Hi Tom,
It really doesn't matter what the surrrounding surface is like, the car park
itself ultimately has to consist of either planes or warped planes. If the
natural surface is steep, then you have more earthworks and/or retaining
walls. The horizontal layout of access lanes etc. may be different to suit
the natural surface topology. You may make the planes steeper or flatter to
minimise costs.
However the design methodology remains unchanged.
--
Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au
"TomD" wrote in message
news:5048511@discussion.autodesk.com...
The parking blocks = "YUCK"......lol
Thanks for the thoughts. I get the impression that most of your site work
has been in relatively flat areas. I've never found the 'plane' approach
completely workable for most of my projects. That's not to say it's
impossible, just hasn't worked for my projects and skill level.
I'll certainly be revisiting my methods and how I'm applying Civil 3D and
going about my work.
Thanks again for your comments/info.
"Laurie Comerford" wrote in message
news:5048109@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi Tom,
The only things in my professional life that I've designed thousands of are
parking lots.
I can't ever remember a project where essentially I didn't layout the
horizontal componentry of the design independently of the future vertical
geometry (multi-story car parks were unnecessary).
After that in virtually all cases the vetical geometry consisted of a series
of sloping planes. With the advent of computers it was so easy to build a
DTM of the sloping planes then make minor local adjustments for handicapped
bays which under our design criteria require flatter grades than normal car
parks. Then I simply extruded my horizontal geometry onto the surface and
documented it with spot levels (for the contractor) and slope arrows (for
the checking authority).
I'm sure at one stage I even wrote a lisp program to create Land Desktop
points with levels based on the handicapped bay criteria so I could easily
add these points to the surface DTM and rebuild it before extruding the
kerbs to the model.
I never needed to get involved with complex 3D polylines to build the DTMs.
When Civil 3D arrived and I saw the editing tools for feature lines I
cheered as they were so much more powerful than the AutoCAD tools for
editing 3D polylines and certainly provided all that my design process would
need if I needed to revise the design planes of the car park DTM.
Having your comments in mind I expect you are designing the kerb lines with
a 'corridor' approach for the kerb and allowing the surface components of
the car park to fall into place between the kerb lines.
Hence I would go back to a small modification my original advice. Draw your
layout first with 2D polylines and the automated car park block provided
with Civil 3D - that's simple drafting.
Provide your own code to add vertical information and all other editing
tools you need. Store the data in a file so you can recall it easily
(provide an Xdata link to the file on all elements which have vertical
information in the file) If you can confirm the fault file format you can
use that which will make it easier to put the data in a Civil 3D DTM, but as
part of the program, you can replace the orginal 2D drafting with 3D
polylines
--
Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au
"TomD" wrote in message
news:5048043@discussion.autodesk.com...
Design info...........parking lots in particular.
I've been thinking alot about this since your original response. There's
really only a couple of things I'd like to see, which I thought would be
fairly simple if there was an object exposed (which neither of us have been
able to find).
The insert works great..........I'd like to be able to delete, as well. The
panaroma view edit implies that it will, but I have had no success with
that. No error or anything, it just ignores me (could be I'm using that
wrong, somewhow).
I'd REALLY like to be able to straighten the grade between points. It would
be similar to a PEDIT...Straigthen, except it would only change the
elevations, it would not remove any horrizontal points between the two
selected points. (By the time I calculate the distance/slope and apply it
to the various stations, I could just as easily have used a 3dPoly tool.)
"Laurie Comerford" wrote in message
news:5048019@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi Tom,
One other question I missed first time round. Are your Feature lines
derived form existing survey data? or are they Design lines?
Any overall process will differ between exisitng and design.
--
Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au
"TomD" wrote in message
news:5047709@discussion.autodesk.com...
First, thanks for all of the info. Very helpful.
No way to join/break feature lines (that I'm aware of). Potentially awkward
grip editing. No easy way to 'straight line' elevations across multiple
points of the feature line. As with most people, I'm still new to using the
feature lines, so it's likely that part of what I'm thinking is missing is
due to my ignorance and/or my own stubbornness.
Coding to provide slope control, etc., for 3dPolys is quite simple.
Thanks again for the info.
"Laurie Comerford" wrote in message
news:5047630@discussion.autodesk.com...
However, let's go back to your original problem.
You say the editor is inadequate for your purposes.
"but I'd like add some functionality
for editing feature lines that isn't included (at least at this point) with
the package out of the box."
Can you explain what you need to do that you can't do now?
From my knowledge of AutoCAD the methods of editing a 3D polyline do not
provide any access to slope information and make it quite awkward to change
the level at a point as you have to deal with the points on a one by one
basis, whereas the Edit Elevations command provides the full data for the
'Feature line' in a spreadsheet like environment where you can see the
grades, edit the grades, see the levels and the adjacent level as edit one
of them.
--
Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au
