Brisbane, Australia
For Release 25th March 2001

HIGHROAD WINDOWS VERSION LAUNCHED

In response to world-wide demand, Creative Engineering has announced the release of HighRoad for Windows. Previously known as MacRoad, the advanced road design software has been available on other platforms for the last 13 years.

Developed by a highway design engineer, HighRoad's key objective has always been to put simplicity and creativity back into road design software. "The art and skill in creating an elegant road design lies with the road designer," says Chris Baker, director for Creative Engineering. "The software needs to aid with this process, not to get in the way."

HighRoad meets this need by hiding its complex road geometry algorithms behind a responsive user interface. Its visual environment and familiar tools allow road designers to work quickly both graphically and analytically.

Typical sections are designed using familiar road objects (such as kerbs and pavements) with embedded intelligence. These graphical 'intelligent objects' perform calculations automatically behind the scenes to make work faster and easier. Commonly used typical sections can be stored in a library for reuse, and these become the building blocks of road networks.

The design of road intersections is handled automatically. An intersection is created by clicking the point on the road where the it is required. The vertical and horizontal geometry is then calculated to match. The geometry of an intersection is kept synchronised with the roads it belongs to and any change in these results in automatic recalculation. You can override HighRoad's decisions when necessary.

Networks of interconnected roads can be synchronised so that changes in any one of the roads are carried through to the other related roads. Even a small change in the width of a road can effect the vertical and horizontal geometry of an attached side road and HighRoad handles this without prompting.

HighRoad includes a drawing manager to lay out drawings that are automatically updated with progressive design changes. This means the same drawing layouts can be used for all stages of design - they are immediately updated to show the latest design information.

According to Chris Baker, "The overriding design consideration at Creative Engineering is that road designers should not have to spend months becoming proficient in the software that they use. They should only need to know how to design roads. By hiding the complexity of calculations behind an elegant graphical interface, HighRoad allows road designers to focus on using their design skills and creativity, rather than getting bogged down by complicated commands or engineering calculations."

The program is versatile enough to be used across the world from designing roads in the world's highest city, La Paz, Bolivia, to highways on the plains of Minnesota, USA. Other projects include designing a yacht basin in the Caribbean, seawalls in Ireland, subdivisions on the Gold Coast, winery car parks in the Hunter Valley, cobbled street rehabilitation in Belgium, urban arterial motorways in Colombia, and forestry road design in the rugged Coast Range of western Canada.

This innovative software is an Australian product. Creative Engineering is a wholly Australian owned company and was established in 1986 to develop advanced road design software. This software is in use around the world and has been sold in 38 countries. It is available in languages other than English, such as Kanji, Italian and Spanish.

HighRoad will run on Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0, and Macintosh, and uses industry standard formats for road design and terrain data.

A demonstration kit is available for download online
Contact Chris Baker 07 3356 6271

Press Releases
HighRoad Visualisation announced - June 2001

HighRoad Windows Version Launched - 25 March 2001

Reviews
HighRoad for Windows - Multi-Cad, May 2001

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