topic Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations in Civil 3D Forum

Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 19:45:17 GMT

Just made the leap from ACAD 2007 to civil 3d for site grading projects. Used to run lisp routines that could insert grade between two elevation points or elevation points at a selected distance from an existing elevation point and at a user defined grade. This was fairly straight forward to use to set elevations around parking lots, foundation walls, etc and annotate the grades.

In civil 3d, it appears this is meant to be done using feature lines, which can be annotated and updated almost automatically. The problem I am having is split elevation points messing up an otherwise clean annotation.

Imagine a simple site containing a square parking lot with standard 6" (height and thickness) concrete curbs. I can use feature lines to represent both inner and outer curb lines, but lets say I only do the inner curb line and set up annotations to show the elevation at each vertex and the grade in between (end elevations from each line segment set to overlap so that only one number is apparent). Now say I want to add a catch basin in the middle of the parking lot and show the slope from each corner of the parking lot and each (bottom of) curb midspan to the top of grate elevation. Is there another way to do this than with feature lines? Using featurelines adds a split elevation point to each curb midspan which disturbs the previously clean annotation of endpoint elevations and slopes. Now it annotates the split point elevation too, which is unnecessary and clutters up the drawing.

Is there a setting or workaround where I can add a featureline that imports the elevation for one of its end from another feature line it is abutting without affecting the first featureline or its annotation properties?

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

Joe-Bouza — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 20:24:52 GMT

I like you ambition. I would avoid split points at all cost and connect to a pvi.

My self I would not have feature line in my deliverable drawing. I use the FL to create a surface and annotate the plan with surface labels for slope and spot elevations. I know the approach you are taking is one stop shopping but I'd be very careful. As the saying goes ...A feature line can corrupt a drawing jus by looking at it...

I use you approach in a design file so I know what I'm doing but keep the FL as far away from the deliverable as I can.

Now if you are the only one handling the files - thats a different story, but I'd still be wary.

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

jmayo-EE — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 20:41:42 GMT

"A feature line can corrupt a drawing jus by looking at it..."

Never heard that one. 🙂

Flines have been very stable for me since the begining and has long been my prefered grading method for site work. Since 06 (my first project using C3D 07) I have had corrupt flines less than a handful of times. Now if you are attaching gradings to the flines then that's a completely different story. 😮

As for the OP, I do what Joe does and avoid Split Points at all costs. Add PI's or elevation points prior to labels.

Adding PI's, elevation and split points will move all labels unless they are dragged and pinned. In this case all the leaders will move but the text stays put.

In some cases it is easier to recreate the labels after adding geometry points to feature lines.

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 20:47:00 GMT

Thanks for the response Joe.

To clarify a bit further, I am the only person who handles the grading files and probably will be for the forseeable future. We are a small rural firm, our niche market is smaller projects and we probably won't change that too soon. This is partially the reason I was going with ACAD 2007 and lisp routines for so long, it was good enough for most of what I was doing.

As for having them in my deliverable, I plan to just turn off the FL's layer while keeping the annotation layer on. Is that what you meant by keeping them out of the deliverable?

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

jmayo-EE — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 20:56:48 GMT

You will need to set the fline layer to no plot. If you turn off, freeze or VPFreeze a fline (any C3D object) layer the labels will disapear on the first regen.

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

Joe-Bouza — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:46:38 GMT

Eric Chapels Island in asphalt

Re: Site Grading - intersecting featurelines without breaking up annotations

Joe-Bouza — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:48:45 GMT

Mostly concerned with an inadvertent / ignorant deletion/ modification of the fl