Considering Truck Attributes and segment editing

[biro.daniel]

Dear Bernd,

When we plan a route, sometimes we face the following issue: the route goes through roads that are restricted for deliveries even if the final destination of the tour is far from this zone apparently. We think that this phenomenon may occur because the routes in question have other attributes than 'freeForDelivery'.

See the attached image below: route between Nyíregyháza and Sátoraljaújhely (Hungary). The route goes through a section where the following restrictions are: modality (motor vehicle), max. weight (12t), free for delivery. Preferably, the route should avoid this section.

Is it possible to modify the routes' parameters directly for testing in the Map Data related layer, and after successful tests, for deploying the modified parameters so that our routing process would consider these changes? Do you think that the Map&Guide Road Editor would solve our problem? Could we use this tool to change the attributes of different roads and check whether it solved the issue?

As far as we recall, a new tool is going to be implemented for using this feature (modifying segment parameters). Is this the case? If so, can you share further details about its planned release?

Thank you in advance,
Daniel

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Daniel,

"maintenance of custom attributes" that's a challenging topic. The MAP&GUIDE RoadEditor is a frontend that has been developed over the years and it enables users to change core attributes of segments stored in a separate database (either MS Access or MS SQL Server). In fact you could use this approach to ensure that the new data situation is reflected immediately after applying the changes. PTV xRoute Server 1.x (32bit) is then able to consider the database content during the routing (road editor DB approach). Furthermore you can use the RoadEditor's "create a BIN file" feature which will write the database content into a BIN file (same structure as the traditional TruckAttributes) after sorting those blockings that are not relevant (time context). BIN files work with 32bit and 64bit versions of xRoute.

BUT:
this approach will become obsolete with future xServer development because our goal is to use feature layers to store generic (PTV) data and custom data. What is missing so far is the API which enables users to change the content of the feature layer. So in fact there's a temporary gap between *approved technology which fades out* and *upcoming technology which isn't ready so far*.

I recommend that you get in touch 1:1 with your technical counterpart to get a custom answer / decision about how to approach your requirement.

Best regards,
Bernd

[Bernd Welter]

https://xserver.ptvgroup.com/forum/view ... ?f=7&t=376

Though I still recommend to discuss this topic with a local consultant I have some images that could already help you to understand some core topics.

• What is the Road Editor? The RoadEditor is a part of the desktop route planning software Map&Guide. Within the program you can use it to update properties of street segments. The info is then stored in a database (access or SQL Server). More or less it is an administration frontend for the usage within Map&Guide but there's no direct connection between the desktop and xServers.
• What do we need it for? You can maintain data such as road blockings (blocked for trucks, ...), conditional blockings (maximum headroom for tunnels, capacity for bridges, ...), preferences (avoid vehicles with a xx malus on certain roads), time dependent blockings.
• Who uses the Road Editor? Customers who work with standard TruckAttributes but who need to be able to customize the content as it is not 100% guaranteed that our standard is up2date every time.

Strong coupling. The content of the original RE database is read during the routing transaction. At runtime the xServer exports required segment attributes and considers them in the routing afterwards

Weak coupling: the xServer isn't connected to the RoadEditor database. Whenever data has been updated in the RE database a manual export + forwarding of the binary files is required. During the export the so-called export timestamp is used to filter relevant attributes. So this approach does not consider the routing starttime. Instead of this all attributes which are in the BIN file will be relevant even if the export timestamp differs from the routing starttime.

Demo_RE_ENG.pdf

"approved" overview of the RoadEditor. Maybe some of the slides can give you a better understanding of how to use the RoadEditor, when to use it and also about it's limitations.

(1.03 MiB) Downloaded 399 times

Best regards,
Bernd