From the Ground Up

3D Solid Civil Surfaces

Want surfaces as solids to better represent your sub-surfaces for construction and collaboration visualisations for your BIM project?

Click the above image to download a Navisworks NWD of this example.

 

Here’s the method to do it

Show your first surfaces as triangles and a border

Extract them (click on the surface and from the contextual ribbon you will see the extract surface option)

Type the command CONVTOSURFACE

Select the triangles

Then type the command UNION and select the triangles.

That’s one surface done!

Repeat the steps for your second surface.

 

Next from the extracted borders, LOFT them together

Type UNION and select the two surfaces and the lofted edge

Finally CONVTOSOLID and select your objects

That’s it!

 

This in combination with the corridor solid tool, which is now integrated into 2014 release of Civil 3D, you have a unique data extraction for civil engineering.

 

A big thanks to Wes Newman (http://autodesk.typepad.com/transportation/) for this excellent workflow for coming up with the method to convert your surfaces to a 3D solid.

 

Jack Strongitharm

Autodesk Live Map – AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014 Workflow

Probably not as obvious on how to use this service as Civil has is own coordinate system.

Saying that though, all you have to do is turn it on!

http://youtu.be/fVMLLmUaQhY

Jack Strongitharm

Autodesk Shared Reference Point Tool – Now available

aka as the BIM Coordinator released on our Labs site, we have had a good interest in making this available on our newer releases.

So for both 2013 and 2014 releases this tool is now available on www.autodesk.com/subscription under the productivity tools for AutoCAD Civil 3D.

 

There are two installers, one to be installed on Civil 3D which runs from the toolbox and a second that installs to run on Revit (any version)

 

The tool exports an xml file from Civil 3D with coordinates and z level/elevation, rotation and units.

From within Revit you select the same two reference points on your building/structure and it creates a ‘Shared Coordinate System’ for your location and can orientate the view to suit and most importantly export the building/structure correctly to be used in AutoCAD platforms, Navisworks etc.

Download the Video

or watch through Youtube

 

To see this in action I have recorded a new video that covers from the outline planning of a site with InfraWorks through to the project aggregated model in Navisworks.

As usual I throw a big supermarket on a public park in the UK close to where I live, of course its all made up!

 

Jack Strongitharm

What is my global shift in Civil View?

 

Short tip from Marion Landry on recovering your values you have imported in Civil View

http://youtu.be/R4WNY2nOTQg

Jack Strongitharm

Autodesk Live Update for AutoCAD Civil 3D

Had a reformat of my hard drive last week as I got myself a nice new SSD (512GB) :)

Best thing you can do for your laptop, fast boot for the OS and of course your software and so much more responsive, more impressive than more memory.

 

Anyway, of course the effort then of reinstalling our software and others to get back to where I was.

The pay off though is a clean registry and a very happy laptop.

 

So I got 2013 installed and was about to go and download the Update 1 pack for Civil 3D 2013 and noticed the icon at the top right.

Then faced with this web page with the option to download and install directly.

And in it goes, it will ask to shut Civil down to complete the install

 

Also, another note.

On install of most of Autodesk software you also get the chance to include the Updates directly on the first installation, of course most people click ‘NEXT’ ‘NEXT’

 

Jack Strongitharm

Navisworks– Sectioning Tip and Trick

If you have been using Navisworks 2013 you tried the sectioning tool you might find using ‘planes’ doesn’t actually do anything

 

If you hit the pull down next to it you will see a number of planes but are switched off, turn one on

That’s better and move and rotate the plane to suit your view

The number of planes is for having different setup that you can come back to when you want.

Jack Strongitharm

Dynamic Feature Line Labels from Corridors

Been a little thin on the tips and tricks on this blog, so with AU out of the way time for some tips and tricks.

So in many cases we need to annotate our models for drawing output and having labels on certain linework is required at a set interval.

This method works from 2010 versions onwards.

 

You need to first setup your corridor at the interval you want, i.e. every 10m and turn off all options in the frequency.

From the Feature Line section, select the ‘Create Feature Line from Corridor’ and select the line in the corridor you want.

I would recommend that you actually zoom out before selecting as it will give you a list of feature line names to select if they are close together

Choose a style, this will draw another line on top of the corridor, you could always change them to no display afterwards, just not yet.

Here you can choose to retain a dynamic link to the corridor.  If you need to change the frequency back this you could choose to uncheck, but will be then static to the corridor model

Now, choose the annotate tab and ‘add labels’ and then ‘feature lines’

Change the label type to ‘Multiple Segment’ and then a suitable style.

These are all available in the UKIE template so at vertex above, below and rotated to the line etc

Select the line and all done.

These are dynamic unless you switched that option off earlier.

This method I would say is the best for annotations on drawings and retaining the dynamic nature of the design

 

Jack Strongitharm

3ds Max Design - RAM Player - tips and tricks

If you are rendering in 3ds Max Design you are hopefully rendering to images, rather than to an AVI etc

 

However you maybe experiencing the output via RAM player to be creating dark videos.

 

Inside the ‘Render menu’, choose ‘Gamma/LUT setup’ and uncheck ‘Enable Gamma/LUT Correction’

Reload your images and now export to AVI and they should match up

 

Jack Strongitharm

AIM - Send to 3ds Max Design tips and tricks

 

If you use 'Send to Max' from AIM, your temporary fbx file and .pos (position file) are dropped in this location.

C:\Users\<user login>\AppData\Local\Temp

You may need to retrieve it if you need to export other data from AIM or Civil 3D again and coordinate the data in Max. You will have to use the .fbx export this time to add the user shift in the model as you may not get the same shift applied by the 'Send to Max' option if you select the region to export differently.

Make sure you copy of this data across to your folder where you save the Max file as if that content is deleted your textures disappear in Max as they are being referenced.

 

 

Images in 3ds Max Design not rendering correctly?

If using trees in your scene which have come from AIM, you may need to set some material settings

Press M for the materials and select the dropper and click on a tree to select the correct material

Set the specular level, glossiness and soften to 0

Select ‘M’ button next to opacity and point to the alpha channel of the tree image texture.

(Thanks to Bob Prokopp for pointing me in the right direction)

Jack Strongitharm

SAC - Subassembly with varying lane width without targets !

This post is based on an earlier post made by Bart De Maesschalck from DEME on the Civil 3D Benelux usergroup page.

The challenge is to create a subassembly with the ability to apply a varying width without the need for a target alignment or polyline/feature line.

In this example the transition will be linear... a curved transition can be considered for another post.

The solution lies in the possibilities that SAC (Subassembly Composer) offers. I'm sure there are many ways to get this done, but this is how I did it…

STEP 1: Define the variables you need

• Base width (Width before the transition, also used in subassembly mode)
• Extended width  (Width after the transition)
• Transition length (Length of the transition zon)
• Transition start station (station to start the transition)

STEP 2: Implement this iS SAC

• Create the input variables we have defined in STEP 1.
• Define an internal variables to be able to calculate the real width during the transition (ActualWidth)
• Define the flows and decisions that need to be taken.
  For every assembly insertion of the corridor we need to define if the current station is before, in or after the transition zone.
  
  
  
  
• Calculate the actual width during transition
  
  

 

• Create the geometry for the lane

  

 

STEP 3: Test in AutoCAD Civil 3D

   

   

The Subassembly can be downloaded here: Download LaneWithTransition

 Peter Ingels