Finished Grade Contours

[wvu9494]

Once a finished grade surface is created is there a way to manually alter the contours?

[acoursen]

I was thinking of the clay metaphor myself.  It really is like that as you work through your site.  Adding a little here, a little there, tweaking this or that - its an ongoing iterative process.  Having to drag out the paper, scale and calculator to design a swale at a certain slope then translate that to C3D, when you could have just drawn a feature line to slope and add it to your surface, no thank you.  Sure you can conceptualize on paper in general terms all you want,  but I don't see much in the way of design benefits anymore if you're fully utilizing Civil 3D.

[wvu9494]

The issue here is that just because you are an expert in Civil 3D doesnt mean you know how to design a site.  And for multiple people to make a comment like "we fire engineers who draw up their design freehand" is laughable and makes this board lose all credibility.

[C3D_RickGraham]

A little background here...

Our little company is founded by an ex-president/PE/PLS that has retired 2 years ago. Unfortunately, the wounds of 'bumwadding' are deep rooted that I will probably never see it's demise.

Our procedure for proposed (finished) contours has been the following:

1. Engineer (who knows NOTHING about CAD and has NO desire to learn it al the while the company endorses their methods) bumads contours.

2. CAD scans the drawing and traces over the lines to create a surface.

3. CAD turns those contours into Civil 3D surface.

Their argument for bumwadding range from:

1. CAD doesn't do it correctly. It can't curve around like we can do it by hand.

2. They have better control over the process.

I CAN see the point of number 1. CAD cannot make nice smooth curvy contours especially at tie-ins to existing, and if you have a berm/swale configuration. CAD just looks at the triangles and applies dalauney principles. Yes it is correct, but it doesn't look nice.

One would think that our designs are golf courses where everything has to be curvy, but we do subdivisions.

Oh I forgot, many of the owners are also Landscape Architects so throw their 'need for creativity and individualism' in with that mix and feel my pain.

Rick

[acoursen]

I think the point is in a downsizing economy, where choices have to be made, the person who can do both, that is designing utilizing Civil 3D,  will more likely remain employed.

[jmayo-EE]

Actually you have received advice from professionally licensed surveyors and engineers who profit using this software everyday.

John Mayo, PE

[Sinc]

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@wvu9494 wrote:

The issue here is that just because you are an expert in Civil 3D doesnt mean you know how to design a site.  And for multiple people to make a comment like "we fire engineers who draw up their design freehand" is laughable and makes this board lose all credibility.

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I suppose someone who is an expert in C3D may not know how to design a site.  Personally, I don't think you can become an expert in C3D UNLESS you know what you are doing.  But there's some validity to that statement, although I think it's a rather weak argument.

But it is really rather a moot point.  Sure, we value experience.  But there are also good Engineers who know how to both design a site AND use Civil 3D.  And if you know both, it is a giant waste of time to use paper.

In the recent down market, we had to trim staff.  The people who were left are the ones who can be the most productive.  An Engineer who can't use Civil 3D simply is not productive enough - he can't keep up with a C3D tech, and it is a waste of money to have two people doing the same job that one person can do.  Now, if times were better, and we were hiring MORE people, then we'd want to keep that experienced Engineer, but mostly in a supervisory and coordination role.  When times get tough, though, the people who can't keep up with the technology are the most vulnerable.

Something that your posts have made clear is that you have never tried designing the way we do.  You seem to think that drawing a design on paper is the ONLY acceptable method.  Well, believe us when we say "Been there, done that", and we know what we're talking about when we say we can do better, faster designs by skipping the paper phase.

[KirkNoonan]

Seeing how this is a Civil 3D discussion board, I find it a bit naive that you think that you would find a lot of people here that endorse the design methodology that the software is intended to supplant. In my opinion, the fact that so many people can do the same thing (in less time) with the software that you do in multiple steps adds credibility to the group. There probably aren't that many people here who are actually responsible for the actual firing or hiring of engineers, but there are a lot of people here that are responsible for teaching engineers how to more efficiently use the tools available to them.

If someone at your company is not as proficient at design as you are, but they can go through 4 software-created iterations of their design in the same time that it takes you to do one iteration by hand and change it to CAD, who is more valuable?

[wvu9494]

I have used Autocad, Softdesk, LDD, and now Civil 3D for almost 15 years, and at the highest possible level.  I see great advantage in the software and am very skilled at it.  I also see an incredible advantage (as do most engineers) in designing on paper.  I just think some of your comments are very narrow minded.

BTW, I am sitting 25 feet from 3 Cadd designers / Civil 3D users who are junior engineers and are not experts at design.

[Sinc]

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@wvu9494 wrote:

I also see an incredible advantage (as do most engineers) in designing on paper.

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How did you determine this?  Are you sure you aren't just stating your own personal bias, rather than speaking for "most engineers"?

[wvu9494]

personal bias for what?  I just told you I have used the software for almost 15 years.  And, well, I know and work with many engineers and jsut so you know, paper is not obsolete.

Now, I realize this is a Civil 3D board, and its very narrow minded and strictly focussed on Civil3D is great (and it is) and its the only way to do anything, and if you dont do it our way you are wrong.  But some of you need to snap out of this and realize how the engineering proffession works.

[jsnock]

We use civil3D for our design software and most of our engineers are not proficient on it.  The Civil techs take the general notes from the engineers (IE grade X% away from the building, get the water to flow to these areas etc.) and make it work.  If there are areas that need refinement the engineers may draw in some contours but the techs are responsible for adding data to the surface to make it look/work as close as possible to the engineers intent.  The notion of hand drawing contours and scanning/tracing them in sounds like a waste of time and effort when you could just add feature lines and make the site look 99% the same in less time and with less chance for error.  The problem with using contours to build a surface is that you are using an interpolation of an interpolation, a lot of room for error & wonkiness in your surface.

I think the great paper/screen debate is a moot point.  I would never send out a drawing without looking at a print (several prints actually) and I do find value in sketching from time to time but I don't think either way is right or wrong.

As far as contours being too angled try the contour smoothing, you can get some fairly curvy contours that way and if you are doing your daylighting correctly your contours should tie in to existing just fine.

[nostupidquestions]

i get sketches all the time from my engineers. they don't have the time or the desire to learn c3d but they do have the time to edit the drawing. if i did the drawings in c3d, they would get exploded or they would be corrupted somehow.  they also have to have things looks a certain way that i've not been able to accomplish in c3d. they own the company and if this is the way they want it and they keep writing me checks, i'll do it their way.