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profile starting and ending station, not sure what they mean

16 REPLIES 16
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Message 1 of 17
Anonymous
2066 Views, 16 Replies

profile starting and ending station, not sure what they mean

They are read-only, so seem to reflect the start and end of the profile tangents.
Would you ever not set those to the alignment start and end stations?

I tried setting them to stations before and after the alignment start and end stations, that did not allow me to reach
my goal of allowing addition of PVI's before alignment start and after end.

I know you can have the profile extend beyond the alignment, it works fine if you add the PVI's with the C3D toolbar.
I can't figure out how to do it with the API though.
thx
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom
16 REPLIES 16
Message 2 of 17
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

I think the graphical edit thing is a bug.
You edit the station in the grid editor, and it will not allow the stations beyond the alignment start/end.

I have noticed this as a trend now. The objects will let you do illegal edits, without error.
for example, the pipe network pipes will let you stretch them away from the structure ins point but that behavior is not
supported from what I've heard.

Land Desktop allowed PVI's beyond the alignment start/end, its actually a critical need because many things start in the
middle of a vertical curve. I know I could extend the horiz alignment as a workaround, but what a shame (so far).

James Maeding
|>They are read-only, so seem to reflect the start and end of the profile tangents.
|>Would you ever not set those to the alignment start and end stations?
|>
|>I tried setting them to stations before and after the alignment start and end stations, that did not allow me to reach
|>my goal of allowing addition of PVI's before alignment start and after end.
|>
|>I know you can have the profile extend beyond the alignment, it works fine if you add the PVI's with the C3D toolbar.
|>I can't figure out how to do it with the API though.
|>thx
|>James Maeding
|>Civil Engineer and Programmer
|>jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom
Message 3 of 17
jwedding
in reply to: Anonymous

I do know that i had to check for those values in RAS. We had situations
where the alignment completely would cross the sample surface. If I
attempted to pull data starting at the Alignment.start, I'd get null
data, where if I started at profile.start, I got valid data.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Engineered Efficiency, Inc.
The Site: www.eng-eff.com
The Blog: www.civil3d.com
The Book: www.masteringcivil3d.com
C3D SP2 Mac Book Pro, XP SP2, 3GB
Message 4 of 17
Sinc
in reply to: Anonymous

I think a programmer somewhere thought it might be a good idea to limit PVIs to the alignment stations in the API access.

It's caused me problems, too. I have a routine in the Sincpac-C3D that allows you to move Profiles. It's for those circumstances where you create an alignment and profile, then realize you used the wrong reference station.

However, since the API takes exception to working with PVIs that extend beyond the limits of the alignment, it can create issues. For example, the user can create a Profile that is longer than the alignment and everything is fine, but I can't move that profile via the API, because no matter what I do, it extends beyond the limits of the alignment. Instead, I have to go through convoluted error-checking, and try to "prune" the profile down so that it actually fits in the Alignment. But this creates other issues...

It can get nasty.
Sinc
Message 5 of 17
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Out goes the call to Peter Funk.
I think I need a spotlight with intitials PF in it instead of the batman symbol.

Can you confirm, Peter or anyone who knows, if the intended behavior of C3D profiles is to allow PVI's outside the
alignment limits?
The API says no, the elevation editor palette says no, the Add PVI tool and graphical grip edits (stretches) say yes.
I need to plan strategy for this.
Thanks for everyones help so far, wading through this stuff is fun.

James Maeding
|>They are read-only, so seem to reflect the start and end of the profile tangents.
|>Would you ever not set those to the alignment start and end stations?
|>
|>I tried setting them to stations before and after the alignment start and end stations, that did not allow me to reach
|>my goal of allowing addition of PVI's before alignment start and after end.
|>
|>I know you can have the profile extend beyond the alignment, it works fine if you add the PVI's with the C3D toolbar.
|>I can't figure out how to do it with the API though.
|>thx
|>James Maeding
|>Civil Engineer and Programmer
|>jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom
Message 6 of 17
rasmusfb
in reply to: Anonymous

If you need to add PVIs beyond the scope of the alignment stationing, why not extend the alignment temporarily so that the station at which you try to add a PVI, becomes valid? I have tried this tactic with success. Of course, you need to delete the temporary entity you added after having made the Profile.
Message 7 of 17
nzeeben
in reply to: Anonymous

The intention is that you can have a profile that is longer than an alignment. We ended up with some additional protection in the API that limits you to the length of the alignment. We did not manage to get it corrected for the 2009 release but it is an issue we are aware of.
Thanks
Nick Zeeben
Message 8 of 17
Sinc
in reply to: Anonymous

This issue still seems to exist, even with the managed API in C3D 2010...?

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com
Sinc
Message 9 of 17
JamesMaeding
in reply to: Sinc

seems to still be present in 2012.

Autodesk, this is basics, for this to be broke still is a major letdown.

Can anyone confirm if this has or has not been fixed?


internal protected virtual unsafe Human() : mostlyHarmless
I'm just here for the Shelties

Message 10 of 17
Jeff_M
in reply to: JamesMaeding

C3D2013 .NET API for the AddPVI() method of the ProfilePVICollection:

 

Exceptions:
System.ArgumentException: Thrown when the value of the new PVI station is less than the start station or greater than the end station of the profile's parent alignment.

 

Pretty evident they don't want us doing that when creating the profile.

 

 

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
EESignature
Message 11 of 17
JamesMaeding
in reply to: Jeff_M

I don't know what to say on this. This is a step back from LDT.

Some major confusion at Autodesk about what is important.


internal protected virtual unsafe Human() : mostlyHarmless
I'm just here for the Shelties

Message 12 of 17
Jeff_M
in reply to: JamesMaeding

I just setup a quick test in 2013. Even trying to change the station of a PVI to a value before the alignmnet start station yields an Argument Exception.

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
EESignature
Message 13 of 17
JamesMaeding
in reply to: Jeff_M

nice, thanks for verifying.

frustrating.


internal protected virtual unsafe Human() : mostlyHarmless
I'm just here for the Shelties

Message 14 of 17
Jeff_M
in reply to: Jeff_M

Bringing this up one more time. Partha, hopefully you see this and can comment on where this stands in the wish list. I'd think that something we've been asking for since 2008 would have gotten closer to implementation.

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
EESignature
Message 15 of 17
JamesMaeding
in reply to: Jeff_M

this is hilarious, I had forgotten about it, but checked my .net tools that manipulate c3d objects and found this statement:

 

bool trimmed = ceProf.TrimToStaLimits(alg.StartingStation, alg.EndingStation);

 

So it seems my tools have been trimming the profiles for years now, and still are for 2014.

That function is a bool, because I use that to warn the user it was trimmed.

 

We don't care much though, about C3D funkiness, as Autodesk sucessfully motivated us to write our own alignment and profile program that works on AutoCad and BricsCad. Soon I will be exporting C3D surfaces to text file and using ceometric surface library to handle surface use. The Autodesk monopoly is splipping fast.


internal protected virtual unsafe Human() : mostlyHarmless
I'm just here for the Shelties

Message 16 of 17

The work around I've been using recently is to add an alignment segment to the begining/ending of an alignment, make the change, and then delete the alignment segment. It sucks, but gets the job done without crashing the program. Seems like all that needs to be done is delete a line of code from the API that is doing the check, test, and compile. Definitely seems like a programmed limitation that doesn't need to be there. I'd be really surprised if it took more then 2 days to make the change for this.

Civil Reminders
http://blog.civil3dreminders.com/
http://www.CivilReminders.com/
Alumni
Message 17 of 17

I guess that works when you have the alignment as parent, not a data-ref.

In my case, I do, but if I used c3d in production, we would never put our profiles in the horizontal design base.

 

With all this Caltrans hoopla, you would think its super common to have highways that start in the middle of a vertical curve.

It would seem an embarrasing thing to tell users they must make overlapping alignments in order to get the VC at end of existing, and beginning of proposed.

That kind of duplication is not liked by designers, especially when you have a highway split up into segments, and each company has a definate start/stop on their segment.

 

But the caltrans issues have not even started from what I have seen. This darn web DG inteface keeps me from watching posts like I used to though.

 


internal protected virtual unsafe Human() : mostlyHarmless
I'm just here for the Shelties

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