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Best Workflow for Grading Lots

m_kingdon
Advisor

Best Workflow for Grading Lots

m_kingdon
Advisor
Advisor

Hi all, during lockdown I am trying out some new workflows.  My goal is to become proficient in grading lots and create a surface that ties in with a road corridor.

 

In my test drawing I have:

  • Parcels of lots and ROW, generated using various parcel tools including slidelines and swinglines.
  • Road and adjacent footways surface generated using a corridor.
  • Building pads generated by feature lines and grading.

All was going well until I tried to grade the rest of the lots (outside the building pads).  My issues started when I tried to assign elevations to the parcel segments.  The drawing became unreliable and frequently crashed.  My parcels segments lost their shapes (in particualr the swinglines went a bit crazy).

 

My question is: what is everyone's preferred workflow when it comes to grading?

 

Some ideas I was going to try out: 

  • Keep parcels 2D only, draw feature lines on top of the parcel segments and use them for grading
  • Extract feature line from corridor and use grading tools to reach back of lot
  • Extend the roading Corridor using a generic LotGrade link to and target a feature line at the back of the lots

 

grading.PNG

Mike Kingdon
Civil 3D Zealot

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Joe-Bouza
Mentor
Mentor

Parcels and corridor and feature lines in the same file šŸ˜® ... Iwould avoid doing that.

 

May I suggest the following that has worked well for me and has been quite stable.

Build the corridor and surface in a dedicated file.

incorporating Feature lines as base lines in <None> site.

1. build the road corridor

2. create a null assembly with a MarkPoint on it 

3. turn the building foot prints into FL <none> site set elevation

4. add to corridor as baseline assign null assembly

5. do similar for lot line

trick it to add the mark point feature line to the corridor surface definition.

6 interior lot feature lines can either beadded to the corridor surface directly or handled as the buildings and lot line.

 

I never played with the lot grade subassemblies . if they can work in lieu of the lot FL great

 

Joe Bouza
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Anonymous
Not applicable

I just created a residential lot grading tool with @redtransitconsultants . Here is a quick video on how it works. It's pretty legit, especially for large scale residential lot grading where the clients grading requirements are standardized.



It will also add surface labels for all of your Pad Elevations, Lot Lines and Pad Reveals! It can label the base file or external sheet files so it should accommodate multiple company-specific work flows.

One of my testers graded and labeled a 508 lot subdivision in less than a day. We're pretty stoked on how it turned out!

To answer your question we often place corridors, lot grading feature lines, and surfaces in one file. However, If you want to split the corridor off into another file it wouldn't hurt. 

The most valuable and timesaving advice I can give you is to prep your lot line polylines using MAPCLEAN, so that all of the rear lot lines (which will soon be converted to feature lines) will have a PI at every point a side lot line intersects it.  Then use the create feature line from objects command and set all feature lines relative 0.0' to the corridor surface. Understandably you will get a warning that says many of the feature line PI's were not on the corridor surface. However, every feature line touching the corridor surface (our corridors are graded to the Right of Way which is where the lot line ends) will remain linked to a 0.0' above/below the corridor surface.

Message me or email support@redtransitconsultants.com if you are interested in being a beta tester for our lot grading tool.


m_kingdon
Advisor
Advisor

I have followed your steps and I think I got it to work.  However I have to turn off "corridor extents as outer boundary" otherwise there is no change to the surface.  Is this normal?

Mike Kingdon
Civil 3D Zealot

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Anonymous
Not applicable

When it comes to compiling the final finished grade surface. You should leave your corridor surface as is. 

Paste the Corridor Surface into an FG Surface. Then add your lot lines and pad feature lines to your FG. 

Depending on the geometry and complexity of the site, you may find it helpful to create a "Intermediate" surface where you paste the lot line and pad feature lines. And then a Finished Grade (FG) surface, where the Intermediate surface is pasted into, and it only has a boundary in it. This is done so you don't have to keep moving the boundary to the bottom of the surface build order list.


 

  • Corridor Surface 
  • Intermediate Surface 
    • Paste Corridor Surface(s)
    • Lot Lines, Pads, ADA ramps feature lines
  • FG (Boundary, Surface Smooth)
    • Paste Intermediate Surface
    • Boundary(s)
    • Surface Smooth(s)

Does that make sense?

lynn_zhang
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hello @m_kingdon ,

Just checking to see if your problem has been solved. Did the response from @Anonymous help answer your question? If yes, please click on the "Accept as Solution" button in his reply so this helps other users in the community find the solution too. Thanks!





Lynn Zhang
Community Manager


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Joe-Bouza
Mentor
Mentor

I usually, if for only temporary purposed use the over all property boundary as a "limit of grading"; turn it into an alignment >> surface profile EG and apply the similar assembly as a pad

Joe Bouza
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Anonymous
Not applicable

Great reply Joe.

 

Would you explain to me why it is so important for your workflow that the feature lines be siteless?

I use feature lines on a grading site so that when they intersect at a point they have to have the same elevation at that point.  This doesn't always work seamlessly, due to o snap not always picking up the elevated elevation and often times if I'm not careful to pick the osnap at the grade elevation instead of zero.  Just curious, no criticism here, never considered trying it with siteless feature lines.

 

Thanks for your input.

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Anonymous
Not applicable

I'd also like to add that when using a polyline as a boundary for a corridor where lot lines will be graded using feature lines. That using the MAPCLEAN command to add a vertice on the boundary of the corridor surface where the feature lines will be attached to greatly increases the change your feature be located over the corridor surface. Another trick is to add a frequency line at each lot line, especially in portions of your corridor on a radius.

Here is a snippet of my lot grading workflow how-to guide I made. The "tool" it mentions is the Lot Grading App I mentioned above. 

lot grading step.gif

Anonymous
Not applicable

My only advice on feature line sites is to ensure your alignments aren't on the same site as your feature line site(s). It will jack your surface up.

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Joe-Bouza
Mentor
Mentor

They may have overcome the issue in later versions but in 2017 and 2018 sited feature lines have an ugly habit if vanishing leaving the corridor unworkable.

 

by trial and error I discovers that leaving them siteless is very stable

Joe Bouza
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Anonymous
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@Joe-Bouza I've seen this instability you're talking about. I'm not sure I ever thought to try siteless feature lines! Great tip. We're in 2019.3 right now and things have generally stabilized. I'll let you know if I come across that. 

Joe-Bouza
Mentor
Mentor

Thanks. it would help some. 

Joe Bouza
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m_kingdon
Advisor
Advisor

there is some great knowledge in this post.  Work commitments require me to draw a playground today.  I will try all these workflows tonight when I get a moment.

Mike Kingdon
Civil 3D Zealot

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Anonymous
Not applicable

@m_kingdon  

Here is a workflow document I created. I think pages 1-8 will certainly apply everyone trying to execute residential grading in Civil 3D. The remaining pages are more focused on the lot grading app. I hope this helps.

Joe-Bouza
Mentor
Mentor

Hello Daniel

 

To be clear, this is ONLY for feature lines as a base line in a corridor.

Joe Bouza
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tony1978
Collaborator
Collaborator

If you want a better and easier way to perform lot grading with set parameters, check out the CCLS Lot Grading app.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNcvtWFET5k&t=9s. It grades, spot grades, and more. 

 Tony Carcamo


President/Owner


Civil CAD Learning Solutions


DFW BIM Infrastructure User Group


LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | DFWBIUG |User Group




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hawstom
Advocate
Advocate

What we did for pads is

  1. Create standard pad feature lines: left and right draining versions of a standard lot as a single feature line that includes the pad and 6 or 8 lot elevations relative to the pad.
  2. Place a 2D pad location block on each lot.
  3. Use a lisp tool to copy the pad feature lines to the 2D pad location blocks.
  4. Grade the streets using corridors.
  5. Use a lisp tool to pick the top of curb elevations and pad feature lines in a row along a street and automatically elevate the pad following the constraints given to the lisp tool.

What we did for back lot lines is

  1. Use a lisp tool to pick the controlling pads, the target feature line, and the points to adjust automatically following the constraints given to the lisp tool.
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