Complicated Setting-out problem - possibly complex Superhatch? coding?

[tyH5SCU]

I'm having intense headaches trying to work out a method to create a setting-out drawing for planting trees on a habitat site I'm working on. 

Background - I've been given simple autocad files with planting areas drew with polylines, a typical detail and an excel document. The task is to create a setting-out point labelled with the tree species for each tree in the planting schedule. 

There's a few rules to be followed, 

for example:

- the trees have to be planted in groups of 3-7 of the same species 

- trees have to be planted in staggered rows

- slow growing species have to be planted next to fast growing species, not grouped together. 

This is the main problem,  going further the area also has a border in which no canopy species can be planted only understory. slow growing species need a bark mulch layer 50cm around centre of tree. 

May best idea so far was to make 2 templates (one for internal and one for border) based off a 1000m2, making sure the trees were grouped in 3-7, staggered etc. I then created a block from this, used the super hatch command to fill the desired area, exploded the super hatch (so that the points could be uploaded onto GPS for setting-out) and used map trim to clean the area. I was then going to use the eattext command or similar to create a list of the plants in each row to aid the planting crew. so the engineer would set out the first and last point, and then pull a string line and the planters would work through the 'row list' with given spacings. 

This idea only worked when the spacings given on the typical detail (no obsolete and so not mentioned above) took precedent, the designer has now decided that the schedule takes priority, in other words I have to make sure that there's the exact number of trees/species on the schedule within the area, and because of the irregular shapes this can't be guaranteed. I'm no expert on CAD and am at the end of my knowledge. 

Can this be solved using Civil3d? 

Do I need to learn how to write some complicated Lisp or something, I don't know. I think that's the problem usually I'm happy to research the method but this is an 'unknown unknown' and therefore I have no idea where to start.

Template Example

 

 

attached an example of the schedule and an example of where I am at so far. 

look forward to hearing from you. 

T 

[ZaraBMCTN]

Civil3d is a drafting programme, this type of task is impossible.

Try upgrading to Revit 

Z

[tyH5SCU]

Okay thanks for feedback, 

I was thinking something would he possible using the vba module and a custom macro.

Please can you elaborate how this would be possible in revit? 

[chriscowgill7373]

It's almost like you need some sort of fill or something.  The tasks as described before are not utilizing Civil 3D to begin with, and could be handled in simple AutoCAD.  Landscaping I dont believe was something that is in the scope of either, and I dont know anything about Revit to confirm if that would be a better software. 

The problem is that to do anything with programming, you have to figure out the constants.  Programming cannot handle random, if it is random, you would be better off to do it by hand.  You may have to break things up into smaller areas so that a constant would work.  I would think your request would require something even more complex than a macro, vba, or Lisp, you're probably looking at C#.net, but even then, I dont know based on your description that there is enough constant to do a program.  There may be some third party addons/separate software out there that can do what you want.

[AllenJessup]

I've done similar things. But on a smaller scale. Just creating blocks and copying them around until it worked.

Figuring this out would take a very complicated program because of the irregular shapes. You Super Hatch idea seems to worked well given the limitations.

My question would be. If someone created a planting schedule with the exact number of trees. Wouldn't they have already have had to do the work. What program did they use? 

Oh for the days of the Softdesk Landscape Module.

[AllenJessup]

I don't know anything about this. But there is a free trial on the landscape plug-in.

https://apps.autodesk.com/ACD/en/Detail/Index?id=6976210933373122316&appLang=en&os=Win64