Curb staking - again

[kdepfyffer]

Is autodesk ever going to solve this issue? How many times must this be discussed before they listen? So many people always spit out the same answer, sinpack or whatever its called, well I want to use civil 3d for everything I think for the price it should be able to do what ever I want. OK rant over lets put this to rest please.

I have no problem staking a corridor, easy right but I don't use those for my parking lots or other jobs where having 40 corridor's would get a little overwhelming. If I have a surface created with featurelines for FL, TBC, LIP or EP shouldn't I be able to use those set my 3' 5' or 10' o/s using the elevations from the featureline, and have it calc every 25' plus grade breaks and angle points. Anyone who offers staking services should be screaming about this. Is there something I am missing? Setting a 3' offset I've seen " O/S you feature line 2' and 5' and create a surface" No thank you sir that's another step.. Sorry guys I guess its to early for me or I just haven't had enough coffee yet.

Is there a straight forward solution to this? Please tell me what I have over looked, I have been throw in the survey seat once again (yes I finally started working again in the crazy economy thank God) and could use a little help.

Thanks guys, any NEW suggestions greatly appreciated.

I know there's a guy in the survey dept ove there who should have the answer to this but I wont throw him under the bus just yet 😉

[jwhal]

I have to agree. Not all managers want to approve the purchase of additional software on top of the already expensive Civil 3D, especially when the functionality requested is SO VERY fundamental to the work we do. We need an easy, built-in way of creating points for whatever part of the curb we want, at whatever frequency we want, at whatever offset we want, with the proper elevations, and at the appropriate geometry locations.

Slope stake reports are okay, but they leave a lot to be desired.

Jon

[Sinc]

Just thought I'd point out one thing...  You spent $7000 for a seat of C3D, along with who-knows-how-many more thousands in training and/or lost productivity while you learned the software.  Now you'd rather kill a co-worker than spend another $175 on software that runs entirely within C3D and solves your problem.  I suspect that killing your co-worker will cost a lot more than $175, and I also doubt it will help solve your problem... 

I can understand being frustrated that this functionality is not in C3D.  After all, that's why I created it myself.  Just keep in mind that my solution is available NOW, in any version of C3D back to 2008.  Also, the StakeFeatures command is actually a pretty elaborate piece of programming...  It's got a lot of flexibility and features that were built up over years of using the command in the field.  Even if Autodesk added similar functionality, it would likely be several releases (if ever) before they managed to match the power and flexibility of the StakeFeatures command.  And with this one command, I can take a job that used to take me a week, and get the whole thing done in less than a day.  That way more than pays for the software with a single usage.

So I suppose it comes down to which one gives you the greatest personal reward and satisfaction: complaining to Autodesk, or getting work done quickly and easily right now.

[jwhal]

And now I will add that Autodesk (the individuals with power) should pull their heads out of their arses and buy your software (Sinc) and incorporate it. A lot of times It is the small things that make the product worthwhile. This happens to be one of those seemingly small routines that can save several HOURS of pain-staking (no pun intended) work.

Jon

[n2itive]

First off, Let me point out I am not a surveyor. However at my previous company I was occasionally part of the "B" crew so to speak as well as mostly in charge of setting up stakeout maps. So for a parking lot I would set points w elev for the flowline / boc, depending on the contractor, at corners, grade breaks, intersection, start/miid/end point of curves. Pretty simple and quick. I'm not sure of exact model but we used a basic Tremble robotic total station. All these extra pnts you refer to were then staked out to using the tools within the data collector and the original pnts uploaded. If what your saying is you manually create these points in c3d before hand, I can see what a pain the rear that would be.

So what happens when your in the field and you have to change an o/s or adjust the sta because some moron has parked a grader in the way and left for lunch?

Like I said I'm not a surveyor but I can't imagine having to create a boat load of points like you have described. I would probably be just as frustrated as you sound... However I do thing there are other more efficient options out there... and yes, they're going to cost money if you don't already have the tools.

[Jeff_M]

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@jwhal wrote:

And now I will add that Autodesk (the individuals with power) should pull their heads out of their arses and buy your software (Sinc) and incorporate it.  

Jon

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Say Autodesk does, in fact, do this. In order to pay for the acquistion they decide to raise the per seat license of C3D $500. You could buy the entire Sincpac package right now for $350 (less if you purchase in quantity). I think I'd rather have Sincpac stay in the hands of the private developer who listens to the wants & needs of their fellow C3D users. 

Just sayin'.....

[jwhal]

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@Jeff_M wrote:

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@jwhal wrote:

And now I will add that Autodesk (the individuals with power) should pull their heads out of their arses and buy your software (Sinc) and incorporate it.  

Jon

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Say Autodesk does, in fact, do this. In order to pay for the acquistion they decide to raise the per seat license of C3D $500. You could buy the entire Sincpac package right now for $350 (less if you purchase in quantity). I think I'd rather have Sincpac stay in the hands of the private developer who listens to the wants & needs of their fellow C3D users. 

Just sayin'.....

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True, I suppose.

For now I'll just have to put on my salesman hat and bring forth the purchase request of the Sinc software to my manager.

Jon

[peterfunkautodesk]

If you have the feature lines in the drawing and you want to stake out the elevations at an interval, the "Measure Object" point command will measure along a feature line and allow you to set an interval and an offset. The elevations of the points are pulled from the feature line.

You could also offset the feature line (AutoCAD OFFSET) and use the "On Line/Curve" command to set points at the vertex/elevation breaks.

What am I missing?

Regards,

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.

[Jeff_M]

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@Jeff_M wrote:

I think I'd rather have Sincpac stay in the hands of the private developer who listens to the wants & needs of their fellow C3D users. 

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I did not mean this to sound like the C3D team does not listen to us, because I know they do. It was inteneded to say "listens to the wants and needs .... and is able to act upon those needs without needing to wait until the next full release in April, or even the one after that the following April."

My apologies if my original comment may have upset anyone, as it surely was not my intent...but rereading it I could certainly understand if it did.

[Anonymous]

Old habits die hard.   Peter Funk's method was the method I used in the old days of LDD and 3Dpolys.  Sometimes I would add vertices to the polys to a certain distance and just use the Automatic feature of create points to set them.

[Sinc]

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@peterfunkautodesk wrote:

What am I missing?

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 Quite a bit... 

Here's some of the functionality in the StakeFeatures command that you're missing with "Measure Object" or "Create Points on Line/Curve":

• Special handling for angle points, allowing for creation of a single NxN offset at the corner, or for two offsets at the corner, one for "course in" and one for "course out".  Contains several configurable options, so you can get exactly the behavior you want.
• Can specify a specific interval (e.g. every 25 feet), set points only at Points of Interest (e.g. angle points, PCs, grade breaks), or a combination.
• Calculate intermediate points using either a set distance from start of polyline (e.g. every 25 feet, as measured from start), or calculate intermediate points evenly-space between Points of Interest, using the specified interval as a "maximum distance between points".  We (and more importantly, the construction crews) actually like this second option better in many situations, especially Parking Lots.
• Automatic setting of radius points, with controls that are geared toward field staking.  For example, an option for maximum radius (so you don't get unnecessary radius points created), and an option that only creates radius points when the offset stakes are on the inside of curves (we don't set radius points in the field if we're staking offsets on the outside of a curve).
• Special settings for curves, e.g. "always set midpoint", "curve staking interval" in case you want tighter spacing around curves (e.g. 50' intervals on straightaways, 25' intervals around curves), "small curve settings" which suppress the offsets around very tiny curves, replacing them with points on the radius point (so you don't get a mess when trying to calc 3' offsets around a curve with 1' radius, for example).
• Option for generating small lines between the offset and the feature line, so you can tell exactly which point each offset belongs to (can really help with elaborate designs, as found in some parking lots).
• As points are created, they automatically get a Point Description that really describes the point.  For example, when creating 3' offsets to Top-Back-Curb (TBC), I might end up with Cogo Points that have descriptions like "3TBC GB" (grade break), "3TBC PC" (point of curve), "3TBC PCC" (point of complex curve), "3TBC PRC" (point of reverse curve), etc.  These descriptions are all fully-customizable.  The best part is they are the point descriptions, so after stakeout, the field crew can dump a cutsheet (staking report) straight out of the data collector.  This cutsheet has all the points in order, with full descriptions from the stakeout points, so it's very easy to read the cutsheet.  (This is one of the MOST IMPORTANT benefits.)
• The field guy can write point numbers on the stakes, and we can give a copy of the staking exhibit to the construction crew.  We can also give them the cutsheet report I just mentioned.  This can make life easier for the construction crew, as well as potentially eliminate the need for us to come back out to the site if they lose a few guard stakes, or if they can't read a cut/fill painted on pavement, or whatever.
• Option for generating "line stakes", or two offsets for each point.  This is nice when the construction crew wants more precise positioning, as they can use the two offsets to stay on line when pulling their offset, as opposed to simply pulling an offset from a single point with no reference.
• Options for minimum deflection & distance between PIs, and for "attempt curve detection".  This is very handy for creating Cogo Points along daylight lines created from C3D grading objects or corridors (or even along Survey Figures), without getting excessive numbers of Cogo Points.  (The "attempt curve detection" option does a decent job of detecting tesselated curves, and treating them as if the curve was not tesselated.)
• Option for setting points with "No Elevation", as opposed to using the object elevation.  This is mostly a convenience that lets StakeFeatures (and all its options) be used to set points horizontally.  Then the grades can be set from some other entity entirely using a command like Pt2Profile or Pt2Feature.  (There are some videos on the Quux Software website that show this in action.)
• And, since there's so many possible options, they can be saved in a Quickset, using the panel in the upper-right of the dialog.  This will save all the current settings in a named setup, for instant recall at any future time.  You can setup your drawing template with all your favorite setups, so you can instantly create points using any desired settings.

For some things, we use the method mentioned above by nelsons, where we'll just give the field guys some points, and they use the data collector to calculate the interval points.  More often, we'll create an Alignment/Profile in C3D, then dump that straight to the data collector using Trimble Link, and let them stake offsets using the Alignment/Profille.  For some things, like utility lines, we really like one of these options.

But for other things, there's nothing we like better than StakeFeatures.  In so many ways, it does exactly what we want.  And if I get a design created in C3D, so I already have elevated feature lines around a parking lot, it takes me a matter of minutes to calc very large parking lots.  And when it comes to something like parking lots, there are some real advantages to having each point identified with a point number, as opposed to trying to use stationing, which is very cumbersome for this type of application.

It all comes down to having the right tool for the job...  You can often get something done without the right tool, but the right tool can make a world of difference.

[Sinc]

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@kdepfyffer wrote:

Is autodesk ever going to solve this issue?

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While Autodesk tends to be very tight-lipped about the things they're working on, you can sometimes "read between the lines".  For example, read Peter Funk's post in this thread.  From what he says, you can infer that Autodesk is probably not working on anything along these lines right now.  That means it is unlikely you can expect anything in C3D 2013, and will be waiting until at least C3D 2014.  By contrast, the Sincpac-C3D is available now.

So again, it comes down to your priorities.  And there could actually be benefits to going the plug-in route.  Just think... If Autodesk tried to add every feature that everyone wanted to the base product, how much would they have to charge?  And every C3D user would have to pay that fee, regardless of whether or not the feature helped them.

[kdepfyffer]

I understand what you are saying and figured I would  hear that but the 25' or 50' intervals are not correct on the offset line if you have a lot of curves  there for that is not a professional or correct solution.

I really want someone to prove me wrong when I say, you can not go out and stake a major shopping center parking lot with 3' or 5' o/s without either calcing the correct distance along curves to have true 25' stations or setting points on the actual curbs and then moving them manually.

Are there ways around this yes but the simple fact is I can not choose my featureline, and tell it to set points at each interval, grade break and 3' o/s to the left or right so with that in mind who has the "best"  way in your opinion and is Autodesk ever going to set this right.

I have worked in survey and design for the last 20 years and just don't get why survey is in the position they are, not only outtakes but the NCSC also, more surveyors really need to get involved.

And no I'm still not buying additional software, I have personal reasons for that so sorry if you disagree

[Sinc]

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@kdepfyffer wrote:

I understand what you are saying and figured I would  hear that but the 25' or 50' intervals are not correct on the offset line if you have a lot of curves  there for that is not a professional or correct solution.

I really want someone to prove me wrong when I say, you can not go out and stake a major shopping center parking lot with 3' or 5' o/s without either calcing the correct distance along curves to have true 25' stations or setting points on the actual curbs and then moving them manually.

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There is no such problem with the routine that I mentioned.  It measures the 25' along the feature line, and does the offset from that point, which is what I believe you are calling a "correct solution".  Although to tell you the truth, I really have to wonder why "correct distance" matters so much along curbs in a parking lot...

It's fine if you don't wish to purchase additional software.  But I'm a Surveyor, and I'm involved...  But I'm probably also confused. 

[peterfunkautodesk]

The routine in Civil 3D will also measure 25' along the curb line and set the points to the left / right of the line by 3'. To get the grade breaks and vertex points at a 3' offset you would need to offset the feature line and then run the command to label the points on the line. This would pick up the grade breaks and vertex point. Then erase the offset line.

So 2 point layout commands and 2 AutoCAD commands instead of a single command.

Regards,

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.

[Sinc]

One problem with that solution (in addition to the things I said earlier) is that most field surveyors wouldn't particularly like it.  They prefer having point numbers in order, so they can just hit "Next" when doing stakeout, rather than skipping around in point numbers.