AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Why does Civil 3D not have options to edit 3D polylines? Specifically linetype scales. I read what was posted previously and a tip someone gave was explode it to 2D, do a pedit, print and then exit drawing without saving. This is not acceptable. This is a survey file provided to me as a base for design and the 3D polylines are tops of banks. Carlson Survcadd allows you to edit 3D polylines. Why doesn't Civil 3D?

[#2]

In Civil 3D, we use features lines instead of 3D polylines.  In the 2013 version of the program, the feature line styles respect the linetype and scale settings.

You can edit the elevations of 3D polylines through the properties palette.  The feature line objects provide a more elegant solution, IMHO.

[#3]

It's no opinion Lisa, it's fact.

[#4]

If I can add to Lisa and Matt's comments, feature line editing is easier and more powerful (not all of these tools work on 3d polys) and you can have true curves.

[#5]

Okay. Here is another issue. The surveyor located the centerline of a stream which I am profiling. I had to profile using station and elevation in a file because after attempting to create a surface from his contours(because that is sufficient to my need), C3D would not accept his elevated contours.

It just seems to me that to have the software perform, I have to somehow re-create the survey drawing provided to me by someone else. His points are all on a single layer so I could not use those to create a surface as many of them have elevations that would throw the surface out of whack. I do not have time to relayer 1000 points.

I do not understand why C3D seems to have lost its user-friendliness towards working with data from other platforms.

[#6]

I would ask the surveyor to send an xml file of the surface if possible. It is easy for them to create if they use LDD.

[#7]

I don't know what kind of points you were provided with. But if they were anything like LDT - Aecc points, you can convert them to Civil cogo points. Then you can create point groups based on the description and/or elevation and change the layer that way or you can build the surface directly from a point group.

If you list one of the contours that C3D rejected and post the results. There may be someone that has a suggestion about how to handle them.

Allen

[#8]

BTW Many of the Featureline editing tools also work on 3D Polylines. I don't have a list of those so you'll just have to try them. I do know that Insert and Delete PI work.

Allen

[#9]

Civil 3D "Did not accept his contours."  That strikes me as odd.

You can feed Civil 3D absolute garbage, and it will "accept" it.

Try as a last resort to using Contours provided by others as the basis for a surface.  The absolute best possible surfaces are created by a handful of "spot shots" and the remainder being breaklines.

If brealklines are not available, then the LandXML approach I concurr with.

[#10]

When you are building the surface you need for your profile, remember that you can use a boundary to exclude points not needed and also that you may set upper and lower elevation limits for your surface, which exclude all of those pesky points at elevation 0 or in outer space. Also, you can use the simplify surface tool to eliminate excess points, such as clustered control points on a benchmark. Processing and editing your points before starting to draw and design saves many headaches.

I hope this smooths out the process a little.

Regards,

Susan H