Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014 contains a bug involving rebuilds on surfaces displayed in customized colour schemes, colour books and even the hard-copied standard colour schemes. Surface rebuilds work OK if the surface is displayed as triangles or contours but it does not work if the surface consists of Levels/ Elevations, unlike in previous versions of Civil 3D.
CIVIL 3D 2013
For a terrain surface constructed from a Point File, it is possible in Civil 3D 2013 to use the “range interval” option to provide colour banding of surface elevations over and above those 6-10 colours available in the “red, green, hydro” etc. colour schemes. By manually clicking on the “colour scheme” property in the “Surface Properties- Analysis” dialogue box, the colour can be changed to any colour available in Index Colour, True Colour, or in Colour Books, up to a maximum of 200 colour bands.
If the Points File used to construct the terrain surface later requires editing, such as to remove data spikes, and the Rebuild function is used under “Prospector/Surface/ right click on Rebuild”, the surface displayed as colour banded Elevations/ Levels changes correctly to conform to the rebuilt surface.
CIVIL 3D 2014
The above procedure does not work with 2014.
(a) Index Colour, True Colour, or in Colour Books. If you have manually selected banding from these colour options, the Rebuild transforms the colours to those in the range of whatever “red, green, hydro” etc colour scheme is defined in the Settings box for the surface style.
(b) “Red, green, hydro” etc. colour schemes. If you start off with one of these schemes, a Rebuild transforms the Elevation/ Levels surface to a single colour.
After a Rebuild, it is possible to go through the whole exercise of manually re-entering the required colours. However, I work in coastal engineering dealing with large datasets generated by multi-beam echo-sounding for seabed terrains and land topography generated from LIDAR and it is now common practice to display these terrain surfaces in a “brown-yellow-green-blue-purple” colour scheme, such schemes having been generated as Colour Books using Autodesk ACDEditor.
Having to manually re-enter from the Colour Book after a rebuild is a laborious and time-consuming task. This will also be a major problem for those whose work involves using any of the proprietary Colour Books supplied with the package, such as the Pantone ones.
Consequently, having just upgraded to 2014 in the past week and found this bug with my drawings, it is evident that a lot of my work requires continued use of 2013.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by neilyj666. Go to Solution.
You're simply changing the colours. What happens is when you actually make an edit to the surface (add a single elevation points somewhere) and your customized analysis will be gone.
Assuming this is actually "as-designed" now, this is definitely not what we want.
The fact is that as mentioned by the Autodesk Support this is as designed behavior introduced in 2014. Of course if I add a point the surface will rebuild and the analysis is gone and I knew about this "bug" since I reported it as well.
I was just answering to the post 19 on this forum. 🙂
@mathewkol wrote:
You're simply changing the colours. What happens is when you actually make an edit to the surface (add a single elevation points somewhere) and your customized analysis will be gone.
Assuming this is actually "as-designed" now, this is definitely not what we want.
Apparently someone did as it actioned after a change request...
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Hi Neilyj
What is strange is that I have just had a reply to my SR via my reseller giving a different reason.
Hello,
Civil 3D 2014 surface analysis works at the moment "as designed".
There has been changes made since C3D 2013 to correct what used to be "an issue", now, the analysis get reset when you rebuild the surface, this is an expected behavior.
That being said, we are aware that customers do not like it very much and that at least, they want to be able to store their color scheme and be able to reuse them.
We are actually debating about that "why, how, etc..."
Your customer description of the issue come in just at the perfect time 🙂
I am sharing that (and more) to fill in the customer need in a futur release.
A change request has been reopen and I will add this SR to it.
But for the time being, I am afraid there is not so much options, except may be one...
Install the UK&IE country kit, in UK&Irelands Reports, there is an "additional tools" section with tools to manage (import, export surface analysis)... please give it a try.
I hope this helps.
Please let me know if this answer your question or if I can assist further.
Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.
Best regards,
It doesn't look as if Autodesk is going to do anything about this problem sometime soon. As a couple of blog sites in the US have suggested that with the pushing of Infrastructure Design Suite by Autodesk, possibly standalone Civil 3D is going to go the same way as Land Desktop.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Hi Folks - We're actively researching this issue and will update you one we have a confirmed plan. We apologize for any inconvenience and will do our best to turn a solution around as quickly as possible.
Thanks
Dave Simeone
Senior Product Manager - AutoCAD Civil 3D
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Here in Christchurch, New Zealand we're still doing a lot of accurate floor level surveys to determine damage from not so recent earthquakes. We use a couple of surface analyses to show building managers and engineers what's going on. We never moved to C3D2013 because of the surface transperancy issues. Some of our datasets are across several buildings with up to 8 dtms per building (depending on construction). If I'm reading the impact of this bug correctly then we wont be able to use C3D 2014, because re-setting the analysis every time is just not affordable.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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The response I got to my support request also noted that "Judging from the development’s note on this, it seemed to be fixed in SP1. However, the specific release date is unknown". So I take this to mean that it's already fixed, we just have to wait for it.
Hope it'll be a hotfix rather than a service pack; although a hotfix does imply that a bug has been fixed - which this obviously wasn't..
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Query.
Why has someone has listed message 13 as a "solution"? It's not a solution, simply a response from Autodesk.
According to message 26 (from Autodesk), the problem is still being investigated. No sign of a Hotfix yet and I expect the first SP will be in 2014.
Six weeks after receiving C3D2014, still having to use C3D2013 for my work. Not looking good.
coastalgeology
Note that we're actively working on a solution to this issue. I can't provide detailed schedule info publicly, but it's short term.
To confirm, the behavior we're targeting will revert back to how it's always worked in the past. When the surface updates, the elevation ranges that were previously set in the surface properties/analysis -> Range Details will remain (but updated to reflect the new surface definition).
Please contact me directly if you're interested in testing.
Thanks
Dave Simeone