71 docs tagged with "drawing-editing"

Place a comment at a specific location on a shared plan to draw a collaborator's attention to an area of interest.

Reduce a layer's opacity to compare or align its objects with objects on another layer.

Use Fit Object to align an imported aerial photo with the basemap.

Alignment

The building blocks of RapidPlan...

One of the trickier techniques to master in RapidPlan is the drawing of a Bezier. Beziers offer a powerful way to create curves with great precision.

The main canvas navigation tools are the origin icon, scrolling, zooming, and layer or stage movement.

Use the Style menu to change the default appearance of newly created objects.

Open Settings and select the interaction mode that matches your input device: Mouse or Trackpad.

Select an object and right-click to open a menu of additional options.

Almost every element in RapidPlan Online has at least one control point. A control point (represented by a small red circle) is a handle that allows you to alter the shape of an object.

Almost every drawable object in RapidPlan has one or more control points. These are the handles you use to shape geometry, align objects, and connect one object to another.

The Crosswalk tool is a handy tool that creates crosswalks on any road that you draw. There are a few options available when editing the crosswalk. You can change the crosswalk width and type to parallel or hatched. The stripe width and spacing can also be changed to accommodate your specifications. All of this can be changed in the crosswalk Properties.

The real power of RapidPlan Online lies in its ability to quickly create intersections. They are formed by adding new roads to existing ones. RapidPlan Online will automatically remove edge lines, shoulders, and sidewalks to blend at the intersecting point where a road is overlapping another road.

Use the Bezier tool when you need precise control over the curves in a line or object.

Turning Lanes

The real power of RapidPlan lies in its ability to quickly create intersections. They are formed by "adding" new roads to existing ones. RapidPlan will automatically remove edge lines, shoulders, and sidewalks to blend at the intersecting point where a road is overlapping another road.

Crop images and other objects to any desired shape, edit individual points and segments in existing crop geometries.

Crossroads are similar to T-Intersections in many regards. Our simple crossroad will be a 4-lane east-west and 3-lane north-south junction.

Custom symbols let you replace selected built-in symbols with your own reusable graphics.

The Dimensions Input Panel tool allows you to:

Open Settings and turn off control point snapping when you need to position control points without snapping.

There are two ways to make divided roadways. The first method is simply to draw another carriageway next to your first. The second method, which we will describe is more powerful.

In the Marked Path tool properties, select Tails to draw a path made of repeated arrows.

Components of the RapidPlan Road

RapidPlan has made it simple to duplicate objects and/or an items property onto another item.

When you select multiple objects, you can change the properties they share in the Properties palette.

Like any other object in RapidPlan Online, the shape of the road can be edited by shifting it's control points. Also akin to other objects in RapidPlan Online - its Properties can be changed as well.

Like any other object in RapidPlan, the shape of the road once drawn can very easily be edited by shifting it's control points.

Once you have selected your object, a number of new tools become available. Its important that you understand what each tool does as you will come to rely upon them heavily.

Use the Fit objects tool to align an imported image or object with background mapping or another imported object.

Geometries apply to the path either the edge of an object or the span of a line-based object takes between two control points.

Grouping and ungrouping objects is an important technique to learn. The benefit of grouping objects is the ability to adjust several objects together, rather than individually.

One of the most important techniques to master is grouping. By grouping objects together, you can manipulate them as one item. Grouping is also necessary if you wish to create and save your own signs. You can group any of the RapidPlan elements together and the technique is the same, regardless of which elements you choose to group.

While editing a Bezier object, hold Shift to hide its handles temporarily.

We won't get into detail with this tool since it is simply a way to import image files to your RapidPlan drawing. Once you select the Image tool from the Tools palette, you will be presented with a typical Open box where you can search your computer for image files you want to import.

The Intersections Editor tool can be used to create complex intersections with just a few mouse clicks. The editor will assist you in adding corners, turn lanes, markings, crosswalks and lane symbols, automatically aligning them with underlying roads. Once created, an intersection remains fully adjustable and editable, or it can be ungrouped for custom adjustments of the individual elements.

There will be times when you need to adjust road, sidewalk or shoulder widths. Rather than going to the road properties you can adjust them on the road itself.

By using the marked path tool you can outline the way a direction of traffic will flow in a clear and easy to read visual.

The measurement tools will enable you to quickly measure distances, angles and areas on your plan. Measurements are precise, zoom-independent and can be saved as marker objects.

Moving Objects

The RapidPlan Online canvas provides comprehensive navigation controls designed to facilitate efficient interaction with your traffic management plans. This document outlines the available navigation methods for desktop and laptop devices.

Object geometry types

Properties

Create pages in the Scratchpad palette to organize reusable objects and other Scratchpad content.

Often, the Road tool alone will be all you need to create your roadway. Other times you will need some extra pieces to make your road look the way it should. RapidPlan has many more tools which compliment the Road tool and allow you more options in your plan creation. They can be found in the Roads tab of the Tools palette.

Whilst being one of the least frequently created arrangements, understanding how bridges and underpasses are constructed is important because it demonstrates how ordering roads on the canvas can be used to achieve certain effects.

You can paste rich text or tables from applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, and Google Sheets into the RapidPlan Online or RapidPath Online editor. Supported formatting includes bold, italic, and underlined text.

Hold Shift while dragging a resize handle to preserve the selected object's proportions.

Select multiple objects, then use the Transform menu to resize all selected objects proportionally.

There will almost always be two different ways of resizing an object in RapidPlan. It is important to understand the difference between the two methods, and when to use each.

These tools enable you to add infrastructure to your road plans. They can be found in the Infrastructure tab of the Tools palette.

Lane Marker tool

These road masking and marking tools are necessary if you need to remove and/or change lane markings on the road. All of these tools can be found in the Markings tab of the Tools palette.

Using the Road tool is very simple. As you move the mouse after you have clicked to start drawing, the roadway will "snake" behind the cursor. Each time you click the mouse on the canvas, a new control point for the road is placed.

Of all the tools in RapidPlan, the Road has by far the most power and flexibility. Accordingly, there are a great many settings you can alter to set your road up as you require. You can change:

Select one or more objects, then press R to rotate them clockwise or Shift+R to rotate them counterclockwise.

Save frequently used tool configurations as styles so you can apply the same appearance quickly.

To switch layers quickly, right-click an object and select Select Object From Layer.

Selecting

Use the matching-properties selection option to select objects that share the same properties.

Double right-click with a mouse, or double-tap with two fingers on a touch device, to select the most recently added object.

Before you can manipulate the properties of your objects (such as the size, shape, position or rotation) you must first tell RapidPlan which item or items you want to change. You do this, by selecting your desired object(s). Sometimes you will need to select only one object,

Set the scale before you start drawing to help produce a consistent, professional plan output.

Resizing and rotating objects can be enhanced by changing the point they scale from or rotate around.

One of the most important skills in RapidPlan is learning to make slip lanes. Fortunately, they are very simple to do.

T-intersections are the easiest of intersections to create in RapidPlan because the Roads tools make the task of joining roads at angles simple.

Use common keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste. Shortcuts can make repeated editing tasks faster.

After selecting an object, use the quick access menu to add related elements such as arrows or annotations.

The technique for drawing with these tools varies from object to object. Many of the objects such as Rectangles, Ellipses, and Rounded Rectangles are simple two-control point structures. Polylines, Polygons, Splines, Arcs, and Beziers can have as many points as you like. Irrespective, the process is simple.

This article covers five different intersections of increasing complexity. It assumes that you already understand the required road tools and editing workflows.