daylight cut and fill transition missing

[michael.jones.86]

I created a standard ‘u-shaped’ ditch  using the subassembly “LinkWidthAndSlope”.  At the end of the ditch I put a cut and fill condition using the subassembly “DaylightMultipleSurface”.  (See attached JPG ‘assembly’ for sample of completed assembly.)  This subassembly enables to corridor to apply a different cut slope though three other surfaces, but the daylight transitions between the cut and fill doe not connect.   (See attached JPG ‘xsect’ for cross section and ‘attached JPG ‘plan view transition’ for plan view of the missing daylight transition.).  I need the daylight cut and fills to connect.  Does anyone know to accomplish this?

[RoadDesignDan]

Make sure that you have a feature line set for Daylight.

Not just Daylight_cut and Daylight_fill

[michael.jones.86]

I'm not sure what you mean.  When i go into the corridor properties ->Feature Lines tab, there's a code for 'Daylight' that has a Feature Line Style set to Corridor Daylight.  But I'm very doubtful that the corridor is acutally using this feature line code since I'm using the subassemblyCondtionalCutOrFill. 

Any other ideas or care to clarify?  

[RoadDesignDan]

No, you got it, that's what i meant.  I would have to see the drawing itself to perhaps come up with another solution.

[dana.probert]

Hard to tell what is happening, but based on what I think I am seeing in the assembly and the plan view, it looks like you have more points in your cut condition than your fill condition. Your feature lines do seem to be drawn and connected appropriately based on how the assembly was buit. Let me explain...

Feature lines in corridors are always looking up-station for the next logical place they can connect.

If you are in your fill condition, you only have one corridor point created.

If you are in your cut condition, you have a ditch there that makes a few additional corridor points.

Again, hard to say without seeing the dwg, but I'd bet that the points that arent getting connected are those extra ditch points.

Some ideas on how to fix it... maybe add some marked points on the fill condition to "latch" onto the cut condition?

What is more important is- how do you expect the transition to look in real life if you are standing at the last place you don't need a ditch and look upstation? How does the resulting corridor surface look?

[michael.jones.86]

okay.  Here's the drawing with the transition problem shown.  This drawing is not based on any real world design but this methodology would be extreamly usefull in a current one i am working on.  I'm using civil 3d 2012 but had to save it as autocad 2007 just in case you're not using the current program and to help keep the file size down.   Please take a look and let me know if you come up with anything.   Much thanks in advance.

[dana.probert]

Looking at your drawing, that is definitely what is going on. There are to many upstation points to connect to when you are transitioning from no-ditch to ditch.

Think of it like this...

If you were going from a region with no sidewalk to a region with a sidewalk, or at the place where a turn lane beings. How would the corridor know how you wanted that transition made? You'd need to give it more information.

What would that look like if you were standing at the last station that didn't require sidewalk? (or a ditch or whatever)

My recommendation would be to think of how that transition would happen and draw a line to use as a target. You could have it run alongside your road the entire length, or just have it begin at the places where it makes sense. In this case, it might just need to be a simple horizontal target. You might be able to just use a polyline. Have the polyline trace, say, your desired ditch bottom of inside bank. Or whatever makes sense.

[michael.jones.86]

in response to "dana.probert" 

Frankly it doesn't matter what the ditch looks like at this point in time.  I would like to know if it's possible to get fill condition to properly transition to the cut contition and vis-versa, and how i would accomplish it since Civil 3d won't do it automatically.  The idea that there are more points in the cut condtion than the fill condition makes sence but i figured that since Civil is so automated that it would know what to do.  Just to try out your theory then, how would i add more points to the fill condition to help even the points out in the cut and fill condition?

please see attached picture 'assist.jpg' to help show what i was expecting to see as for as transition lines.

[dana.probert]

Civil 3D won't make those lines for you the way you have your corridor constructed. It connects corridor points one for one.

Give me a few minutes and I'll see what I can cook up to show you how I'd do it.

[michael.jones.86]

thanks very much!  🙂 greatly appreciated

[dana.probert · Accepted solution]

OK, so there is an easy fix to this. I still like the idea of treating it more as a true transition because your ditch just POW appears, but this will get you started.

Civil 3D connects _indentical_ point codes as you move up station. Since you used a generic link for daylight in your fill condition, they didn't have identical point codes. (P2 for the generic link and Daylight for the multisurface)

1. Go into each of your LinkSlopetoSurface subassemblies and change the P2 point code to Daylight. (make sure you use capital D) You can do this on the Parameters tab of the Subassembly properties dialog.

2. Go into corridor properties and check the "connect extra points" box on the Feature Line tab. This will join feature lines of identical point codes when it finds more than one identical code up station.

[RoadDesignDan · Accepted solution]

Here you go, make sure that your "Connect exta points" is checked and add a Marker Point with the "Daylight" point code and it will do what you want it too.

[michael.jones.86]

That's got it.  Thanks very much both of you.  You guys are awesome!!!

[michael.jones.86]

Hey guys,

A kind of connected problem now... any idea how to get just the perimiter of the daylight cut and fill files to how as line work?  When i select the corridor and select 'feature lines from corridor' then pick the daylight (doesn't matter cut or fill), civil 3d doesn't output a feature line for the entire length of the road 'daylight cut and fill', it just outputs a feature line as far as the cut OR fill goes but not both at once.  Any idea how to get it to output 1 line for both daylight cut and daylight fill on the right side of the road (i would like it on the left too but we'll start iwth the right for now XD).

thanks in advance.

[dana.probert]

How about... making a corridor surface from the daylight with corridor extents as boundary. Then, either either make a style with the border shown the way you want the linework to look or extract the border?

[michael.jones.86]

yea this would work, but it doesn't really fit the scale of the project.  We're designing 95km or road so it would be a serious pain to have to generate a surface for the whole this and then look for anomolies in the road surface before changing the style.  Though i like the idea... anything more automatic?

[RoadDesignDan]

If you turn off your featurelines for Daylight_Fill and Daylight_Cut, you will notice that the Daylight only feature line is there underneath..  If you look at the drawing i posted, you will see a _I_None feature line style.  Set your Daylight_Cut and Daylight_Fill to this style and you will only get the "Daylight" featureline for the length of the corridor.  Remember you can add a Marker Point to any part of the assembly and give it a point code of anything and then add a feature line to that point code and then extract that feature line.

[michael.jones.86 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Everyone for you comments!  I managed to solve my own problem in the mean time and then took it one step further to solve to feature line work problem.  Basically the subassembly I was using (DaylightThoughMultipleSurfaces) was extremely limited in that the same daylight code was used for of the three surfaces the ditch day lighted though.  This problem was solved by using the other subassemblies “LinkSlopeToSurface” connected head to tail.  This was extremely advantageous because this allowed me to change to code on each LinkSlopeToSurface subassembly and tell civil 3d that the three different daylight points are different (not the same as if I was using the original daylight subassembly). Except that the outside subassemblies on both the cut condition and fill condition, I coded the same so that the feature line work could be extracted and wouldn’t require any juggling latter.  This common coding worked extremely well later when I began pulling volumes out of the road prism because Civil 3d was able to isolate everything that was common and only analyze exactly what I asked it to do.  So the problem is solved.  Thanks again everyone.  You guys definitely gave be a good push in the right direction.  I also had a flip though ‘Mastering Civil 3d 2012’ which had some very useful bread crumb trails that helped immensely.