Looking for area between profiles...

[elijahvoigt]

Hello I am looking to calculate an area between to profiles(sq ft). I basically have a profile along GL of a wall along with a profile at FG along the back side of wall at the front face of panel. I need to calculate the area between the two profiles as that's how the wall construction is billed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[jmayo-EE]

Draw a profile view for top and bottom of wall.

Superimpose top profile to bottom or vice versa.

Draw a pline closing the wall face. If the profiles close perfectly and you can turn the grid layer off, the boundary command should work.

Add a note label that will use an expression to divide the pline area by the profile view vertical exageration.

Attached is the result of the above w/o the area label.

[Neilw_05]

I posed a similar question some years ago. You might find it helpful. I ended up using John's approach but it was noted there may be a way to do it with QTO.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/Benched-wall-quantities/m-p/2698194/highlight/true#M1...

[emelendez]

Not sure if I fully understand what is needed, but, If the profiles are actual profiles and not drawn by hand you could get the area utilising surfaces and volumes. If you have a profile of the GL and the FG then you can create a surface for each that is 1 foot wide. then calculate the volume between the two. this will be the same as the area.

Simple math:

V=LxWxH, A=LxW there fore V=AxH but if the width of the surface is 1, then the formula breaks down to V=LxH also known as the vertical surface area between the two profiles.

[troma]

I like that idea.  I presume you mean to create a corridor from both profiles, > corridor surfaces > volume surface.

Be careful though.  Make sure both corridors are based on profiles on the same alignment.  If not, the top and bottom surfaces won't fully overlap and the volume could be cut in half or more than what it should be to represent the area.

[emelendez]

yes, I did mean using a corridor. I Haven't had my first cup of coffee yet so I'm not running on all 8 yet.

Although it would be easier to manage, you don't actually have to have them associated to the same alignment; however, the alignments would have to be directly over one another. there are pros and cons to both. what I would do though, is make the "base" surface (corridor) just a bit wider then the "top" surface (corridor) that will prevent the error you speek of.

[Neilw_05]

Kudos to you for a great suggestion.

[elijahv]

JOHNM This is the method I will end up using. The only thing is that I am having trouble getting the expression right within the lable. Could you help with what that would look like. My vert eg is 10. Thank You

[jmayo-EE]

Here are the three label styles that I have used.

The profile method is better for our workflow because we need to submit construction drawings for the wall that will  include block layout, geogrid layout, anchors, etc. The superimposed profiles set this up nice. Profile sta/elv labels make it easy to draw the wall in our structural sofware that will spit out the block and geogrid layout. Surfaces and QTO add tasks/time without gains in the production cycle.

[emelendez]

Well that is a matter of opinion. As with most things with Civil 3D, there are more than one way to get the same result. it's just a matter of how far you want to take it and how comfortable you are with certain things. some people are not comfortable with corridors and other are not comfortable with pipes.

The time it takes to create 2 assemblies and then a quick coridor and surface is only a matter of 5 minutes tops. The production benefit is if either profile changes. You will not have to trace the profile again, just change the profile, rebuild the corridor and then check the stats of the volume surface. This takes less time than recreating the polyline. I'm sure there are other benefits with creating tables and stuff that I am not thinking of.

With that said, I do not know the specific purpose of this exercise as I do not do any work dealing with quantifying surface areas of walls.

Bottom line, choose the method you are most comfortable with and run with it like a fat kid chasing the ice cream truck!

[jmayo-EE]

Yes there is opinion involved which is why I referenced the post to our workflow. We are not designing long symmetrical walls that you would typically find in transportation projects. QTO isn't going to do this and surfaces may make sense to me in our workflow if the design was constantly changing or I was running through a number of cost estimates. IMO tracing a simple pline is faster and easier to work with for our workflow. The design will not change often enough to warrant a dynamic calc.

I use corridors often for these walls using the two profiles mentioned above and one assembly. The corridor is used to harvest feature lines for a surface and 5 min's would be a long time to build one of the wall corridors I have done recently.

In our workflow the profile is required on plans for local contruction in some towns. Engineering drawings and calcs are required for walls over 3.5'-4'. Many contractors around here also bid/price these walls by face area.

[elijahv]

Those labes worked great. Thank you. 

[witzel]

We use surfaces and since I know the "slope" of the wall, we have a "slope legend" that reports the 3d area of a specified slope.  That gives us the square footage of the wall.

I can elaborate if you are interested.

Thanks,

Conan Witzel

[troma]

Do you mean simply a surface straight from the top, front of the wall to the bottom front?  Built with feature lines or corridor targeting a profile?  I've never used legends, but I presume this is the same number as '3D surface area' in the Extended Statistics.  This method sounds even simpler than the one with two corridors and a volume surface.

[witzel]

We usually use a grading object set to 1000%.  Under surface analysis we set it to one range with 900%+.  Under the surface style you can turn on slopes to verify you are getting the correct slopes.

You set the slope legend table style to report 3d area.

This would also work with a corridor surface if you knew the slope of the wall.

It can also be dynamic (be cautious with 2013 we have had some issues.)

Works great.

Hope that helps

Conan Witzel

[emelendez]

I presume you have the grading object targeting a surface, the feature line is the top of the wall, and the alignment is directly over the feature line.

My first thoughts when I saw this post was this method, but the information originally provided led me to my original response. Good methods either way.

[witzel]

We would use a grading object only when daylighting to a surface.  On the interior of a site, we might just do a really tight offset.  Anything to get the slope % very high.  

We generally do our curbs as .5 over and .5 up (or 100%)  so anything steeper than that should be a wall.

A Corrdior would work as well and might eliminate a step with the alignment.

We started doing this way back in the LDD days and had a macro that would sum a group of 3d faces.  The legend just makes it easier and dynamic (when that works!!)

Thanks,

Conan Witzel