Gravel Pit Grading

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am working on a project where I have to show a post mining profile view of a site for permitting purposes. I have been playing around with grading with feature lines to try to represent what our gravel pits look like after mining. I have attached a file and in that you will see a bunch of feature lines that I have set elevations for. The first feature line is set at 225 and the others are set at 200. My problem is with all the little peaks that I am getting in the grading. Basically our pits have 2:1 or less on the slopes and flat bottoms. They eventually fill up with water and turn into lakes. Does anyone have any suggestions to how to get the high spots to go away that's around the center of the pit and just make that a flat bottom?

Thanks in advance!

[jeff_rivers]

Your featurelines have zero elevation PIs where they cross your alignment.  

See how in the first image below, the first PI is grey with a little plus sign? That's the visual cue that that PI crosses another featureline, and so that PI is locked. 

Move your featurelines to a new site, keep the alignment in Site 1.  

The last screenshot is the ObjectViewer view, orbited slightly for a perspective view.  This is a handy tool for troubleshooting things at different (and at incorrect) elevations.  

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response. I'll put the feature lines in a new site. Looking at the object viewer screenshot I have places throughout the pit where there are triangles that come up to a peak. Is there a way to fix that?

[wfberry]

Just remember, if you have a peak as shown, something is causing it.  Perhaps a wayword point, just remove it.   Zoom in close to your peak and determine what is causing it.  If need be, thaw all layers, turn all layers on to check.

Bill

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I'll see what I can find.

[wfberry]

You need to change your method after further review.  You need to make a separate surface with your feature lines.

Currently you have 5 FLs all at the same elevation.  (200) and one at EL. 225.

Apparently you used the FLs in your current DEM surface.  You will not be able to remove these points that are causing those peaks.

Make a new surface and paste into the existing.

Bill

[jroot]

The points where the elev is zero should not be locked, that's just where they cross the alignment (not another FL).

You should be able to set these to you 200 or 225 elev's and the peaks should go away.

[jeff_rivers · Accepted solution]

Agreed.  You have just one working surface in your drawing, and it's huge, with nearly 180,000 points.  That makes working in the drawing slow and awkward. 

Make a new surface (or use the empty Surface1 that already exists) and add your breaklines to that surface to make the pit.  Next make a new empty surface, which will become your final combined surface.  Paste in the Hamilton surface, then paste in the proposed pit surface.  

As for the points, change your Surface Style to include points in both Plan and Model views (there are separate tabs for each in the style editor).   With points visible, use the Toolspace, Prospector tab, and expand the tree for Surface -> Definition -> Edits, and select Delete Point.  Then click on and delete those points at the tips of the peaks.

Here are before/after screenshots showing one point before and after its deletion.  I used 3DORBIT to get a perspective view so the peaks & their points are easier to see (this is where the Model component of the surface style composer is important.  A style can have different settings for Plan view (top down) and Model view (which can be from an isometric perspective).  So I took the extra step of changing the Model view surface style to include the points, triangles, and border, so that I could find the points at the tips of the peaks in this perspective view).  

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help with this guys. I'm going back and re-drawing  and creating new surfaces and sites and am going to try to do the stuff you guys have showed me.

[jeff_rivers]

Glad we could help.  

Jeff Bartels has some great videos on his blog (Civil Immersion).  For surface editing, one of his videos shows how he creates three two Modelspace views of his surface in order to see what the edits are doing in real time.  Two views are One view is plan view (top down), the third other view is a perspective view.  Each view has a different visual style, to show only what is needed for that view to make sense.  

Here's his video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m2zHHDejZA

As he edits his surface and edits his featurelines, the perspective view shows the 3D model updating instantly.  That's the power of C3D- you are editing a 3D model, so be sure to take advantage of that.  Don't limit yourself to only working and viewing your model in 2D.

(Edited 9:07 PST)