The geometric design and setting-out of highway curves is an important part of the site engineer or surveyor's task in establishing the horizontal and vertical alignment of transportation facilities. Once the centre line of a new highway is chosen, it is a matter of selecting suitable horizontal and vertical curves to suit the topography and keep the earthworks volumes to a minimum. The advantage of using a microcomputer to fulfill this role is that horizontal and vertical curve elements can be phased together to ensure compatibility. With disc based microcomputers the basic design can be saved to disc for future development or hardcopy plotting on a range of plotters.

The computation of volumes for earthworks and the plotting of mass-haul diagrams is a task which can be handled readily by the microcomputer in a 'what-if' situation to ensure the 'best' gradient of a new highway is chosen to reduce the volume of the earthworks and consequently the haul costs. Once the final gradient is selected, the overall width of the earthworks has to be set out using pegs and batter boards. This is a complex task and depends on the original ground levels, the new formation level and the design cut and fill slopes. Once on site, each of these interrelated parameters often need to be altered to accommodate varying ground conditions. If the initial information is stored on disc it can be immediately recalled, the parameters changed and the new setting out details immediately available.

This paper describes two interrelated suites of microcomputer programs developed for use on site and presents graphical examples of on site situations and computations.

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