connection of a geolocated surfaces

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Hi everyone, I'm a civil engineer student at the university of Padua. Currently I'm developing a master dissertation regarding interoperability, Open-BIM etc.

I ran into a problem: I have 3 Civil 3D files, one with the EG surface, one with roads surfaces and the last one with railways surfaces ( i did on purpose to create different files to simulate a "real" workflow). All three files are located using the command: geographic location - from map. My goal is to insert the two surfaces (roads and railways) in the toposurface file (EG) obviously by not changing their position. So i create a link data but when i try to insert them the surface are in another place different from where they should be. I also placed the UCS in the same point but nothing change. Did someone have the same problem ? Could you help me find the solution ? 

Thank you very much for your time, 

Best regards 

Cristiano Zuccarello

[Jeew-m]

Did you check the units of each file?

Are they the same or different.?

[cristiano.zuccarello]

yes the card settings are the same

[tcorey]

I think you may have missed a step. You need to assign a coordinate system to each drawing, using EDITDRAWINGSETTINGS command, Units and Zone tab. 

[Pointdump]

Hi Cristiano,
Let's see what you've got. Please post your drawings.
Dave

[ChicagoLooper]

All 3 sites must be drawn in their correct geospatial location so they can be pasted accurately. If your pasted surfaces are not appearing in the right location then you haven't drawn them in the correct spot. You can verify whether your surfaces are accurate by turning on Bing Maps.

The geolocation tool can be tricky. Assign a coordinate system without using the geolocation tool, it's easy.

1. Using a brand new, clean drawing, assign the appropriate coordinate system to modelspace. Use MAPCSASSIGN command to search for and 'assign' your CS. See image-1.
2. Turn on Bing Hybrid map. Go to Geolocation Tab=>Online Map Panel=>Map Icon=>Select Bing Map Hybrid from dropdown. See mage-2.
3. Next, use your mouse wheel to zoom-out unitl you can see the RED Geomarker.....Then zoom-in on the geomarker. Use Bing aerial imagery and the map labels in Bing to navigate to your site.

If your surface is not consistent with Bing Hybrid you won't be able to paste the surfaces accurately. See image-3.

Image-1

Image-2

Image-3

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear tcorey, 

thank you for your reply, unfortunatly the drawing setting are the first things that I have done. 

attached you can see the drawing setting that every files have (sorry but they are in italian) 

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear Pointdump,

I'm going to attached two files : Roads DMP and Roads RTP in the first one you can see the EG plus part of the DMP (doraleh mutipurpose port) roads and of course profile and assembly used ( i'm really sorry about them 🙂 ) in the second one you will see the RTP (railways project) roads. both of them are based from a autocad file (masterplan).

I'm sorry again for my confusion I am a beginner of this program. 

thank you very much.

I hope you could help me. 

Best regards 

Cristiano 

[Pointdump]

Cristiano,
Thanks for posting your drawings.
Neither drawing uses coordinates within the range of Adindan.UTM-38N. Using the GeoLocation Command to shift your drawings won't work.
Can you post the Master Plan drawing?
If you use GEOREMOVE Command on both drawings, then XREF them into a new Metric Template, you'll see that coordinates for both are wildly different.
As to how to fix things up, I'm not sure. You have a lot of Surfaces and Corridors in need of repair. Honestly, I'd start over. Probably not what you want to hear.
Dave

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear Chicagolooper,
thank u very much for your reply. I have already done it. But when i create a data shortcuts and then a reference of one of the surface, the software automatically past it surface in a different place.
something that i notice and that could help find the solution ( at least i think) is regarding the property settings of the surface--> general --> minimum coordinates etc ( thery have a certain number)

but when I move the cursor over the surface itself in the bottom tab there are other values that are completely different.

And when i create reference in another file, the surface is placed taking in cosideration the first coordinates.

I thought that if I moved the UCS or the geolocation point the minimum and maximum coordinates value would change, but it's not. (sorry for my english ) 

I hope you understand what i'd like to say.

Best regards 

Cristiano 

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear Dave, 

thank you very much for your honest reply.

I attached the file used from autocad, I checked and  found that the coordinates are completely wrong. i was wondering there is not the possibility (knowing the coordinates of a precise point) to move the surface ? 

Cristiano 

[ChicagoLooper]

Ciao @cristiano.zuccarello 

You have not established the geolocation correctly and this causes insertion errors when you xref. Your reference point  at the DMP is located at Lat/Long 11.601817 and 43.074142 with projected x,y coordinates at 289906.410595, 1283030.094505 (Adindan.UTM-38N EPSG 20138). 

If you properly assign Adindan.UTM-38N to a drawing, you'll see the individual ref point has BOTH the correct Lat/Long AND the correct x,y for the same point. In your drawing, however, you have accurate Lat/Long and an inaccurate x,y located at 0,0 and that means your linework won't xref, paste or insert correctly. Your non-matching Lat/Long and x,y's are due to the procedure you used when assigning your drawing's coordinate system.

Although your Lat/Long is accurate your drawing doesn't have same X,Y as shown here.

The GEOGRAPHICLOCATION command is popular and frequently used but it can give bad results when used improperly. It's tricky to use.  

Your existing surface uses topographic contours (Topography layer) as the definition. I suspect those contours have a projection you can use to geolocate your surface. To make your drawing right you'll need to go back to the source contours and analyze the projection so you can rebuild it in the correct spot rather than at a arbitrary location. Can you upload those contours?

Yes, I could easily reproject your contours, rebuild the surface then upload it, but as a matter of principle, I won't.

[Pointdump]

Cristiano,
Disegno2(1).dwg has high negative coordinates. While you can move things to their "right" place, Scale and Rotation are unknown. I don't know any easy way to fix your drawings.

Dave

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear Dave,

I would like to understand the problem well. knowing that the drawing is already oriented north on a scale of 1: 1 in meters and that more or less the right angle of the drawing has longitude 11 and latitude 43, I cannot simply move the drawing by referring to the right corner and typing the coordinate value? is there a difference between autocad X Y coordinates and longitude and latitude?

sorry again for my ignorance

thank you very much for your time 

[cristiano.zuccarello · Accepted solution]

Dear  @ChicagoLooper 
so i should move the drawing making lon lat coincide with XY coordinates, is this right?
the thing I don't understand is why when I geolocalize a drawing, this is not done automatically?

here attached you can see an autocad file with  topography and master plan  in the right spot (but is not the same used as civil3d file) 

[cristiano.zuccarello]

Dear @ChicagoLooper ,

i was wondering after rebuilding the surface, how do I move all the other surfaces?

best regards 

[Pointdump]

Cristiano,
"is there a difference between autocad X Y coordinates and longitude and latitude?"
At risk of simplifying things too far, yes. When you are drawing in a Projected Coordinate System you always need to keep in mind Grid Scale and Elevation Scale, sometimes referred to as the Grid to Ground problem. Also a consideration is Map Convergence. Astronomic North is always different than AutoCAD top-of-page grid north.
In what drawing did you design your surfaces and corridors? Where did you get your contours?
Dave

[MikeEvansUK]

Theorising, as you are not working in the real world perhaps you can adopt the BAS option.

BAS stands for Bodge it & Scarper, we obviously wouldn't use such things in the real world but you could add text in the report describing any mistake and corrections.

To correct, I would start a new file using the correct unit template. Set up the correct coordinate system (if not already) in the civil3d toolspace then turn on the bing mapping.

Attach the files DWG's for the data as xrefs possibly specifying the insertion manually then use the move command to align as close as possible by eye - unless you can add a known coordination Cube in each?

Once they are about right, bind the xrefs and explode. Any surface definition will include a transform edit in its definition. Remove this from each surface and they should all be in the same place.

Once sorted if you needed to you can save the file 3 times, delete each unwanted file and try the original workflow again.

Mike

[MikeEvansUK]

I love these images, I always wondered how the GPS to plane grid scaling worked.

[ChicagoLooper]

Hello @cristiano.zuccarello 

Thank you for uploading your contours.

Unfortunately  the contours are NOT referenced against a known coordinate system. It looks like the topographic reference was abandoned or deleted and that’s not good. As it is now, there’s no easy way to georeferenced your drawings. If it were me, I would start over because the drawings don’t look like there’s a lot to recreate. You can move the topo contours and recreate the existing surface.  

If you’re up to it, you can do this to establish the correct geolocation for your site.

1. Open a clean metric template and setup the UNITS so you can view high precision lat/longs. See image-1.
2. Use MAPCSASSIGN to assign Adindan.UTM-38N as your coordinate system. See image-2.
3. Insert a geomarker. Go to Geolocation Tab=>Online Map Panel=>Mark Position dropdown menu=>Lat-Long option. See image-3.
4. On command line input Latitude=>ENTER, Input Longitude=>ENTER. Go to your flashing cursor in modelspace and enter DMP=>Click away from your cursor to end the geomarker command. See image-4.
5. In modelspace, select your geomarker=>Properties Palette=>Geometry section=>Size=>change to 100. See image-5.
6. Bing Aerial imagery. Go to Geolocation Tab=>Online Map panel=>Map Off=>change to Map Hybrid. See image-6

Image-1

Image-2

Image-3

Image-4

Image-5

Image-6

The x- and y-values in the new drawing are now consistent with the assigned coordinate system. If you want to do it right, and I think you do, you can rebuild your EG surface in this new drawing. You may, or may not, need to recreate your design surface FG too. You can cut-move-and-paste your non-civil entities to the drawing, it’s your un-georeferenced surfaces that will give you problems.

Although the steps above use a geomarker to quickly and easily zoom-in on the site, you don’t necessarily have to use one. It can be easily accomplished in a brand-new drawing by assigning a coordinate system and turning on Map Hybrid which will allow you to zoom and pan to your site using the map labels as a guide. The geomarker is only used to navigate to your site quickly and accurately.

To determine the Lat/Long, you can download the free program named >>Google Earth Pro<<.