optimises to minimise the penalty. So activating the CAPEX design rule will provide the CAPEX estimates as outputs, but it will not optimise for cost.
Add the rest of your design rules.
Create another design rule that you will use to evaluate the corridors developed by the previous configurations. This will provide you with the relevant metrics to present trade-offs. For some additional information on each design rule, head to help.optioneer.