Being Civil

Corridor Surface Contours Not Matching Target Surface?

You may have noticed that occasionally when creating your corridor surface that the contours from the corridor surface sometimes do not "match up" as expected. Contours will never “perfectly” tie in because contours are not the TIN, they are an approximate representation of the TIN. We are modeling surfaces, so it performs an exact match from edge of TIN to edge of TIN.

As you may have noticed in your corridor some places can seem worse than others. This is due to the frequency set in the corridor parameters. A very wide frequency will cause the surface creation to interpolate between those intervals, and if the terrain varies quite a bit between those frequencies, the interpolation can produce less than desireable results. Although the results appear to be incorrect, it is just Civil 3D doing the best with the information provided. The trick to resolving this issue is to shorten the frequencies in these areas and you will see your contours begin to tie in to existing ground much better.

Moral of the story: tighter frequency=tighter contours

The fodder of this post was obtained from a conversation with the one and only Jason Hickey. Thanks Jason!

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Feature: Survey Query

One of the new and cool features introduced this year are the additions to the Survey functionality. Survey Query tool can be used to filter points and figures from Survey database by their properties. Since survey data is stored externally in survey database, it can be brought or referenced into a drawing-we all know that by now. Survey Queries now allow us to filter by any of the survey properties listed in either general or extended properties defined by user defined properties or brought in via LandXML.

One other thing you may notice when building a Survey query is the Survey ribbon that allows us to not only create new queries but to also insert them into the drawing or add them to the surface. It looks like this.

In survey tab you will see a new node “Survey Queries”, right-clicking on it will bring you to the Survey Query Builder.There you can name your query, add criteria and even preview it or save the query. So let’s see how to create one simple query out of points with description containing SDWK value. For lack of better idea, let’s say our goal is to filter all points defining our sidewalks. 

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Features: Check TIN for Max Angle

Now that we started slicing and dicing new features in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 one feature caught my eye. In Surface Properties, Definition tab, there is a setting that does pretty similar task as “Use maximum triangle length”. This one is found right above it. It’s called “Maximum angle between adjacent TIN lines”. What does it do, you may ask? Well it is basically set to analyze and build surface more intelligently by eliminating TIN lines that exceed desired maximum angle. To see more, click on continue reading.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Features: Surface as a Hide Boundary

One of the new features added to Civil 3D 2013 is the ability to select surface and use it as a boundary for other overlapping surface. This one is not easy to explain so I will use one of the possible workflows to describe where you will most likely end up using it. At the same time we can review the workflow about adding boundaries. Two birds with the same stone, kind of a deal. Pay attention on step 4 but let’s go one step at the time.

Here is the scenario: When we created a corridor surface and tied it with Existing ground (EG) surface we often want to see how it all ties together. DRIVE command is very useful tool here because it shows us how the road looks and it looks pretty on the screen. But if we invoke DRIVE command we may see that there are some bumps along the road. These bumps are basically showing those cut areas from our Existing Ground (EG), so the corridor will be obscured here. The gray thing that looks like gray cloud is basically my quick rendering of Existing surface. It looks like the road will get into EG-not good!

You may choose to hide EG, and that’s OK- you can see the entire corridor, but you will not be able to see where it ties into Existing Ground. See how and what after the jump.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Features: Surfaces in Volume Dashboard

For quite a few years, we have been able to compare two surfaces (existing and proposed, for instance) and get some cut and fill values. Volume Dashboard takes it a step further because it allows you to break down your surfaces in phases or for some particular area of your concern such as a lot (parcel). Basically any kind of closed polygon defined as boundary will do.

Volumes dashboard gives us a tool to calculate multiple volumes for a corridor surface, or a surface that lies below multiple parcels. It also calculates volume for the entire object. For example, if you have a corridor design that is broken into phases, you can calculate the volume’s cut/fill for each phase and also put it all together or combine to see what your Phase 1, Phase 4 and Phase 5 have while leaving out Phase 2 and Phase 3.

Another scenario that is documented in help (there is a video too) talks about having 4 parcels and driveway on top of the surface.

Not only that but it gives you an opportunity to adjust cut and fill volumes and factors for specific areas as you change it-in real time! From there you can create a report or paste the calculation in your drawing. Volume Dashboard command is found in Analysis ribbon. Create Volume Surface in Dashboard by comparing two surfaces (EG and my Top corridor surface).

 More about it after the jump.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Features: Overview of Changes (What’s New and Improved)

I can’t believe it’s that time of the year. It really seemed like it was a few weeks ago when we were doing this last year. I am talking about a series of blog posts introducing new features and changes to Civil 3D 2013.

Besides some changes credited to the core AutoCAD functionality which you may read on some other blogs specialized in AutoCAD, although a few things such as the change in DWG format from 2010 to 2013, will be mentioned on Bieng Civil. More about AutoCAD Map 3D will also be published at Being Civil. In any case, here are a few key points you will be reading about in the next several weeks that will cover Civil portion of the changes.

• Linework generation for Civil 3D objects (backed by popular demand). All the feedback you have been providing us finally paid off.
• Improved performance (faster opening, processing, REGEN and rebuilding, especially corridors-more on that, BTW)
• Drive Along tool with ability to change path and add viewports.
• Rail alignments, assemblies and Cant design. New tools added to Civil 3D.
• Survey queries and adding queries to the Surfaces
• Volumes Dashboards and enhanced Surface tools
• Simplified Corridor Workflow and other Corridor enhancements
• Subassembly composer additions
• Assembly editing improvements
• Improved cross sections with multiple corridors
• Pressure Pipes and other things related to it are the big item this year.

And many more..

There are many goodies coming from that and I’m sure you will be reading about it here, at Being Civil.

FYI: Starting with future releases of AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software, Autodesk will no longer be providing support for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® Land Desktop Companion 2009 software. For more information see this and this.

Please stay tuned for more.

 

Error "IAeccSurveyDataMigrator ->CreateInstance() failed, please check server registration."

We witness that today very large percentage of e-mail traffic and also a significant number of web sites are infected by malicious code that may attack your system. These days, it is hard to imagine any serious system without some form of virus protection running. Things like Trojans, worms, spyware, denial of service attacks (DOS), etc. are very common. I guess that may be one of the reasons virus scanners and registry cleaners are invented - to fight those attacks and to keep intruders away from the system. So this is pretty common knowledge, but not everybody is aware that settings in virus scanners and registry cleaners could be adjusted not to be so aggressive towards all services that may be running.

These scanners/cleaners basically scan each incoming package of code and if they notice something suspicious they may block some of them or even remove them. That may cause some other issues such as that your program suddenly could stops working or you may see some error messages. Sometimes turning the scanner off or running AutoCAD in diagnostic mode may reveal if there is a conflict with third party apps which scanners basically are - third party applications. 

 

From the Grid to the Ground–a Conversion Walkthrough

Let’s talk about points, the grid, and the ground. Why not? All the surveyors are – everyone wants to project their grid points onto the ground, or vice versa, and so many users think that they’re doing the right thing when they’re really accomplishing nothing. Let’s take a look at the complete process for making this happen. Follow the link to read on…