Grading with existing contours as feature lines

[Anonymous]

Does anybody know how to grade with existing contours as feature lines. I made them all feature lines and added them to a surface but still am having trouble getting it to grade.  The dwg is linked if anyone has any ideas. 

[Udo_Huebner]

My first hint: NEVER freeze layer 0

My second hint: Use a Civil template like "_Autodesk Civil 3D (Metric) NCS.dwt" currently your AutoCAD Units are in "Feet" and Civil Units are in "Meter"

[Pointdump]

Hi Abigail,
Normally Feature Lines are added to a Surface as Breaklines and Polylines are added as Contours.
I used Command -DWGUNITS ("no" to scale objects in drawing) to change your Metric drawing to Feet and UNITS to change to US Survey Feet. Then your horizontal linework lines up pretty good with Bing Live Maps. But your Surface remains in Meters. I don't know what to do about that.
Dave

[Joe-Bouza]

What does getting it to grade mean?

i see @Udo_Huebner  & @Pointdump  commented on you drawing units, but we should get clear that traditionally we grade to EG as a target. If you are trying to modify eg to what you want a finish grade to be you’ll want to consider changing direction 

target eg with grading tools and create FG surface. You can make a separate composite surface and paste EG&FG together if you desire a single end product- graded