How TIA Helper Came to Be

The Humble Beginnings
While a grunt at a major transportation consulting firm, PolyTech's current president (Andrew) was charged with producing traffic impact studies. The idea was to deliver as many reports as humanly possible as quickly as as possible (or quicker) while making as few mistakes as possible. Andrew, like many of his colleagues, spent many a sleepless night wondering how many typos went out with his latest TIA report...

 

Andrew's passion has always been automation of manual labor. He believed that repetitive, usually boring and error-prone tasks are best left to machines. Plus, shaving off hours of labor from a typical TIA project meant he could leave office on time (though his superiors had different ideas...). After having slaved over his n-th TIA report, Andrew decided it was time to get some more use from his expensive computer. First on the block was one of the most ridiculously painstaking and time consuming tasks - creating the requisite intersection volume exhibits.

 

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The First TIAH
Andrew developed an early version of TIA Helper in Draffix, an excellent CAD program that's all but forgotten now. TIAH (then called "TAP") worked great but Draffix was not the company-wide engineering graphics platform - AutoCAD was. And so Andrew was the only one using the program. His own TIA workflow was greatly improved but no one else could use it as there was only one copy of Draffix in the company. Not having the first idea how to program in AutoCAD and not being able to get the company to fork out money to outsource the programming, Andrew moved on to other things.

A few years later, while working for PolyTech, Andrew got involved in traffic impact studies again.  Shortly thereafter, TIAH for AutoCAD was born. Two separate versions of the program were produced - one for Traffix, and one for Synchro. As one TIAH user put it: "TIAH is the best thing since sliced bread. Once we complete the initial figure setup to input the turning movement volumes, with TIAH, the entire process to upload volumes for TRAFFIX to AutoCAD is less than 5 minutes... With NO mistakes. And, it is a great tool just to review overall traffic assignment volumes in an intersection format! Extraordinary product!"

 

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TIA Helper
After nearly four years of improvements to TIAH based on user feedback, it was time to re-write the program from the ground-up. The new TIAH code will allow it to expand in functionality and to maintain compatibility with the ever-changing AutoCAD environment.

The specifications for the current release of TIAH were designed in large part by TIAH users. Never one to settle for second-best, Andrew teamed up with the programming experts from ResourceCAD International to develop TIAH 3.0. The new TIAH software was officially released on December 2, 2005.

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ResourceCAD International (RCI)
RCI is a global association of CAD programmers and CAD users allied by a common and unifying goal to assist the CAD community through focused custom programming. RCI offers viable, practical CAD solutions to complex CAD challenges; develops custom CAD productivity tools; and acts as a medium for code and idea sharing and a clearinghouse of knowledge and experience for it's associate members. Individual bios of RCI's team members involved in programming TIAH can be looked up here . RCI provides ongoing development, maintenance, and upgrades of the TIAH software as well as direct Technical Support for TIAH releases 3.0 and above. The TIAH support forum can be accessed on this site (after logging-in to the site).