I imported from native into my alignment file. When I imported my mainline alignment with the profile associated with that alignment, the profile came in as a Microstation chain, not a Geopak/OpenRoads chain. (Upon further investigation, I found that there were station equation mismatches between the alignment and the profile, which may have contributed to this.)
This is why I was "tracing" over the representation of the imported profile.
The reason I need a proper OpenRoads profile is because I am guaranteed to make adjustments. In case it hasn't been mentioned elsewhere, the Geopak import tool has a fatal flaw that prevents me from effectively modifying something with the VPI tool and then importing. The flaw is that when I import a profile, it will be associated with an alignment. When I import that alignment, it won't take the place of the alignment by the same name; it'll be renamed at that time. Then, in order to replace that alignment, using .872 (which has its own fatal flaw regarding projections at a slope) I would have to change any corridor based on that alignment and using an older version I have to create a brand new corridor. Then I have to make sure that all offset elements have the correct parent elements, and so on.
This is why I was "tracing" over the representation of the imported profile.
The reason I need a proper OpenRoads profile is because I am guaranteed to make adjustments. In case it hasn't been mentioned elsewhere, the Geopak import tool has a fatal flaw that prevents me from effectively modifying something with the VPI tool and then importing. The flaw is that when I import a profile, it will be associated with an alignment. When I import that alignment, it won't take the place of the alignment by the same name; it'll be renamed at that time. Then, in order to replace that alignment, using .872 (which has its own fatal flaw regarding projections at a slope) I would have to change any corridor based on that alignment and using an older version I have to create a brand new corridor. Then I have to make sure that all offset elements have the correct parent elements, and so on.