C3D 2011 Corridor 'Drive' Command

[Anonymous]

I am trying to drive through my corridor, using the new command. As instructed by the help, I select my corridor, hit 'drive', select my alignment and select my profile. After this, the model regens and returns to the command line, no drive tools in sight...

My corridor has six regions, although I don't see why this should be a problem.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Same thing here - I've tried it 10 different ways without luck.

[Anonymous]

It's good to know i'm not alone in this one...

Was one of your ten ways a single region corridor? One of my theories was that my corridor was broken somewhere at the join of two regions.

[Anonymous]

Actually no - I tried different alignment types, profiles by layout and from surface.  Seems odd.  There's an old thread here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/Where-is-the-Drive-Tab/td-p/2589600/highlight/true/pa...

Didn't work for me.

[Anonymous]

Cheers for this

Yeah I tried typing in 'driveplay', I got a message on the command line saying 'not in drive mode', so at least I know that drive mode is not activating.

[SethHall]

Hi nickelson-

Is this just happening in one drawing? I just tested the "drive" in the tutorial Corridor-5a.dwg and it seemed to work as expected. I selected the corridor>ANALYZE panel>DRIVE, it prompted me to select a feature line, alignment, or 3D polyline. I selected "A" for alignment and grabbed the Centerline alignment, then the Layout (1) profile. At that point the DRIVE contextual ribbon appeared and I was able to "drive" through the corridor. Could you test a tutorial and see if you can get the same results?

[Anonymous]

I start the drive command from the ribbon, on the Analyze tab. The command works "somewhat" for me.  It shows my start station as 0+00, I don't even have a 0+00 station, my alignment starts at 43+00.  The appearance of my start station isn't correct either, there are many other intersections missing.  This corridor was created in 2009 version, not sure if that makes a difference.  So my take is that something is missing, just not sure how to fix it.

[SethHall]

On a side note, I tested this with a large drawing and 2+ mile corridor. Although it suffered a bit from a performance aspect, it still launched the Drive contextual ribbon produced the desired results. Have you noticed this occuring on other machines as well?

[ACADuser]

Same experience here as well.

[Jeff_M]

Just out of curiosity, due to this thread, I decided to try this command. First I tried in a corridor tutorial drawing, it seemed to work just fine. I then opened my own working drawing, which was started in C3D2008, mostly completed in C3D2009, and only updated to C3D2011 for testing purposes. Drive works in this drawing quite well....although I haven't applied any materials so it is just a wire frame view.

[Anonymous]

Hi Seth

Thanks for your reply

This is occuring in about six different drawings I have, however four of them are from doing a 'save as', and the other two have the same assemblies and styles. The same problem is occuring on two different computers.

I have followed the tutorials and am following the process exactly. I select my corrisor and either type drive, or go to analyse → drive on the ribbon, type 'a' for alignment and select my alignment, then my profile. Upon this, Civil3D performs a regen and then returns back to normal mode. When I type 'driveplay' or other drive commands, a message on the command line tells me i'm not in drive mode...

I had another thought - should it matter that the existing TIN surface (that is the target surface for the corridor) is data shortcutted in?

[Anonymous]

Hi Seth

Sorry I misread your post - i'll test the tutorial now and post the results.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Okay the drive command works in the tutorial, so the problem lies in the specific drawings. I'm going to try a few more things...

Thanks

[GZE]

Same problem happens to me when am dealing with a large size drawing, but as a work around i usually crete a 3d polyline from corridor and select it instead of selecting the alignment.

[SethHall]

Thanks for testing that out. What are your system specifications and how large is the corridor you are trying to drive? I had tested that 2+ mile corridor on a machine with 12 GB of RAM installed and a Xeon 2.67 GHz cpu, and although it did perform the command it was a bit "choppy" occasionally.

That being said, you may want to try gze's suggestion and extract a feature line or 3D poly from the corridor and see if you get better results.

[hgohel]

Those having trouble: do you have the command line (and possibly event viewer) window open?  Does it show any messages?  Make sure that the profile chosen belongs to the alignment previously chosen.

Are you able to switch to a 3D visual style outside of the drive tool? (try VISUALSTYLES)

[Anonymous]

Seth and GZE:

My specs are:

 8gb RAM

 Intel Xeon E5420  2.50Ghz quad core 

 NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 4gb

and the corridor is roughly 5000m long. The workaround suggested by GZE works, and I am able to drive my corridor by extracting a feature line. Fairly jerky but it's a substantial corridor so to be expected.

Himanshu:

There are no messages on the command line, and the profile I am choosing defintely belongs to the alignment. I am able to switch to 3d visual styles outside of the drive tool.

Thanks again for all your help guys...

[Anonymous]

I've played around with the visual styles, unloaded the xref and created a merged surface from the corridor and the existing. With only this merged surface and the corridor visible, the performance is great, I can easily drive the full 5km - the surface looks good and the drive is fairly smooth. I still have to extract a feature line first, but that's pretty easy...

[hgohel]

Glad to hear you're up and driving about.  If you run into drawings in which the drive tool does not work, I'd suggest opening a support case and submitting the data for us to analyze.  Thank you.

[Conrad_A]

I tried the drive command and it's working fine. I had a question regarding the surface. My corridor has a ditch in it but the existing ground covers it. How can I make it appear so that the ditch and fill locations show up on the viewer while driving? Is there a way to choose what surface I'm driving on?

thanks in advance.