How do I use parcels in other models?

[Anonymous]

Firstly I'll start by saying that I'm new to parcels. It's one part of C3D I have in the past just not had a need for.

To give you a quick breakdown of my situation. I have a rather long project. The volumes are to be broken down into many specific areas and reported as such. Many of these boundaries butt up against each other at a field boundary or something. The surveys from site do not take the boundaries into consideration, they are surveyed as the work is completed in that area. The physical boundaries do not even exist once site clearance has taken place. I need to break down these volumes for the completed cut/fill works and report them for each area. Doing this using volumes dashboard and bounded volumes is fine for a couple of boundaries. but when I have hundreds of surveys across many different models (can't have them in one model due to unmanageable drawing sizes) and many different boundaries, suddenly the volumes dashboard and manually attaching each boundary to each volume TIN is not really feasible. Or at least not desirable!

Someone mentioned that I may be able to achieve the same using parcels. Can someone please explain how this would work. If I have say 50 volume TINs in each of 6 drawing files. These volume TINs are data referenced from the original 300 or so files of survey data. Can I setup a model with only the parcels and then use them across multiple drawings or do I need to copy them into each (the boundaries wont be changing)? I notice that parcels cannot be data referenced. How do I report the volumes of the volume TINs for each parcel? Do I need to go back and change something in each of the 300 or so survey files to enable it all to work? There will also be new files and volume TINs added as I go.

I am aware that I will need to create a new excel template to pull and combine the relevant data from the crappy xml reports that get generated to present it the way I want but that's fine, I'm very comfortable with excel. I just need to get the data out of C3D.

Thanks,

Peter

[rl_jackson]

Parcels are more like land boundaries (i.e. established by survey), I don't think from the description your providing that that would be something your looking for, however they will calculate overall land area rather quickly.

[Anonymous]

This video will demonstrate how to add an expression to Parcels so that you can calculate the volumes and display them in tables.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/civil-3d/learn-explore/caas/screencast/Main/Details/86d0cbda-... 

Create Reports - Parcel Volume Report

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/civil-3d/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019/ENU/Civi... 

[Joe-Bouza]

Are parcels Dref-able?

You can use the Crop Surface tool to divide the surface into more manageable sizes. They can even overlap. The crops can be Drefed and will be dynamic to changes in the parent.

Then the more manageable surface can be used in the volume dashboard for bounded volumes

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous  thanks for your response. It wasn't quite what I was looking for as the volume was a manual calculation rather than a section of a volume surface.

After I stopped running around in circles I remembered that the suggestion to use parcels came from @neilyj666  in response to a query about adding multiple boundaries to a surface in the Volumes Dashboard at the same time instead of individually (different project). I went back and searched my previous posts and found it here. At that time I only had a couple of surfaces but a lot of boundaries. I ended up doing it manually as I didn't have time to reformulate my excel spreadsheet to cope with the different export format, and to be honest I was a little wary of the whole parcels thing as I have never needed to use them before.

My apologies if I wasted anyone's time there. It was not intentional, just forgot where the suggestion came from.

My original question still stands though. Can you dataref parcels or something similar? I have taken to inserting and exploding an xref of the parcels but obviously going forward that is not dynamic if someone decides to change a boundary.

[Anonymous]

@Joe-Bouza  I see where you are going. And I have done that in the past for a single large surface with a few boundaries.

But I don't want to create 20 copies of each of 300 survey files, a little over-exaggerating maybe as I suppose many surveys will only cross 3 or 4 boundaries, but that would still be a manual effort to create 3 or 4 cropped copies of 300 survey files. That would leave me with 1000 to 1200 data references!! Definitely not desirable in this case.

I did though figure out where the suggestion to use parcels came from (see my other post in this thread) and must admit that after a little fiddling it is working well. I have no need to crop surfaces or manually create bounded volumes in Volumes Dashboard. I will though end up with 300 exports of volumes, one for each surface, but the workflow is still much quicker than using the Volumes Dashboard for the sheer number of surfaces and boundaries in this particular case.

I am though still looking for a way for these boundaries to be dynamic between drawings so if someone decides to change the boundaries I don't find myself having to do it manually for each of my model files.

[neilyj666]

Yes - Report Parcel Volumes and some VB in Excel to turn it into something useful.

I have noticed that the surface area report is broken in 2020 (can't export to xls) but I've not tried the parcel volume report.

I export the parcels via SDF to use in other drawings and the parcels maintain their unique naming so it is fairly easy to use Mid, Left, Right and VLookup in Excel to tie all the volumes together.

[Anonymous]

"I export the parcels via SDF to use in other drawings"

But are they still parcels or just boundaries? How do you then import them into other drawings? Do they maintain a dynamic link to the SDF so that if you update it, the parcels update?

Sorry for so many questions I'm just interested to know how it works as never used SDF files before. I'm usually exporting LandXML or shape files.

Regards,

Peter

[Anonymous]

@neilyj666  I must admit that I didn't bother with the vb in Excel. I just copy and paste from the xml that's created and dump it into a Raw Data tab. Lookup functions and wizardry then get things how I want them to look on my Report tab. It's working well though so thanks for the suggestion to use parcels. Might keep this setup going forward.

Regards,

Peter

[Joe-Bouza]

I think you misunderstood my intent. Build one composite surface. Then crop that to manageable size.

as you add or update survey data in the composite the crops will adjust

[jae.kwon]

Here would be my suggestion:

1. Just have one giant volume surface. Create a data shortcut for the volume surface.
2. Create a new drawing and dref in the volume surface. This will avoid carrying your base and comparison surface data in this drawing.
3. For each sub-area, create a surface. Let's call the first one Surface_01.
4. Assuming you have a closed polyline that represents the limits of Surface_01.... Offset that line out some distance and add the offset as a data clip boundary for Surface_01. (Because data clip boundaries can't have non-destructive breakline option checked on.)
5. Paste in the overall volume surface into Surface_01.
6. Add the original polyline as the outer boundary.
7. Repeat 2-5 for all other areas.
8. Set up a data extraction for the volumes of all surfaces for spitting into a table/excel.

This should create a light-weight drawing with the least amount of data/processing duplication that can quickly report all your volumes.

[autoMick]

I have a client that requires regular updates on volume changes for about 140 sub areas of a survey area. As it stands at the moment, I just have a master drawing with parcels, which I have to copy and bring in the new surface data, so that I can get a parcel volume report. I couldn't live without reformatting it with excel vba.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/parcel-volume-report-annoyances/m-p/6510666#M309747.

It would be a great step forward to be able to DREF parcels. Is there a technical reason that this hasn't been implemented?

Mick

[Anonymous]

@Joe-Bouza& @jae.kwon  I may well be misunderstanding, but does that method only work with a single composite surface? I need to report quantities at all stages of construction, not just the final composite as-built surface.

I think the parcels method seems to suit my workflow very well for this particular task. It gives me the opportunity to export the volumes at each and every stage of the construction process, which is what I needed.

The modelling itself basically done. I just needed a quicker way than the volumes dashboard for adding lots of boundaries to hundreds of volume TINs. I now have something that works well but wondering how to keep the parcel boundaries dynamic between drawings. If I can't do that then it's fine. At this stage I only have 6 master files and I can copy the parcels into each.

Thanks everyone for your comments here. Been at this game for 20 years and I'm still learning new tricks... Old dogs and all that!

Regards,

Peter

[Joe-Bouza]

Hi Peter

Yes we are a tad off on understanding. When I use the composite term here I am referring to all these staged construction surfaces you have to deal with. each stage is pasted into this master composite that can be divided into smaller sections for better performance with the cropped surface tool. As the stages get updated int the master composite the crop surface update and your volume follow.

It was my belief that the overwhelming size of the surfaces to do the volumes calcs was your dilemma.  The boundaries need to be drawn if they are parcels or poly-line.  if the dashboard is not the reporting method then I understand.

I thought your were troubled with a surface size for the analysis

[jae.kwon]

I misunderstood the parcel workflow when I posted last. I get it now - it seems to work well.

Since we can't dref parcels maybe the best thing for the time being is to be able to quickly recreate them...

Would it take long to keep a master parcels drawing that you use to adjust the boundaries and then bind-insert/explode it into the volume surface drawings as needed?

[Anonymous]

@jae.kwon  that is what I am currently doing. I have a boundary template drawing with the parcel boundaries that I'm inserting into my 6 master drawings. As it's only 6 main drawings it's not a big problem if I need to change boundaries and re-insert.

Regards,

Peter