I'm curious, what is the best way to indicate street lighting/traffic signals in Civil 3D? Currently I'm using COGO points to represent the various types of work required (replace luminaire, install new pole, remove street light and foundation, &c.), however, using a symbol (and various user defined labels), does not fully help with visualizing street lighting/traffic signal pole foundation interferences with utilities, bridge structures, or even just for simple flythrough or export to lighting analysis software such as DIALux. Should I take the time to learn AutoCAD Utility Design (I'm a civil engineer, not an electrical engineer, just to be clear)? Can I utilized pipe network structures/pressure network structures for such planimetric roadway features? What solution have you come up with in Civil 3D for integrated street lighting/traffic signal plans and models?
John Mayo
That kinda sounds like what I thought. With multi-blocks one can model the below grade foundations as well as above grade poles and luminaires with attached ies files. The only problem I can see with that is the callouts. With COGO points, I can can create dynamic point labels to indicate pole style, arm length, luminaire type, &c. and have all of this info in a dynamic Civil 3D point table.
AutoLux doesn't appear to be free. DIALux is free, and can generate comprehensive design and analysis documentation. Yes, it's a double step process (export to fbx, import fbx into 3ds Max export to 3ds), but it is free.
The analysis doesn't concern me as much (any software will do) as the design information, the BIM within Civil 3D. Whereas I can add User Defined Properties to COGO points, how do I do that with blocks? How do I pull that embedded information from the object and display it in dynamic labels? It is this question that led me wonder if maybe modeling such roadway features as pipe network structures or pressure structures may be a solutions, as such structures can be represented as a 3D model, a 2D symbol, all with embedded data that can be labeled and agregated into a table. This is also why I was wondering about Utility design, if it has a better way to model and access such information.