Feature Lines and Polylines

[TheJabberwocky]

Hiya,

I'm pretty new to using Feature lines, but for what I am doing now I realise they are easier for me to use. I am connecting a series of points up into a continuous line, with straights and arcs in it. Creating the feature line itself is fine, and my question is probably very simple and easy to do, I just can't seem to find it.

The program I need to use to create my file for machine control on site does not recognise feature lines and will not import them. To get a 3D line into a job it needs to be a 3dpolyline. I know I can just explode a feature line back to a polyline, and generally this works fine, but it simplifies the arcs into straight edges, running from start to mid point to end.

Don't bother saying I need to switch the other program for a new one, this is what the company uses and I am required to use it to create my job files. Aside from not reading feature lines it is perfectly fine for what we do with it.

What I would like to know is either:

Can I turn Feature Lines into 3d polys and retain to curves?

or Can I add extra points around the curves simply so that when I explode it it has more straight edges, ie. break a single curve up into 5 segments, or similar?

[neilyj666 · Accepted solution]

Additional vertices can be added to featurelines quite easily by increment or distance although I'm not sure what happens for arc portions of the featureline

[neilyj666]

The smaller the arc radius, a smaller increment/distance needs to be used - probably best done by saving the dwg, adding points, exploding the FL and undoing as required.

[ericcollins6932]

Does your machine control not support surfaces? Normally the feature lines are used to build design surfaces which are then loaded to machine control.

[Jeff_M]

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@TheJabberwocky wrote:

Can I turn Feature Lines into 3d polys and retain to curves?

or Can I add extra points around the curves simply so that when I explode it it has more straight edges, ie. break a single curve up into 5 segments, or similar?

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3dPolys do not have arcs. So option 1 is out.

To add more vertices to the resulting 3dPoly, set your Site (the one containing the Featureline(s)) properties mid-ordinate distance to a smaller value. Experiment with numbers to find the one that works best for your projects. Most of mine are set to 0.02 - 0.1.

[TheJabberwocky]

I'll give this last one a go and see what happens.

In regards to surfaces, yes the machine control does handle surfaces, and yes I do include the surface in there for them, but for some reason they also want 3d linework as well. I have tried just giving them 2d linework before I received numerous complaints about the file I uploaded. I think it has something to do with when they select the line to run offsets with and the way some of the auto controls work. The drivers I have to deal with are not the best. We are using Topcon 3DMC, and I need to upload from Civil3D into 3D Office, which doesn't support feature lines, to create the TP3 file which is then given to the operators on the machines and my surveyors using Pocket3D. I would rather them use Magnet (or anything except Topcon, like I would love some Trimble gear) but the controllers we have cannot handle the program.

[ericcollins6932]

I understand now - they are probably trying to slope stake from your shoulder line or whatever you give them. Whatever best represents your feature line (probably a well-tesselated 3D Poly) is probably the best thing to give them.

[TheJabberwocky]

I tried adjusting the Curve Tessellation but it did not seem to have any noticable affect on my arc.

While that did not seem to do anything I used the incremental vertices and set it to 1m so that the straight lines were smoothed into the arc better.

[Jeff_M]

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@TheJabberwocky wrote:

I tried adjusting the Curve Tessellation but it did not seem to have any noticable affect on my arc.

While that did not seem to do anything....

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What values did you try? Here is an extreme, yet simple, example of how this setting affects the exploded featurelines:

[TheJabberwocky]

tried a few different ones, including 0.05 and 0.01. Didn't seem to change anything at all.

[mguilbert8JCWE]

same here doesnt change anything