topic Re: Civils 3D Beginner in Civil 3D Forum

Civils 3D Beginner

ewFR43G — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:29:13 GMT

I want to create a cut and fill (earthworks) drawing using Civils 3D. I am a complete beginner with civils 3D but have experience with AutoCAD.

I have created the drawings but it hasn't really turned out how I was hoping. The topo I have is 2d and the contours had no elevation to them, I had to split the contours and add elevations to them. The DWG which had the proposed levels in had no contours in at all so I created my own using polylines.

The proccess I followed was

- spilt contour lines on topo and add elevations

- I made this into a surface by going to Toolspace > Prospector > right click surfaces > create surface. I then added the contours via Toolspace. Tin surface was then created.

- I then did the same for the proposed levels.

I now have two tin surfaces in my drawing, one of the problems I am having is the base of the topo and proposed levels are now on level 0 where as my contour lines are miles above.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please? I think i need a topo that already has the correct elevations on the contours on to start with? Do I have the correct file types or are standard AutoCAD files not right for this task?

I have attached the file for reference.

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

MMcCall402 — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:58:05 GMT

The polyline contours used to define the surfaces have elevations that don't seem right. The selected one in the sample below would have an expected elevation of 45 as it falls between a spot grade of 44.47 and 45.41, yet it has an elevation assigned to it of 44490.

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

neilyj666 — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:42:30 GMT

As a side note the product is CIVIL 3D not CIVILS 3D... but based on the reply from @MMcCall402 thee looks like a conversion mm to m issue here

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

Pointdump — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:17:37 GMT

Hi Enna,
Thanks for posting your drawing.
There's a little problem. The Foot Units used in the drawing are not compatible with EPSG:27700 Meter Units.
The spot elevation blocks would need to be assigned elevation from the nearest text in order to create a viable surface. Do-able, but difficult.
I see this as a do over. You can grab some nice 1-Meter DTM's from >>>Defra<<<.
Attached, check out this drawing and surface from cropped DTM.
Dave

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

ChicagoLooper — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:22:24 GMT

@ewFR43G wrote

<<....The topo I have is 2d and the contours had no elevation to them,....>>

Can you upload the 2D Topo? Even though the topo is 2d, it might be easy to redraw those 2D contours with elevations. Then use those new contours as the surface 'Definition' when creating your surface. I agree with @Pointdump. Your contours should be redrawn so the correct elevation can be given to them. Drawing it from scratch will be a lot easier than correcting bad contours.

Do you run the free program known as Google Earth Pro? Using GE Pro you can do this....which can help you visualize the ground surface prior to building your TIN. The program is free to download and highly intuitive to use.

Arley Dr.

GE Pro might NOT be survey grade but it's easy to use, doesn't bog down, and can easily display a surface profile and elevations by drawing a PATH. For the example above, the yellow path is super simple, it has two vertices, a beginning point and an end point. I could have easily drawn a path with 13 vertices and a zig-zagging route.

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

neilyj666 — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:35:35 GMT

From the drawing you posted I see you are in the UK so I would strongly suggest that you ensure you are using the British English version of Civil 3D as well as the UKIE Country Kit as this has a lot of preconfigured styles and UK specific content contained in a template that should be used for all new drawings.

You also have a grid difference surface (Surface 2) - I would recommend the Triangulation Volume surface as it is more accurate

The contours identified in the screenshot below cannot be contours as they all have different levels (albeit out by a factor of 1000 as mentioned previously)

Can you post the original drawing before you started work on it so we can see what the starting point is?

Can you request the triangular DTM from the originator for the existing and proposed? If there were contours in the starting drawing they will have been created from a TIN.

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

neilyj666 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 07:52:01 GMT

I would also suggest not mixing existing and proposed raw data in the same dwg—best practice is to have them in separate dwg files and then use data shortcuts although this is a very small site so may be ok in the same dwg

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

ewFR43G — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:24:53 GMT

Thanks for taking time to look at this! Please see attached topo.

I don't have Google Earth Pro but this is something I will look into downloading as it looks like a great tool! thank you

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

ewFR43G — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:39:31 GMT

Thanks Dave! I will check this out.

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

neilyj666 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:01:52 GMT

I INSERTED the topo into the UKIE template and there is a frozen layer (SS_3D) that contains all the 3d info required.

I built the surface from all the blocks named PT_PLUS and added all the 3D polylines as breaklines and the contours generated match with the supplied contour polylines (which aren't required but are useful for checking) - it's taken longer to write this reply than to create the surface...!!!!

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

ewFR43G — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:05:36 GMT

Amazing! Thank you so much!!

Re: Civils 3D Beginner

neilyj666 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:08:57 GMT

I would still encourage you to install the British English version of Civil as well as the UKIE Country Kit