Been using Land Desktop (and its predecessors) for years. Switched to Civil 3D almost two years ago.
The progress has been in fits and starts, but for the most part I have picked most of it up pretty well. Re-tooling my thinking, and at times just trying to FIND the vast array of settings, has been my biggest struggles. But, it's working pretty well, and is getting better.
One thing, though... As great as corridors and profiles and the such is great for street and roadway projects, it seems to me that the program still leaves something to be desired for site development. Shopping centers and parking lots and the like.
I used to do mostly commercial development in LD, but have been doing mostly street and roadway projects in C3D. Only one commercial project in C3D, so far.
Is it just me, or is the site development aspect of C3D leaving something to be desired?
Whilst it's prety good at creating a proposed finished ground level, what is more of use to me is the earthworks outline i.e. below all the surface finishes, roads, paving etc so I can calulate th etrue cut and fill for a development.
Unfortunately, Civil 3D fails miserably in this task (although it can be accomplished with a significant amount of manual work) so somewhat negating all the BIM puffery that is bandied about in the press releases and publicity.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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I understand your quest and strongly suggest you view Eric Chappel's video on AU 2011 "Islands in Asphalt" (sorry cant get the link at this time). This video demonstrate a technique for grading parking lots that , IMO, is the easiest way to grade a site. When the 2012 vids are up I'm going to take a look at Eric's "10 great grading examples"
Some people find it hard to swallow because the technique utilizes multiple surfaces to get a FG surface, but I haven't found a technique that work better. And I haven't done a site grading that did not require me to use multiple surfaces.
Trust me - it is the way to go
Joe Bouza
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Another thing to consider is that corridors can be used for more that roads. A parking lot can be considered a very wide road or a bunch of parallel roads. While I've been doing road design for many years and haven't done a site in C3D. I know someone who is masterful in creating site designs using corridors. Interior roads, parking lots, retaining walls, benched slopes can all be designed using a corridor. Having not done this myself, I can't go in to much detail.
Allen
Allen Jessup
CAD Manager - Designer
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I concur about the lack of support for subgrade materials with the grading tools.
There are numerous other issues that I feel need to be addressed or improved. Some of them are:
Having to delete all gradings applied to a feature line when the featureline needs to be broken
Having to create multiple levels of intermediate target surfaces when stacking grading groups into a final model (i.e. Group A targets surface from group B which targets surfaces from groups C & D, etc.).
Certain limitations with transitions
Lack of support for dynamic benching
Lack of support for mitered corners (Major issue!)
Instability when manipulating grips
The site topology paradigm can be a pain. Granted there needs to be dependency rules but I wish there were a better way to manage them.
Lack of support for dynamic relationships between featurelines (i.e. feature line A should always be 2% lower than featureline B).
I could go on but suffice it to say the tools don't quite meet the demands for many site work scenarios.
@Joe-Bouza wrote:I understand your quest and strongly suggest you view Eric Chappel's video on AU 2011 "Islands in Asphalt" (sorry cant get the link at this time). This video demonstrate a technique for grading parking lots that , IMO, is the easiest way to grade a site. When the 2012 vids are up I'm going to take a look at Eric's "10 great grading examples"
Some people find it hard to swallow because the technique utilizes multiple surfaces to get a FG surface, but I haven't found a technique that work better. And I haven't done a site grading that did not require me to use multiple surfaces.
Trust me - it is the way to go
I have seen that video (and know where to find it, so I'm ok with no link), but haven't watched it yet. I will check it out.
I believe Eric Chappel is the same person who did a video about driveways along a street corridor. It was very good and I used that video to teach myself how to do driveways in a corridor.
@Anonymous wrote:Lack of support for dynamic relationships between featurelines (i.e. feature line A should always be 2% lower than featureline B).
Yeah, I figured that one out the hard way.
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