First time using a grading object in 2015 today and first crash using a grading object in 2015 - nice to see the tradition of flaky grading objects being maintained in the newest release.
They really should take a long look at the objects and get them sorted out as they are a fundamental part of an earthworks workflow...
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Grading objects don't seem to really be getting many updates since around 2010. In my personal experience, I have found a couple of things that create stability problems:
I'd speculate No 2 is because grading objects are projecting these dynamic feature lines - so when it's on the same site as a lot of other feature lines maybe it gets a logic/math error.
The most stable way I have found to work with them is to create a temporary site and move feature lines that I need to project gradings to that site. I don't have a lot of issues adding grading objects onto projected feature lines from grading objects. If I have different gradings for one segement (a dam, for instance, where I may have a grade to distance on the fill and a straight cut where there is cut) I will usually use the cut grading first, then break the segments where the cuts end, then do the offsets and projections for the fills separately. Once all the grading objects are done, I do explode all the feature lines, convert them back to feature lines, and tie the ends together for smooth transitions.
If I ever run into a problem in the drawing, or it starts to get corrupted, I delete the site. Deleting grading objects sometimes don't seem to fully clean up remnants, but having a temporary site and deleting it seems to leave any corrupt part fairly separate from the rest of the drawing.
Yes, this means the file is never truly dynamic, there is extra work, but I have had grading object crashes maybe 1-2 times a year since doing this approach - it's a long term evolution of what to do/what not to do over the last 6-7 years. This does not mean that I'm ok with the fact that grading objects are pretty much unusable as they are presented outside of a tiny basic project. I'm very dissapointed that Autodesk doesn't put more resources on improving the stability of grading objects and/or the overlapping of sections in corridors, leaving end users with nothing but workarounds that are not exactly dynamic for both types of situations. I'd also like to see some better error trapping algorithms in the software that will just say "illegal operation" and leave you sitting at your last command rather than ejecting you from the program when the program fails to make a calculation. I think this has been the bane of Civil3d for quite some time. I'd be a bit sad if my grading didn't work, but to lose 20 minutes of work because of an illegal operation is pretty abysmal.
I would like to see the Grading Object entity abandoned and focus resources on fiuther development of the more robust Corridor object.
Bring the Corridor more easily into the site grading realm by adding the ability to use a Feature Line as a Baseline for hroizontal and vertical control without the need of an Alignment and Profile.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Bentley has taken that approach with their Openroads technology. Assemblies can be applied to any graphics, not just alignments. Actually all graphics function as alignments as they have geometric constraints. They also have profiles which can be configured to maintain relationships to other profiles. This addresses one of the downsides we have in C3D with using corridors for site design, since much of the vertical design needs to be related to and managed in plan view.
We have not embraced C3D because it is too cumbersome to use for site work.
Joe Bouza
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Joe Bouza
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@Neilw wrote:
Right now it's a hybrid approach with Power Civil for creating the models and Land Desktop/AutoCAD for details and final documents. We've been in limbo for years waiting for a savior.
Neil Armstrong was once asked: "If the engine of your spaceship breaks and you only have an hours worth of oxegen, what do you do"?
.............................................Neil's reply: "work on the engine"!
Joe Bouza
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Beyond tempremental really..
The whole gradings thing has been an issue since the product was first molded from its ancestor and became Civil 3D. I couldn't agree less (in fact a lot more) that gradings just need to be scrapped and they need to just start again.
In the meantime though a few things that would really help.
But all in all a bit more stability is really needed. I would even be even happy to trade off a little bit of functionality if it means some more stability.
Enough ranting i guess, back to work..