Bounded Volumes

[keithknifer]

Bounded volumes only work if you create a volume surface. If not, it calculates from zero to the surface which of course is useless. It would be nice if you had the option of selecting two comparison surfaces and a bounding polygon and not have to create the volume surface first. Not a big deal, but it would be nice.

[davidtice1958]

You got my vote!

[Anonymous]

What if you could use a single surface and a datum elevation?

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

[keithknifer]

There are a few times that might be helpful, like if you need to get the volume of a pond to the spillway maybe. But 99% of the time if you're after volumes, it's to compare two surfaces and get cut and fill volumes. Sometimes you make design changes and want to see the effect in the area you changed, not the whole surface. To do that now, you would have to continually create a new volume surface everytime a change was made. If you could select two surfaces for comparison and grab the bounding polygon, you could instantly get what you're after. If you're in the design phase and trying different ideas, that can be a real hassle.

[Anonymous]

Why do you need to make a new volume surface every time a change was made?
If you add a boundary to the volume surface, it can be moved around the
surface as needed. At the worst a new boundary would need to be added to the
volume surface before rebuilding it.

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

[keithknifer]

To be honest, I haven't tried it like that. I didn't think the volume surface would stay dynamically linked. If it does, it wouldn't be too bad. I'll have to try it next time.

[Civil3DReminders_com]

I tend to delete it because it takes up too much space in a drawing or I have to put it in another drawing. If I have a large EG and FG surface performance goes down hill fast and file size increases. Neither is a fun prospect to work in, especially if the surface edit I'm doing takes a while to do. I agree with the original poster it would be nice to be able to do bounding volumes without having the overhead of a surface in the drawing.

Christopher

[davidtice1958]

I concur with Christopher, why do additional surface work when all I need was to have the volume of an area specified within the boundary? Two surfaces (Existing grade and designed grade) was finished and there would be times I was asked to provided the volume of a small area and within the finished drawing the last thing I want to do was to do a boundary clip, start a new drawing or do additional tasks just to get the answer for a small area. With bounded volume, ideally I would like to draw a polyline boundary (or feature lines) and have Civil 3D presented me a quick volume of the area within the two finished surface. (not from elevation 0). We want Civil 3D to be useful and productive, not labor intensive... (like Microstation) 😉