topic Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope. in Civil 3D Forum

Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

sanetdikkumbura1950 — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 07:39:04 GMT

How to easily draw a horizontal line according to grade/slope in AutoCAD by adding a top view? Is there a command?

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

tcorey — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 14:39:26 GMT

Use _DrawFeatureLine command.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

sanetdikkumbura1950 — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 20:47:52 GMT

I want top-view line. not vertical.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

idoQEYMP — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:54:35 GMT

The easiest way really is to draw a polyline with ortho mode on; place the first vertex, then second vertex 1 unit up from the first vertex, then third vertex 2 units to the right, and then delete the second vertex so you're left with only the first and the last vertices. you can come up with many sophisticated ways like using transparent commands on a non exaggerated profile view, but really a polyline is just the simplest and fastest way I know.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

ChrisRS — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 21:46:40 GMT

I may not fully understand what you are looking to do.

I think by horizontal you want to draw in the top view.

(By definition, a horizontal line would have no slope)

If, while in top view, you want to draw a sloped line, I agree with @tcorey that a feature line works.

Watch the command line as you draw. you can specify the slope (2 for 2:1) or grade (50 for 50%) for each segment. You can draw multiple segments.
Explode feature lines twice to break the feature line into line segments if desired.

I hope this illustration helps.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

sanetdikkumbura1950 — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 01:46:56 GMT

@ChrisRS Thank you for your important explanation. But I need a drawing like a profile view.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

fcernst — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 02:43:32 GMT

Top View in Civil 3D is looking down and drawing on the XY plane..(Civil Engineering Convention) .. since you mention AutoCAD.. go to that Forum and discuss drawing what you want on the XZ and YZ planes with UCS.

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

ChrisRS — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 06:10:46 GMT

Try using relative coordinates.

Note spaces are included below for better visibility.

They are not allowed when typing in the relative coordinate.

Using Slope (2:1):

Click on point one then type @ 2, 1 to set point 2. This will give you a line that is 2 in the X direction and 1 in the Y direction.

You can scale or extend the line as needed.

Using Grade (50%)

Click on point one then type @ 1, 50/100 or @ 1, 0.0 to set point 2. This will give you a line that is 1 in the X direction and 0.5 in the Y direction.

Representing the percent as a fraction eliminates the very simple mental arithmetic.
You can scale or extend the unit line as needed.

I find the unit line more useful. You can create it from a slope using @ 1 , 1/2

This is silly for very simple slopes but useful when mental arithmetic is not obvious. 15:1 would be @ 1, 1/15

I am still not sure that this is what you want.

Good Luck!

Re: Drawing a horizontal line according to grade/slope.

teerawat.pSCHYQ — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 06:36:11 GMT

Hi @sanetdikkumbura1950 , if you already have one line in top view, and then if you would like to draw another top view line, you can using Grading tool to specify for the new line with several slope or % of grading, after that you can explode that feature grading line, then you will get a new line.

this is my understand that you would like to know, right?