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How to export a surface STYLE to a different drawing?

17 REPLIES 17
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Message 1 of 18
hb_alaska
4284 Views, 17 Replies

How to export a surface STYLE to a different drawing?

 

Hi.  I customized a surface style to show relative elevations, with lighter tones representing higher elevations, and darker tones representing lower elevations.  With a single glance, I know the high and low spots in my project area.

 

C3d provides several default surface elevation styles.  None of them comes close to providing the instant, data-at-a-glance information that my customized style does, which I use to design stormwater systems.  Again, it's really helpful to see, with one look, where the high and low spots are in my project area.

 

I can't figure out how to export, transfer, copy, whatever, my customized style from one drawing to a new drawing.  If I want to see my customized style, I have to recreate it from scratch in each and every drawing where I want to use it.  It's a royal pain.

 

Any suggestions about how to transfer a surface style from one drawing to another?  By the way, I tried opening up both drawings, with both toolspace/settings windows open.  Tried dragging and dropping the customized style to the new drawing.  Didn't work.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

 

 

 

 

17 REPLIES 17
Message 2 of 18
Jeff_M
in reply to: hb_alaska


@hb_alaska wrote:

 

Any suggestions about how to transfer a surface style from one drawing to another?  By the way, I tried opening up both drawings, with both toolspace/settings windows open.  Tried dragging and dropping the customized style to the new drawing.  Didn't work.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. 

 


Did the style copy but not the expected settings, or did the style not copy at all? If the latter, make sure the drawing to copy TO is current, Toolspace is set to MasterView, expand the tree in the settings for the FROM file, go to the style to copy and drag it into the canvas of the destination drawing. 

 

If on 2012, have youu tried the ImportStylesAndSettings command?

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
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Message 3 of 18
neilyj666
in reply to: hb_alaska

May be due to being based on an analysis?? (not in front of C3D so can't check)

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 4 of 18
JeffPaulsen
in reply to: hb_alaska


@hb_alaska wrote:

 

I customized a surface style to show relative elevations

 


The term relative elevations makes me think you defined the colors on the Analysis tab of the Surface Properties. If this is the case neilyj is correct and it is not part of the surface style. I do not know of any way to export the analysis settings.

Jeff Paulsen
Civil 3D 2020.4 | Win 10 Pro N 64-bit
Xeon W-2223 @ 3.60GHz, 32GB Ram | NVidia Quadro P2200
Message 5 of 18
BrianHailey
in reply to: JeffPaulsen

There was a tool that I believed shipped with one of the country kits that would export/import a surface analysis. Check the From The Ground Up blog.

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 6 of 18
neilyj666
in reply to: BrianHailey


@BrianHailey wrote:
There was a tool that I believed shipped with one of the country kits that would export/import a surface analysis. Check the From The Ground Up blog.

There is certainly something in the UKIE contry kit although I have never got it to work in the way I was expecting it to.....perhaps someone can enlighten me???

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 7 of 18
Joe-Bouza
in reply to: neilyj666

One way would be to highlight the ponts in prospector, copy to clipboard and paste to excel

Thank you

Joseph D. Bouza, P.E. (one of 'THOSE' People)

HP Z210 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E31240 @ 3.30 Hz
12 GB Ram


Note: Its all Resistentialism, so keep calm and carry on

64 Bit Win10 OS
Message 8 of 18
emelendez
in reply to: hb_alaska

Any suggestions about how to transfer a surface style from one drawing to another?  By the way, I tried opening up both drawings, with both toolspace/settings windows open.  Tried dragging and dropping the customized style to the new drawing.  Didn't work.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

  


I think there is a step here that some overlooked. I came across this with a coworker a few weeks ago....notice the area above highlighted. It sounds like they opened two sessions of civil 3D. If that is the case, then that is where the flaw lies. In order to drag and drop styles from one drawing to another, you MUST open both drawings in the same session of Civil 3D. Then as stated by another above, in the TOOLSPACE, Settings tab; set the view on top from ACTIVE DRAWING to MASTER VIEW. THen have the drawing you want to copy TO as the active drawing. Then in the TOOLSPACE scroll down to the FROM drawing, select the style, click, hold and drag over the screen where your TO drawing is active, release the mouse button and there you go. The style is in your new drawing. If you are in 2012 you can use the import styles feature, but I have found that utilizing this tool is better if you are trying to get a multitude of styles from one drawing to another. For one or two styles, use the drag and drop method.

 

If this doesn't work, than I would suggest updating your template file with said style by recreating it and then always start with that template file.

 

Hope this helps.......

Edwin Melendez
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 Certified Professional
Certification No. 00319327
Message 9 of 18
hb_alaska
in reply to: hb_alaska

Hey people, thanks for the helpful suggestions.

 

I think I hit pay dirt with Brian Hailey's tip to check the "from the ground up" blog.

 

http://fromthegroundup.typepad.com/from_the_ground_up/2009/04/additional-tools.html

 

The second youtube video down shows how to import/export a surface analysis.  That's exactly what I'd like to do.

 

Sooo ... my next question:

 

How do I get one of these handy dandy Country Kit Content Packs?  And hopefully they're free, yes? (the CFO at my company is a total tightwad).

 

Emelendez, that was a fine and subtle point about c3d working differently depending on whether one or multiple sessions are open.  Thanks.  I would have never figured that out on my own.  Also, the suggestion to set up my customized surface analysis in a dwg template was really good.  Tried to do that, but c3d won't let you set up an surface analysis style without a "real" surface.  Bummer, huh?  Maybe I'll try creating a bogus, 3-point surface just so that c3d has something real to sink it's digital teeth into, instead of hypothetical nothingness.  Still, I'm not keen on having anything bogus in my dwgs, especially a template.  Then again, if that analysis export tool works, then maybe I won't need to put that style in a template.  We shall see.

 

Thanks again, everybody.

Message 10 of 18
Joe-Bouza
in reply to: hb_alaska

And to think in the olden days all we had wer conturswith haschure marksSmiley Wink

Thank you

Joseph D. Bouza, P.E. (one of 'THOSE' People)

HP Z210 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E31240 @ 3.30 Hz
12 GB Ram


Note: Its all Resistentialism, so keep calm and carry on

64 Bit Win10 OS
Message 11 of 18
Jeff_M
in reply to: hb_alaska

Some of the Country Kits come with C3D and can be installed by going to Control Panel, Unisntall a program, select C3D2012, once the dialog comes up, the lower left corner has "Add or Remove Content". Select this, the UKIE kit is the third from the last in the list.

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
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Message 12 of 18
BrianHailey
in reply to: hb_alaska


@hb_alaska wrote:

 

Also, the suggestion to set up my customized surface analysis in a dwg template was really good.  Tried to do that, but c3d won't let you set up an surface analysis style without a "real" surface.  Bummer, huh?  Maybe I'll try creating a bogus, 3-point surface just so that c3d has something real to sink it's digital teeth into, instead of hypothetical nothingness.  Still, I'm not keen on having anything bogus in my dwgs, especially a template.  Then again, if that analysis export tool works, then maybe I won't need to put that style in a template.  We shall see.



You could create a surface, add data to it, run the analysis, and then remove the data. That might keep the empty surface with the analysis. You could then just paste whatever surface you want to run the analysis on into that surface and, badda bing badda boom, you have a surface analysis.

 

I create a couple "bogus" things in my templates to assist users such as pipe networks (that way you don't have to change layers every time you create a different network) and point groups.

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 13 of 18
hb_alaska
in reply to: Jeff_M

Thanks Jeff.  Tried that.  I'm running c3d 2011.  The UKIE kit was not listed as an option of additional content to add.

Message 14 of 18
hb_alaska
in reply to: BrianHailey

Brian - I might end up trying your suggestion if I can't find a 2011 version of the UKIE kit first.

Message 15 of 18
Jeff_M
in reply to: hb_alaska

It's there in 2011 as well. I did leave out a step....at the first screen that you see after you select "Add or Remove content", hit the Next button. You will then see a screen like this (after scrolling down):

 

2-27-2012 9-47-31 AM.png

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
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Message 16 of 18
hb_alaska
in reply to: Jeff_M

Omg, it almost worked!

 

Left surface - orginal.

Right surface - target of exported surface analysis.

Dialog box - surface properties/analysis tab.

 

The export worked, but it seems something literally got lost in the translation.  The color range in the analysis tab should all be of the same hue and saturation, but graduated in 5-point luminance increments.  So, the original is basically all one color, just in incrementally lighter shades.

 

The target, as shown in the dialog box, has different colors (lavender and teal, not just plain ole blue).  And some discrete elevation ranges are using the same color.

 

I opened the text file that was created using a tool from the ukie kit (as shown in that link I posted a few days ago).

 

the text file is very simple - 3 columns: color, elev low, elev high.

 

The problem is that the color field in the text file is only one field wide - just a single color code.  Whereas the original color scheme used 3 fields: hue, saturation, luminance.

 

Neilyj - you said you got something like this to work in the ukie kit, but it didn't work the way you thought it would.  Is this what you meant - the color scheme not translating properly?

 

 

 

image002.jpg

 

Message 17 of 18
jszalus
in reply to: emelendez

Was not working for me at first either.

 

Dragged my surface styles in with no problems when I open both drawings in one civil 3d session.

 

 

 

Civil 3d 2K11

jib

Message 18 of 18

Country Kits are free.

 

You can either add them by

 

If civil 3d was installed directly onto you machine from the install media

  1. Go to the Windows Control Panel
  2. Programs and Feature (for windows vista or 7)
  3. select "AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013" (or whichever version you have) and click "Uninstall/Change"
  4. Click Add or Remove Features button in the form that opens.
  5. a new form opens which allows you to add or remove content packs (also called "country kits")
  6. Check either the UKIE content or the ANZ content (both have the surface analysis export/import tool)
  7. click next
  8. click update

If civil 3d was installed/deployed from a deployment you can download and install individual country kits from this link

 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7271531&linkID=9240698

 



If a post provides a fix for your issue, click on "Accept as Solution" to help other users find solutions to problems they might have that are similar to yours.

Andrew Puller
Maitland, NSW, Australia
Windows 10 Enterprise 64bit
Intel core i7 11800 @ 2.30 GHz with 32GB Ram
Civil 3d 2021

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