Good Morning,
I am working with a rather large EG surface. Any drawing that it is in is very cumbersome to work in. Is there way to crop the surface to just the small work area I need while maintaining a dynamic link to the original EG surface? (ie. I don't want to have to create a second surface that I will have to open and update any time the original EG surface is changed)
Thanks,
Doesn't this work?
Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI
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Ideally we'd like to be able to create a DREF and apply a data clip boundary to it.I've explored that possibility when working with large DEM datasets. It can't be done. Your only option is to create a copy and edit the boundary or use the crop surface tool mentioned above. The surfaces won't be dynamic to changes in the original.
Neil, are you sure that the cropped surface isn't dynamic? According to the help file it seems like it should be.
When you create a surface by cropping the source surface, or when you rebuild the new surface, AutoCAD Civil 3D creates a copy from the saved version of the source surface. If you modify the source surface and want the changes to be reflected in the new surface, save the drawing containing the source surface before you rebuild the new surface.
Steve
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neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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Personally, I'd get your EG surface and paste it into a new surface called Clipped EG (or whatever), then add in a Dataclip boundary from an outline polyline. The key thing here is to then edit Surface Properties/Definitions and move the dataclip entry right to the top. This then doesn't bring in any data outside the boundary. Then make sure your original EG is always turned off. This definitely retains a dynamic link.
You could actually create a separate model for the above and datalink in the EG surface, then do the above so keeping the original EG data in a separate model entirely.
Another good way if you have a Lidar or large point number dataset is to use point clouds. I had a 316 million point cloud from an aerial survey and created surfaces for only the areas that I needed, using the level of detail toggle to get around half a million per area. This method isn't dynamic though as far as I can see.
Kevin
What I'm saying is that if I understand it correctly the cropped surface is equivalent to a data reference. You get a copy of a part of the source surface, which will be current to the last time the source file was saved.
Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate
So here is the issue I have with Crop Surface.
Say I have the Orginal EG and create a Clipped EG in a new drawing. Then data reference that Clipped EG into a production drawing. If the Orginal EG changes (say we get more detailed topo in a specific area that is incorparated) then I have to manually go into the Clipped EG surface drawing and update it before the data reference production drawing will update.
So... Original EG > Data Clip to new drawing > Clipped EG data reference to Production Drawing means the production drawing is not dynamic to the Original EG since the Clipped EG is not dynamic to Original EG.
I agree Neil. Paste EG into EG-Clipped in the same dwg with autorebuild left on. Dynamic all the way.
John Mayo
I found some time to do a little test and I don't think the create cropped surface function is what I am looking for. My reasoning below.
I will hopefully have time to test Kevins method (creating a new surface > edit > paste Orginal EG > add data clip to top of defintion) today at some point.
You're quite right, plus I hadn't quite described it properly!
It does work for me, but my original surface comes from a data linked model and is using a lidar .asc file as a definition. So I'm wondering whether the dataclip works in my case because it's a data file, but not in your case because its generated from polylines/features etc.
Sorry I can't be more help!
Kevin
I have attempted to apply data clips to DREFs of surfaces created from a points file. I have not been able to get it to clip. I don't think that is the answer.
The inability to apply clips to DREFs is partially discussed in this thread which also covers the Crop Surface tool.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-General/Create-Cropped-Surface-from-Dref/m-p/4637279/...