Is it possible to create a profile or section using a network surface?

[Anonymous]

Pertaining to the question..

I have in front of me a survey of a small section of road (it's only 10m x10m or something). I want to be able to create a profile along the road section to demonstrate the surface level changes. I have created a network surface but Civ3D doesn't seem to able to use this type of surface to create a profile. Is there anything I can do, perhaps a way of transforming the network surface into another type of surface? Or am I going to have to manually create this profile in ACAD!

[graf_p]

Forgive my ignorace, but what is a network surface?

[Anonymous]

"A network surface can be created between a network of curves or between the edges of other 3D surfaces or solids"

[AllenJessup]

No. That's not a Civil 3D object. You might be able to do something like this in reverse:

Convert a Civil 3D Tin Surface to AutoCAD Solid

If you can explode a copy of the network surface to get basic autocad entities like lines, Plines or 3D faces. You can create a Civil 3D Surface from them and do your profile and sections.

Allen Jessup

[neilyj666]

This post illustrates the confusion by having surfaces in AutoCAD and Civil 3D but which are two totally different incompatible objects

[Anonymous]

Hi Allen, Thanks.

Unfortunately my surface is made up of SPLINEs which I don't think I can use in Civil to create a surface. 

[Anonymous]

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@neilyj666 wrote:

This post illustrates the confusion by having surfaces in AutoCAD and Civil 3D but which are two totally different incompatible objects

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Agreed! I'm just beginning to realise that I should leave Civil 3D well alone until I find the time to go on a course! With either AutoCAD package Sectioning/Profiling ought to be really simple, but appears instead to be excessively complicated.

[AllenJessup]

Yes. Training is a top priority and you probably shouldn't try to use Civil 3D for production until them. However doing profiles and cross sections isn't that hard once you have a Civil 3D surface. That means you should create the surface with Civil 3D tools not AutoCAD tools.

You can draw a polyline that represents your alignment, create an Alignment from that. Then just tell the program what Alignment and Surface to use to create the Profile and Cross Sections. The real power is that they are all dynamic. If you change the Alignment of Surface the Profile and Sections will update automatically.

The HARD part is setting up styles for the Surface, Alignment, Profile and Sections so that they look like you want them to when they're created.

Allen