Is Kubla the right tool for me?

Thanks very much for the reply Tim0.
I will see if I can email Kubla to get some more feedback.

Hi Bushman

Welcome to the Kubla forums! I will just expand on Tim's excellent answers to your questions : 

3. Can I import or create the geotech info of different layers and types of earth and then report this when doing the cut calculations. In other
    words if I need to know the volume of sand, clay, rock etc that would be excavated.

Currently support for different materials assigned to earthworks and to the existing (via bore hole input) is not possible.  People do however manage to complete different material analysis using different phases in the program.  In each phase a mathematically raw comparison of two TINS takes place so you can use this to assist in many different scenarios outside the standard bulk earthworks scenario.  Kubla Cubed is very much a work in progress and materials are planned for Kubla Cubed 2020 Ultimate Edition, that will be priced slightly higher than the Professional.  We are going to have to do quite a bit of research for this one as there are a number of factors to consider like swell\compaction and how to interpolate bore holes in an intuitive way.  We also hope to introduce a balancing tool in 2020.    

4. When I create a pad, the software then ads a cut/fill batter. Can these batters be changed manually and be of different slopes. Sometimes you have slope of 1:2 at the
    north part of the pad and a 1:4 slope at the south part of the pad.

Indeed it is a bit of a design flaw in the current program that side batter is only input per earthworks element.  We have frequently had this request.  The calculation engine can do this as it was a requirement for one of our marine products, but Kubla Cubed doesn't support it.  In Kubla Cubed 2020 the side batter will be switched to a property of boundary lines rather than element and it will remedy this situation.  The current workaround we recommend is to combine different platforms into one building pad.  As one platform will override the other you can create different segments for different sides.  In most cases this creates a very satisfactory result.

There is a discussion (with examples) regarding this in this thread : Differing side batter

5. Can I create and export a rendered model of the job into either a .jpg or even better yet, in a video format like .avi or .mov?

There is an export to image feature in the program which can export a .jpg, .bmp or .pdf of the plan view.  For the 3D shots it is best to enter 'Presentation Mode' and then use Tim's shortcut or the Windows snipping tool to grab the picture that you want, for instance : 

   

In Windows 7,8 & 10 follow this guide : https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help...creenshots

In regard to .mov .avi spin around it is certainly something we want to do in the future.  However currently there is no facility to do this in Kubla Cubed unfortunately.  The best thing I can recommend is to either export the CAD models into a 3D program like Blender (free opensource animation package).  You can then create a fly around of the model using Blender tutorials, however this is recommended only for people with some animation\3D modelling experience.  We had to do this for a presentation once and cheated a bit by just using a screen capture software (we used the free Open Broadcaster software at the time but have since purchased Screen-Cast-O-Matic which is easier to use) and then we just spun around the models in CAD although you should be able to do the same in Kubla Cubed using Presentation mode and the keyboard keys to get a smoother spin.  We only did it in CAD to demonstrate exports. 

Please feel free to contact support if you want to see a demonstration of the current capabilities using your own data.