Visualization - Road Tools

To visualize road graphics in MotionView, you must open the Road Tools dialog located under Vehicle Tools.


Figure 1. Road Tools Selection Menu
There are two options in Road Tools:
  1. Rigid Road
  2. SoftSoil

Road

The Road option provides a way to create a surface graphic for the various Altair Road Files.

From the dialog, select the desired road file. All the road types mentioned in the previous sections except 3D Cleat can be visualized. The crg files must be chosen directly instead of providing the rdf containing the crg.


Figure 2. Road Dialog
In the Road Tools dialog, the Road File path and the Road type must be chosen as shown in the figure below.
Figure 3. Road File Path and Type Selection

The MDL option allows the selection of the file path location where the created road graphics are saved.

Road Sampling can be changed as per your requirement to reduce the time and detail level for producing graphics.

If the [GRAPHICS] block is described in road file, it will be used for the road graphics definition.

In the case of a FLAT road type, a checkered grid is created. The grid size is obtained from the LENGTH and WIDTH value available in [GRAPHICS] block. The square size is obtained from the ROAD_INCR value.

$-------------GRAPHICS
[GRAPHICS]
LENGTH = 160000.0
WIDTH = 80000.0
ROAD_INCR = 500
The road’s origin is shown by the marker in the figure below. If the ROAD_INCR is positive, the grid is created in positive x direction. If negative, the grid is created in negative x direction.


Figure 4. Checkered Road

SoftSoil Carpet

The SoftSoil Carpet option provides a way to create a flat surface in MotionView representing the soft soil graphics. The graphic file created with the road tools is sent to MotionSolve where a Grasub is used to mimic a moving carpet-like road that can show soil deformation in HyperView.

The figure below shows the Road Tools – SoftSoil Carpet dialog:


Figure 5. SoftSoil Carpet Dialog
The carpet Length and Width represents the dimension of the carpet-road graphics used to show the soft soil deformation.
Note: The carpet dimensions do not represent the limits of the road property file.

The Export Graphic File option is used to select a path location where the .obj file representing the carpet road is saved.

The four parameters required to create the road graphic are detailed below:
Carpet Length Length of the carpet.
Carpet Width Width of the carpet.
Elem dx Node spacing along the x axis. “0” indicates auto calculated values at runtime.
Elem dy Node spacing along the y axis. “0” indicates auto calculated values at runtime.


Figure 6. SoftSoil Carpet
Click OK/Apply to create a graphic system containing a file graphic as shown below.


Figure 7. SoftSoil Graphic System
To make the SoftSoil carpet move along with the vehicle, two markers are needed:
Carpet Marker Center Marker of the SoftSoil Carpet. It can be stationary or a moving marker. If the marker moves along with the tire, the carpet will be a moving carpet. In the case where the marker is stationary, the soil deformation will be visible when the tire passes over the carpet. Default is global marker.

In vehicle simulations, the Vehicle Body-CM is an ideal marker to define a moving carpet.
Road Marker A reference marker that is static during the simulation. This marker is used to position and orient the carpet graphic in MotionView.
The selection of the markers can also be defined in the attachments of the Graphic System.


Figure 8. SoftSoil Graphic System Attachments