Importing Multiple .asc Files

[agie13]

Evening!

As part of my honours year dissertation I'm desigining a small section of highway in AutoCAD Civil 3D and as such I'm required to generate a DTM of the site area. I've managed to get a hold of several .ASC files that contain all the data needed and I've opened them individually to check that they are creating the surface properly. My issue is, I can't seem to work out how to combine all the files in order to create one big surface... I can open one file using the "Create surface from dtm" and that works fine, but I'm unsure of how to import the other files. 

"Modify > Surface > Add Data > DGM Files" Doesn't work, but I'm unsure if that's even how it's supposed to be done! 

So my question(s) are: 

1. Is it possible to create a surface using one file and then just import the other files, and if yes how?

2. If that's not how it's done and i need to merge all the .ASC files to create one combined surface, how can i do that?

If neither of those ways will work, or you know of an easier/better method, could you spill the beans? FYI I have 12 ASC files.

Thanks for any/all advice!

[neilyj666]

Can you send an example of the file data - the first 10 or 20 lines - so we can see what sort of data you have?

[tcorey]

What is the format of your ASC files?

If it is simple ascii data, in a format like North, East, Elevation, you can attach the multiple files to a surface:

1. Create a new surface. It will be blank and you won't get any graphical indication that it exists. It will be listed under Surfaces in the Prospector tab of the ribbon.

2. Expand the surface there on the Prospector tab.

3. Expand Definition.

4. Right click on Point Files and pick Add...

5. Pick the Plus Sign in the upper right of the dialog. Browse and select one of your files. Return to the dialog.

6. Pick the correct Point File Format from the list and be sure your file previews correctly.

7. Once the file previews correctly, go back to the Plus Sign and pick more files. You can use CTRL or Shift to select several at a time. Return to the dialog.

8. Press OK.

You might need to zoom to the surface. Right click the surface name in Prospector, pick Zoom to...

Tim

[Murph_Map]

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@agie13 wrote:

 I've managed to get a hold of several .ASC files that contain all the data needed and I've opened them individually to check that they are creating the surface properly. My issue is, I can't seem to work out how to combine all the files in order to create one big surface... I can open one file using the "Create surface from dtm" and that works fine, but I'm unsure of how to import the other files. 

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Unless the file names are totally different any .asc files that I worked with were a group of files with one or two different file names. Ex Bob1.asc, bob2.asc.bobA. were all part of the BOB.asc and only used by different software. I always used the largest file of the group and it worked OK.

As for combing different asc files with different names you may have to create multiple surfaces then merge them together in Civil3D as one surface.