Data Shortcut - Sync - Reference - Feature Lines

[Anonymous]

I have an idea. I would like to be able to Data Sync / Reference specificly named feature lines.

My thought is to try to elminate all the redundant line work bewteen 2D drawings and 3D Model / Drawings.

What I would like to try to do is say I get a 2D Building Footprint from an architect. I would like to make an outline of his building footprint in my base site improvement.dwg. Lets say I decide to drawing the face of curb and edge of pavement for my parking lot. It would be cool to create feature lines out of these objects. Reference them into a grading surface base file to assign elevations to them. Same with the property line, convert that to a feature line and refence it into the grading surface base file. That was I can generate a match existing line from the property line, then with the building footprint I can assign a Finish Floor Elevation, Add those feature lines to a surface as break lines. My surface is now done.

The above would be the basic setup.

As I need revisions or move stuff. The surface would automatically be updated with the revisions I make in the site improvement base.dwg.  If I add a vertx on the building footprint, it would sync over to the surface.

And if I can take it a step further, It would be nice to add a feature line Label that will label only the vertexs of the feature line. As a new vertex is created a new label would popup. (Maybe give the label different styles (Top of Curb and Bottom of Curb / Single Spot Shot Elevation / None).

Hopefully this makes alittle sense.

[dsimeone]

Thanks for your suggestion. Anything related to DREF of Civil 3D Feature Lines is being tracked in portfolio feature PF952. 

[dsimeone]

Thanks for your suggestion. Scope items related to DREF of Feature Lines are being tracked as Portfolio Feature PF952

[doni49]

I really like this idea.  But I don't want to have to reference in individual featurelines.

One example where I would find something like this useful:  I want to create a corridor in a corridor.dwg file, extract the ETW and daylight lines (and run smoothing on them as I do so to try and get rid of the tessellation).  Then in my plan sheets, I'd have it reference in all featurelines from the corridor file with styles ETW and Daylight).  As new ETW/Daylight lines are added to the corridor, the new lines would automatically show up in my plan sheets.

[troma]

@Anonymous @doni49

Would you want to d-ref an entire site of featurelines? This seems like the best way to me. Do you see any problems with that?

[Anonymous]

I think if people place there feature lines in the correct site and the feature lines are labeled / named correctly, the user should be able to go into the Data Shortcuts in the Toolspace and select (Feature Lines) or (Sites - Feature Lines). Open that up then browse for the site and then feature line that you want to data reference into another dwg.

As i think about this alittle more, What do I do if I have to edit the feature line in the source drawing?

Lets say I have the original building footprint from the architect. I have named the footprint (BLDG FOOTPRINT).

Do I deleted the feature line and redraw it and then rename it to (BLDG FOOTPRINT)? (Would it still hold the data reference?)

What about the user breaks the feature line, then adds other pieces of feature lines together by joining them. (Would it still work properly?)

[BlackBox_]

This is one of the many byproducts of Autodesk's decision to move to an Internal [Project] Database - duplication of work in maintaining myriad critical design elements.

We now have the ability to have design elements of the same name, etc. residing in different drawings, with no easy way to know what's different between them, and no in-built functionality to replace a Promoted Object with DREF Source, replace DREF Source with a (revised?) Promoted Object, etc. Grrr

/ Vent

To the topic - 

With the advances in technology since Land Desktop, I see absolutely no reason why C3D cannot [d-]'evolve' into a single, consolidated, organized Project structure, where all critical design elements reside (i.e., Alignments, COGO, Parcels, Profiles, Sites, Styles, etc.), which would allow ANY associated project drawings to only DREF the Objects and Styles they selectively 'map' into any given drawing, Model (not for plot), or Exhibit/Sheet (for plot).

No more unecessary drawing bloat from duplication of unused Styles, wasted time having to re-import same as needed if you were mindful to purge them in the first place - just do your work, and maintain a single, consolidated Project, that's it.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

We doing a lot of complex site gradings and exploding feature lines and pasting them into an xref is messy and does not support dynamic design changes

[Anonymous]

Hello @Anonymous, do you have any information about implementing this idea? It has been a while since ACCEPTED and we are still waiting 🙂 customers are asking about it a lot ...

[Anonymous]

Same here. I make ponds, site terrain modelling, ditches and noise barriers in the same project. Its not really practical to have all these grading objects in the same model when editing its appearnce for drawing production. Not being able to dref featurelines from gradings makes it impossible to keep a dynamic link from design to drawings.

[gherrmanRQ549]

I guess it takes 6+ years to implement an accepted idea.

[m_kingdon]

I don’t see why it isn't possible to data shortcut feature lines.  They are simple objects that contain valuable data.  We should have the option to reference this data into other drawings. 

Example scenario:  I have a set of building pads, made using closed feature lines.  I want to reference these in other drawings.  This would allow me to try a few different grading options away from my main model.  If this workflow existed, I would place all my feature lines into a site, called “Building Pads” and create a data shortcut for this site and reference this site in other drawings.  I can see this being very useful.

Example scenario:  A surveyor has gone out and surveyed a built stormwater network.  He has provided me with 3D lines, built using the start and end invert levels for each pipe.  I often convert all these 3D lines to feature lines, name and label them for our as-built drawings.  I would like to move all these into a site called “as-built SW” and reference this into another drawing.  A combined as-built drawing showing all as-built data, or into our proposed drawing to show any construction errors.

[SoaresASBCAD]

I also concur 

[ChrisRS]

XREFed feature lines can delineate basin top/bottom, grade breaks, flowlines, etc., that are not apparent from contours. Feature lines that are design controls (break lines) can be labeled faster and more accurately than the resulting surface.

It appears that some Idea Consolidation is in order.

[m_kingdon]

This idea was supposedly accepted in 2015.  Have the development team forgot about it?

[ChrisRS]

Have patience,@m_kingdon.

From my experience, 6+ years is not a long time for Autodesk to react.

1. The development team has limited resources. 
2. Projects need to be prioritized and resources allocated.
3. The Development Team and the Decision-Making Team are not one and the same. 
   There may be no overlap at all. ☹️
4.  From @Dsimeone's original comment, "Scope items related to DREF of Feature Lines are being tracked as Portfolio Feature PF952". 
   I suspect that it has been bundled with related items, increasing both its importance and difficulty. The impact on prioritization is unknown.
5. Since this has been accepted, I suspect you will see some sort of realization at some unknown time.
   I will be turning 70 in April and may actually retire at some time; I have no such expectations.
   
   

[rmcclung]

I think it would be nice to have the ability to Data Shortcut Feature Lines for use multiple drawings.  For example, it would be nice to create feature lines in a base mapping file and be able to Data Shortcut them into a Cross Section file for projections.

[cwr001]

This feature has been requested on the ideas forum many times and I think it's highly necessary.

As of now, there is no single-source-of-truth-solution of to show featurelines in profile- and section views as they have to be inside the drawing to project them. If you copy them into the drawing, you automatically "fork" them and it's a lot of work to keep changes up to date. You can do it with Dynamo but that's a quite some overhead and I really think there should be an out-of-the-box-solution.

I don't know what it would take to get it onto the roadmap - being able to dref featurelines and COGO-points would really go a long way!

[patrick_ericson]

I agree on this on as well, it's a high demand for all users that not use corridors and linear objects for their design.

[m_kingdon]

Let's make this happen lads!  I am feeling optimistic!