Workflow question (updating survey)

[gameschess]

Typically my workflow is to take the survey drawing, data reference the surface, then create a copy of it and reduce it down to just polylines (no 3d elements). I use that as my civil basemap.
Lately, the surveyors will come back and update their survey drawing which means my civil base drawing is now out of date. How do you go about making sure the civil basemap gets updated with the survey basemap? Is there a better workflow that the one i'm using?
I'd just like to get some opinions/thoughts. Thanks!

[user181]

You might want to consider xrefing the survey drawing into your civil drawings. That way all you do is update the survey xref and your civil plans are updated. 

[gameschess]

If I just xref the survey, how would I split the survey figures, how would I change the style on the cogo points. I don't want to modify the actual survey drawing because the surveyors own that drawing. This is why a copy is created and stripped of the 3d elements. Not to mention the etransmit doesn't seem to work with survey drawings. If I moved something to a demo layer on the survey drawing it would be editing their drawing and open up a whole different can of worms. Creating a copy has it's own issues though. 

[jefflambert9091]

This is always a good topic. We have a BM surface drawing to create the surface and then create a datashortcut of the surface. We then "SaveAs" to a BM drawing and use a lisp routine to take all the survey figures to polylines and draft the basemap. We do don't use C3D point labels to label with we use C3D labels or Mleaders.  The civils then xref our base map. For Demo, we have a demo template setup with demo point styles and layers. The surveyors gave permission to the civils to go into our basemap, import the styles from the demo template, and use design center to bring in the rest of the demo layers. The can then change the point styles to the demo styles and any regular CAD entities into demo layers. The demo point label styles are setup to be a slightly different color and in demo layers, but everything plots the same. For small projects that we are pretty sure the BM will not change the civils will do a saveas. If there is additional field work, its not too painful since you can bring in the points/linework to both dwgs via the survey database. 

[gameschess]

That's very similar to our method. The issue i'm running into a lot lately is the surveyor will go out and get more information or the information will change, then it is hectic for me to figure out what has changed and how to bring that information in.
Here's our workflow, we try to use A/E/C cad standards.
Surveyor creates V-SP0001
Civil copies V-SP0001 into civil folder and renames it to V-SP1001 while exploding all survey figures/feature lines and reducing it down to a 2D drawing, then Data shortcuts the surface from V-SP0001
Then the civil uses the V-SP1001 as their base drawing.
They surveyor then updates some linework with the V-SP0001 and then it gets hectic because we have to figure out what has changed and how to implement the updates. The surface updates since it's just a data reference, but we struggle with getting the 2 base drawings similar again. I don't want to remake the civil drawing because many things have been moved to another layer (-d for demo)

[jefflambert9091]

We create a network for every days work for a crew. One good way to tell whats new is to insert the network into the drawing. We have a network style setup that is just circles on every point in magenta. Just did this today from some new utility markings. See attached, I have the points off, but the network on. 

[_Hathaway]

The whole point of data shortcuts is for the pertinent files to work together senselessly. Our Topo drawings are xref'd into the pertinent civil files, surface data shortcuts are created in each of the pertinent Civil designs.  We have projects with hundreds of drawings and have never had any major issues with this setup.  Topo drawings and surfaces are often updated on weekly basis, sometimes daily depending on the project.  

There are no copies of files made, no dumbing down of the data, and most certainly no manipulating of the surveyor's data.  That's just a recipe for inefficiency and a disaster waiting to happen...like in the old LDD days when a topo was updated and Civil was designing based on an outdated surface.

[neaton]

If you have 2019 or 2020 have you tried DWG Compare to find the differences? One issue I see is the demo layers would always show up as different but they should be at the same coordinates so may be easy to ignore.

https://uscad.com/blog/dwg-compare-in-civil-3d-2020/

We are still on 2018 so I haven't been able to try it.

Nancy

[gameschess]

I have not heard of the dwg compare. We're using the 2018 version, but i have access to 2019/2020 because we're going to be moving to BIM 360. I'll test it out next time I run into this issue. Thanks for the thought. I had thought about using the overkill command, but I can't select which one I want to keep.