topic Re: Pasting surfaces in Civil 3D Forum

Pasting surfaces

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:05:40 GMT

I am grading a site that has a semi-flat pad and an access road. I graded the pad by creating a feature line/site/grading group. The target surface was the existing ground. For the access road a created an alignment/profile/corridor. I wanted to create a "combined" surfaces by creating a new surface and pasting the pad and access road surfaces.

Here is what the two separate surfaces look like without any type of combining:

First I pasted the access road in as the first surface, then pasted the pad surface. Unfortunately that did not work correctly. See below

Then I tried pasting the pad surface first then the road surface, still no success, see below:

Any thoughts on how to get this done correctly would be appreciated.

Re: Pasting surfaces

chriscowgill7373 — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:17:16 GMT

It sounds like you are trying to get the two surfaces to blend. That isnt really what pasting surfaces is for. when you paste a surface, it literally pastes one over the other, wherever the bounds are, that is what takes precedence. If you need to blend them, you need to do a little more work with it, either using the road and telling it to tie to the pad surface over the pad and over existing grade over existing grade or by some other manual means.

We utilize a series of target, sub and intermediate surfaces to achieve our blending. in your case, you might want to create a surface, paste existing then the pad. then when you run your corridor, blend to the new intermediate surface (existing plus pad) then your contours will look the way you intend and then you can create a final overall that has the pad pasted, then the road.

Re: Pasting surfaces

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:20:12 GMT

It seems in your situation, you need to split the corridor region (Right click on the corridor. Region - Split Region) Split it at where the two daylights are intersecting.

Change the daylight target for the new Region to your pad grading.

This way the daylight will no be overlapping.

Hope that helps,

Re: Pasting surfaces

MMcCall402 — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:24:57 GMT

Make a new surface, paste in the existing surface and then paste in the pad surface. Use this surface as the target for the corridor. This surface is just for design purposes so it can be given a style with no display.

For the final design surface, make a new surface, paste in the pad surface and then the corridor surface.

Re: Pasting surfaces

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:28:58 GMT

If I paste the pad and the existing surfaces together will this affect my earthwork calculations? The site is pretty well balanced but there will still be some tweaking that needs done. I was planning on using the combined surface to generate a volume surface, then raise and lower the combined surface as needed to achieve balance.

Re: Pasting surfaces

chriscowgill7373 — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:34:57 GMT

This would be a separate surface and it shouldnt affect anything you would use for your calculations. you are just doing this so you can blend your corridor in (at least in the workflow I posted)

Re: Pasting surfaces

MMcCall402 — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 22:28:57 GMT

Think of it as a sequential modular approach to building the final surface.

Existing surface "A" and Pad surface "B" are pasted into surface "C". Surfaces A and B as still intact with no change. Surface C is a composite surface made from the definitions of A and B. They're pasted into C in a particular order such that the information in the area of surface B will override that of surface A. The process also makes surface C change dynamically with any change to surface A of B. This surface C provides a single surface target needed by the corridor so it can make the transition from matching the existing surface on to matching the pad surface. The corridor can produce its own surface, "D", which is dynamic to its own changes and to any change in surface C. Now you can make a composite design surface by pasting B, the pad surface, into a new surface, "E", and then pasting in surface D, from the corridor. A total earthwork quantity could be derived from comparing surface A to surface E.