& Construction

Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing

Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
When I do topo I have a "TC=/BC=" text and I drag each Top of Curb and each Bottom of curb point to right after the "=" sign. Is there a way to have Civil 3D automatically label all TC/BC shots like that? Some are also TDC/BDC for Drop Curbs. Same with Walls: TW/BW or I have TW/BW(high side)/BW(low side).
But would also need to EXLUCDE some points for clarity/readability.
Shown below.
Are those COGO Points you're labeling? You can accomplish your goal using Expressions. If the BDC comes from a surface elevation, the TDC could come from an expression that adds some number to BDC. Expressions can then be used as part of the the Label Style, as text components.
Currently C3d has no way to have a point label read more than on point in a point label. You could use a generic note referencing two or three or more points and having to select all the appropriate points each time you place or copy a label.
You can go Tim's route plus use User-Defined Property Classification to allow variable addition/subtractions since not all walls/curbs will be the same height. These values would be entered manually or can be done as part of point shots imported from point/text file.
We use a Note label style with two Reference text components for two Point objects. Placing the label takes 3 clicks. One to place the label and one for each point.
I use a feature line on a non-plotting layer and a single line label on a plottable layer. The label reports start and end elevations.
The feature lines can be updated automatically from a surface ref if elevations only change. They can be dragged to TIN triangles if horizontal geometry changes. They can be copied from dwg to dwg IF you select all lines first, labels second and then copy.
John Mayo
My general thought on this subject are fairly simple. You have 4" 6" & 8" curb profiles, which are pretty standard nationally, shot the Flowline (BC) of the curb and create a expression to add the nominal value of the profile for your particular curb at the site which gives a TC elevation. At the end of the day the PE only care about the flowline, and what the elevation is from Point A to Point B to make a determination of slope for the hydraulic calculations. When water is running at or above TC there's other issues altogether. As far as the Drop goes there's only 1 elevation the flowline, there basically the same, to call them different over a half inch is like building a rocket ship to Mars.
Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
We shoot both TC & FL (or bottom of curb) and use a lisp function that searches for cogo points on certain layers and when it finds a TC and Fl within a horizontal foot from each other it places an mleader flag with the elevation values at the FL point. Typically the flag is placed at @ 45 degree angle from the featureline, is annotative and very flexible especially compared to almost any civil 3d label style. We do the same for walls; ground shot at wall and top of wall. For me, there are so many hassles and aggravations using and manipulating civil label styles for elevations. They sort want to be easy to manipulate but are a complete and frustrating waste of time for us compared to the ease of use with multileaders. If elevations/datums have to change, I can update my flags in a couple minutes.
To Rick Jackson: We got burned on time when we doing an as-built on a new parking lot and had the crew measure a few top of curb to flowline (bottom of curb) elevs, they checked a few spots and got a 6" average height. Comes time to do some construction a few months later, turns out all the curbs were not the same and the contractor measured from the top of some curbs to derive some additional proposed landings etc, and the bottom line is we had to eat some survey crew time (about 2 days) to go and re-shoot a bunch of stuff to get it fixed. To us there is no standard curb height; we now shoot it all.
Since existing conditions vary a 3rd party app may be needed or get the TC entered in a UDP to label the difference . Some Excel wrangling can get that done
Joe Bouza
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
To build on jmayo-EE's solution... Maybe you can do even automate it with survey figures? TC description can be CURB B, BC description can be CURB E. Assign a pre-configured TC/BC figure label style that labels start/end elevations.
Have description key set assign TC/BC as full descriptions, assign a no-display marker style to one of them, and assign no-display label style to both (because figure line will be used for labelling).
Yes that is correct.
When you have it setup, you should be able to simply import the points into your survey db, select the figure lines you want to label (likely select all the BC-TC ones except the exclusions), then apply the BC-TC style figure label to them.
It would basically be reduced to a 1-2min process for the whole site.
I wish I could label my field shots like this:
This wouldn't be automatic, but I would create a surface, then add surface spot labels that require two clicks to get elevations - one to the node of each curb shot. The advantage to being a manual labeling operation is that you could add the labels only where you wanted, and also put them on a layer other than the points.
No, these are shots taken in the field. So they have completely varying heights. 4" 4 1/2" 5 3/4" 6 1/8"
Thanks again jae,
How does the survey figure get drawn from the BC to TC?
Is that something I do through description codes?
We shoot BC or flowline (as FL.100 B) and create the survey figure from that. The TC doesn't get a line number
To get survey figures you must use the survey database (Survey Tab), this basically has the field crew code the data in a way that C3D draws the curb, centerline, concrete pad or whatever you deem appropriate to draw. This would be a somewhat long topic to explain but F2F or Field to Finish is what I would call common practice. You can start hear, have questions ask, that's why we are hear.
Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
Hey Rick
I'm very familiar with the data base, and description keys and all the rest of it. But thanks for the link.
How to buy
Privacy | Do not sell or share my personal information | Cookie preferences | Report noncompliance | Terms of use | Legal | © 2025 Autodesk Inc. All rights reserved
Type a product name