very tricky question (at least for me!)

[Hidden_Brain]

i have an interesting situation which i am trying to wrap my brain around to see what the best approach might be. I have a block, for which, i need:

1. at two points, need to extract the northing-easting

2. on a third point (along an edge), need to check and make sure that it is at least 24" above the EG immediately below.

please see attached image. what is the best way to accomplish this? i researched and found out that I cannot use dynamic blocks for cogo points, was hoping to be able to so that i can at least extract the N-E for multiple locations from the same block. any help is deeply appreciated.

[wfberry]

For starters, do you have a geo-referenced drawing in your particular coordinate system?

Is this a bridge in your picture  with appropriate as-built details?

If you have all of this, it seems fairly simple,  If not, you need it.

Bill

[Joe-Bouza]

place point at post centers, make an alignment and profile of the edge. from the tool box you can report the elevation diff to EG. The report will list any station incriments to check.

[sboon]

That looks like the mount for a solar panel.  Can I assume that you have multiple units to install, and they all need to be checked and relocated as necessary to fit the requirements?  Are the posts a fixed height or can they be made longer when needed?

It seems like it should be possible but we need to work out how you want to establish the elevation of the tabletop.

Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate

[Hidden_Brain]

Bill and Joe, thanks for the replies. in my image attachment from earlier, the red rectangle is a solar panel. the two sticks are the support posts. for a solar project, I will have quite a few of these panels (close to 35000 or so). the info i need to extract for each panel is the northing-easting-elevation of the support posts for each panel, and the elevation of the edge of the panel at the bottom of the sloped side (in view B-B). these panels come preset sloped at 2:1, I know the panel dimensions of the panel (LxWxTh), the posts will attach at a fixed distance from the edges at all times. when placing these panels, I have to make sure that the bottom of the sloped edge is at least 24" above ground (logic being weeds typically grow to that height). looking back at the image i posted earlier, it appears that i forgot to indicate that i also need the elevation of the top of the posts (bottom of the sloped panel) at those attachment points, the contractor would need to know where to cut the posts i suppose. to summarize: 1. need N-E and elevation of the top of the two posts for each panel (block) 2. need to make sure the bottom of sloped edge is at least 24" higher than EG i looked into using block with multiple base points, and also the possibility of using cogo points inside blocks, but cannot come up with a decent method at the moment. if you guys have any suggestions, i am all ears. thanks again!

[Hidden_Brain]

Steve, you are right. i have multiple units to install (several thousands), all need to be checked and relocated as necessary, and the posts can be made longer when/as required.

[Hidden_Brain]

just wanted to follow up with another image attachment, please see attached. here's what I did: 1. created three blocks, PLAN, LONG VIEW and SHORT VIEW to show in true scale how the panels will look like. 2. created a point style with that block 3. tried to ACAD array that point, but faced quite a bit of trouble. ended up fudging to create any array of cogo points. 4. created alignments and profiles (yellow dash is EG, green solid is EG+2). in the image. Alignment (2) is the horizontal alignment cutting through the solar panels parallel to their long edge. 5. projected the points to profile view i tried to create the PLAN block a dynamic block with two insertion parameters hoping that I will be able to trick it when used in a cogo points style, i could not. also, could not even extract N-E-Z for the two points using data extraction.

[Joe-Bouza]

for the coordinates of the post: add some attributes for the post. I did a test and if you add an attribute ti the center of each post using the "BlockPlaceHolder" for "position" you can then DATA extract the post coordinates for all.

[Hidden_Brain]

Joe,

i took your idea and modified it slightly. please take a look at the attached drawing. it appears that the formula in fields do not work very well inside block attributes. i have my solar panel block insertion as the mid point of the lower edge, i am getting the N-E of that point using attribute LOWEDGE to extract X-Y, and then am adding another attribute def at the same point called LOWEDGEZ to extract the Z only.

for the posts, i am extracting the X-Y using attributes RPOST and LPOST, and am trying to calculate the Zs in RPOSTZ and LPOSTZ using a formula which basically takes LOWEDGEZ and adds a value based on the distance and a 2% up slope. i cannot make these to calculate the Z values.

file is attached.

**EDIT: i forgot to add that i have a dummy tin in the file at elev 200, and i am moving the block panel to the tin to get LOWEDGEZ.

[sboon]

I found a solution using coco pts. I'll post details later

[Hidden_Brain]

thank you! i look forward to your solution Steve!

[Hidden_Brain]

Steve, any suggestions on how to tackle this? sorry, do not mean to be a pain.

[Joe-Bouza]

Cogo points and User Defined Properties (UPD), I presume. I'm looking forward to Steve's solution. Dyno blocks are fun but I'd rather leverage civil3d

[Hidden_Brain]

i tried something that looks a little promising, defined three cogo points inside the panel block (within block editor). then i array the blocks, explode the array, and then i have the points. during point definition, i made the point raw descriptions as LPOST, RPOST and LOWEDGE.

the point group set up by those descriptions do not recognize all the points inside the blocks until i explode all the blocks. not the end of the world. the annoying part is when i am exploding the blocks, now i have to hit ENTER a million times to assign next point numbers. from there, i can drape the points on EG and get a N-E-El.

one problem is i now have a lot of points with numbers and same desc (LPOST, RPOST,LOWEDGE), but i have not found out a way to have like a block number for the panel so that i can tie the panel and the points together. hope that makes sense..

[Hidden_Brain]

i am pretty darn close i think, the only problem i have with my method is that for each block insertion, i have 2 cogo points, and i cannot the block number (an attribute taking an increment) to all the three points in it. the only one i can connect to is the point which has the same X-Y as the attribute (in Excel)...

[sboon]

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/plain;" />

Finally have some time to sit down and write this.

I started with a pline, representing the panel. I added two colors points at the posts with descriptions P1 & P2. I then created 5 more points on each of the long sides with descriptions L1 to L5 and R1 to R5. I'm assuming that the panels tilt to follow the sun so I want to check both sides. 

I added all of the above to an ACAD group, which allows me to move, copy & rotate them all together, but also allows the points to work properly. Once I had enough panel groups I draped all of the points onto the surface, then exported them to csv. 

In Excel I have 12 pts per panel. I can use formulas to get the maximum elevation from the left or right edge and I could calculate the post top elevations for each panel group. 

You didn't say what your output should look like, but you could link the spreadsheet back into the drawing. You could also edit the file so that each of the post points has the correct top elevation and it's description includes the expected height, then re-import those back to the drawing. ‎

[sboon]

Reading this again - you could replace my plane with a block that carries the panel id in an attribute. If the block insertion matches the first post point in each group then you could use attext to export the panel is and coordinate then merge the data. Use the panel id as a prefix for the point name of the post cogo points.

[Hidden_Brain]

Steve,i did actually do that (mentioned in the recent previous posts), have a block representing panel in plan view, three cogo points within block definition (for each post and mid pt of the lowest edge), and have an attribute as a panel number. i am incrementing the attribute with a lisp, then attext to get the attribute text, northing and easting. separately, i am exploding all the blocks to get access to the cogo points within, then extracting the PNEZD. where i have a disconnect is how to connect my three points (2 posts+1 low edge) to that respective panel number. tried to match data between the two tables in excel based on northing-easting combination, but can only match the attribute to one cogo point, depending on which one it shares a common insertion point with. now here's my question to you about your recent post: how can i use the panel ID (the attribute) as a prefix to all the cogo points "housed" within that block?

[Hidden_Brain]

do you mind sharing your CAD file for me to take a look? thanks again for all your help Steve, it is deeply appreciated.

[Hidden_Brain]

i should also mention that i am array-ing this block of mine to lay out the panels. once i am satisfied, i explode the arrays and i am left with the panel blocks, that "house" my cogo points within.