From the Ground Up
A European perspective on design and out of the box thinking with Civil 3D.
About Jack About OveLatest Post
- posted 03/28/07 by Ove Cervin Surface analysis
- Hi everyone,
This IS a great week - spring (almost summer) has come to Sweden!
Yesterday we had +19 degrees Celsius (66.2 degree Fahrenheit) and today we're expecting +21 degrees. Yes!!
What I'll post on this week is a fairly simple tips but I know some users have not gotten used to changeing the Styles. That's why I have to write some rows about it. ;-)
If you want to change the analysis style of a Surface you can do like this.
Below is a normal Surface with a contour style.
Hit Properties and select a Style presenting, for example, Color Analysis.
Go to the tab "Analysis" in the same dialog box.
This is where you set the "type" of analys you want to present.
Choose a number for "Ranges" and hit the "arrow".
Double click the color bars under "Scheme: " and select preferred colors. The same for selecting "Range Details" / Elevations. See below.
This will give you a simple map with colored elevations.
Have a great week! Cheers! / Ove C0 comments In From the Ground Up > Tips and Tricks
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Previous Posts
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Visualisation Part 4 – Camera settings and simple lighting
Posted 03/23/07 by Jack Strongitharm
I retained my title as ‘Junction Jack’ last week from the webcast I did last week on Junctions and Roundabouts. Any one that missed it the recording is now available on the website and can be downloaded from www.autodesk.com/civil3dwebcasts
Well it is Friday again and we return to visualisation in Civil 3D.
We left last week with a camera looking at our surface design.
However the background is black, the lighting is dark and there is no shadows.
So this week I will take you through some simple ways to enhance the camera view and get to a good rendered scene.
1. Go to the View menu and named views
2. First of all I recommend that you create a named view of your current view to make it easy to revert back to. To do this click on Model views and click new
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Give it a name and click ok and it will create a view with your current settings
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3. Click on Camera 1, change the visual style to realistic, then click on background override and select Image or Gradient
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4. You can either apply an image or select two colours, i.e. bluey gray colours to create a sky background depending on where the project lives for how sunny and clear the sky is. (normally grey for where I live!)
Download the Sky image to get you started if you wish
Download file
To set up an image, click on image. Then browse to the image and also adjust image and set to stretch to fill the camera background
5. Now if you select Set Current, and then ok, your view will now revert to the camera view
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Lighting
1. Go to View menu, render, light and Edit Sun Properties
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Turn the Status to on, set the time and date etc to what you wish
2. Next click on Geographic Location on the eye glass icon
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Choose your region and city location
3. Next go to View menu, render and advanced settings
Here you can choose your output choice and using the presets will help you get a simple change to suit your needs
4. Complete
The last couple of week’s efforts have given you the basic fundamentals to create surfaces with different rendered materials, lighting and cameras.
In due course I will revisit this area with an update with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 and where we can take this to a much higher level.
Good weekend all
Jack Strongitharm
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Editing a segment of an Alignment
Posted 03/21/07 by Ove Cervin
Hi again,
This week we noticed that some users might make use of a tips regarding editing a segment of an Alignment.
When you need to change the length of an alignment, that consists of just one tangent, to a specific value you have a few options. Below I'm presenting one way to do it - in a fairly simple way - and the Alignment is still dynamic.
In the example, the line should maintain its direction but the length must be 70 meters.
Use the following steps
1. Select the Alignment
2. Left click the first grip-point
3. Right click the same grip-point
4. Select Scale
5. Type “R” (Reference) on the Command line and hit Enter
6. Left click the first, then the second grip-point (gives the reference length)
7. Now – just type in the length you want on the segment and hit Enter again.
The result is now 70m!
Until next time - have a great week!
Cheers! / Ove C
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Visualisation Part 3 - Islands and Cameras
Posted 03/16/07 by Jack Strongitharm
I am back. Just like Ove and Chris the last couple of weeks have been really busy with no desk time.
However I will move us on from my last post about visualisation and surface techniques.
The good thing about the delay is that I can start to incorporate some of the new great enhancements in 2008 in the coming weeks.
We left it last time where we were creating individual surfaces with a combination of boundaries both hidden and outer types.
When you create such a thing like a traffic island or hard standing within a surface we want to cut out the surface below. When you come to render your scene you will otherwise find that you will get some strange results. So cut out the surface is recommended.
1. Add your island to the car park surface, by draping the line first to the surface
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2. Again add the island as a hide boundary to remove the triangles inside the island
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3. Create the island as a seperate surface and add the outer channel line as an outer boundary
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Cameras
1. To create a camera in your scene either type camera or View menu and Create Camera
2. Pick a point in your scene where you want to look from and also then pick where you want to look at
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3. Raise the height of the camera, your cursor tooltip will show you the height at the surface, then add a little for either eye level or a raised view. Same applies to the target.
Then change the visual style to realistic. Grip edit the camera to move the preview around
Next time we will setup the camera and look at some simple lighting to make your scene look much better
Please download the example drawing to examine how things are setup to date
Download file
Until next time
Jack Strongitharm
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Tunnel - post 3 (last)
Posted 03/14/07 by Ove Cervin
Hi all,
Tunneling time again... ;-)
Sorry it has been two weeks since last time. We've had a full calender including an interesting trip to Las Vegas for a week. Travelling that far from Sweden is a 20+ hour trip with two connections.
This will be the last (for now) post on the creation of a tunnel.
I might pick up on this issue later on when I find another way to do it or to point on some advancements etc.
Last post was about how to create the Assembly from a Polyline. Today I'll present what I have done to get it as a Corridor.
Below you can see that I have used only one Region and a 5m c/c (frequency)
For my Corridor and Assembly I have created a new Code set style called "Tunnel1"
Under Corridor properties I have set up the creation of Surfaces using the Links with their codes.
All Surfaces will be rendered with a Render Material Style. In my case limited to Concrete and Asphalt ("Betong" and "asfalt" in swedish, as you see in the picture)
I have attached the Render Material Style to a Material Name from the AutoCAD rendering function. In this case "Betong/concrete" is pointed to "Concrete,Cast-In-Place.Flat.Grey.1" See below.
That material is set up in the Material Editor.
When those Corridor Surfaces are set and are using materials the tunnel will be like this.
Hope this helps or gives ideas.
Have a great week!
Best regards / Ove Cervin
