Connect Corridor Surface to Graded Pad??

[perpetualjon]

I have been searching for the answer to this for a long time now. I have a simple graded pad on a hillside. I want to design a driveway that connects the pad to a road down the hill. I'll create a corridor to control the driveway but now I can't seem to merge the two surfaces together to form a continuous surface for earthwork calculations. Unless I start the driveway at a daylight point, I have yet to find a solution.

I've tried creating a new surface and pasting in both other surfaces but the problem is that where they intersect there is a dip --and depending on the order of the surface pasting, determines where the gap falls but I still can't seem to get them to just merge cleanly. Can anyone help me perform this seemingly simple and common operation??

[mathewkol · Accepted solution]

It looks like your corridor has a daylight subassembly. Consider removing it. Then extract the outermost feature line from the corridor and place it on the same site as your pad. Then grade the extracted feature line as you normally would.

Because they are on the same site, they will interact and trim each other as necessary.

[neilyj666]

I'd copy the EGL surface and paste the pad into it then use this combined surface as the target for the corridor daylight subassembly.

[perpetualjon]

Actually that could totally work as well! However, I want to be able to track total earthwork volumes between my grading designs and the EG surface so I'd like to keep the grading of the pad and the road in one grading group to pull that off. Still, very good idea! If I need to do some quick design work just to see how things fall, I may try this option first.

[perpetualjon]

Thank you so much! I've been trying to figure out how to do this for a very long time now. As often as I see tutorials on grading and corridors, I've yet to see much on how they interact (other than a very limited amount). By extracting the feature lines, I can maintain the interactivity with the corridor so as I make changes there, my grading and earthwork volumes automatically update. The only thing to watch out for is if I adjust the height of my pad -but this can be easily fixed. Thanks again!!

[neilyj666]

Although be aware that gradings are notoriously buggy and have the ability to totally corrupt your drawing - hence my solution which minimises their use.

[Anonymous]

There is nothing stating you cannot create another surface to paste your pad and corridor surfaces into for volume comparisons against your EG surface.

[fcernst]

For this I would make driveway and pad all one Corridor for a smooth transition on to the pad. No grading objects to worry about.

Need some driveway radii in there so trucks don't catch a tire and roll. 

[perpetualjon]

I didn't realize you can do that! How would I go about making a corridor with the pad at the end?

[neilyj666]

I wouldn't use this approach personally