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posted 11/26/08 by Ove Cervin Combine with an Analysis Surface

Hi there,
Last week I was on Iceland again - and this time I spent some relaxing time on the Blue Lagoon. www.bluelagoon.com
Not bad, not bad at all... Half way between the airport and the city of Reykjavik.



In Civil 3D, as you are well aware of, it is very easy to create Surface of almost any kind.
I just want to give some hints to new users, to open up for a "broader mind", on how you can use it in an "extended" way.
For example, one thing is that because of the linked objects, you can relate a Surface easily to another.
If you then design a simple parking with elevations, Feature lines etc - present it with contours etc, like below:


What you can easily do, besides assigning a number of Surface Labels, is creating Slope arrows on the Surface.
Like below:


To avoid Slope arrows on the whole Parking Surface (including the Grading slopes etc) and just keep it over the paved area, you can create a new Surface.
In my case called "Parking Analysis". Then under that Surface, Definition, use "Edit" - "Paste Surface" and add the Parking Surface.
Apply a Surface Style that has Slope Arrows "ON" and set the "Analysis" parameters on that tab.
After that is done you simply put a Border to it using a Polyline etc from the "Curb stone" and then you don't have the Slope Arrows on the Grading anymore.
In my case, below, I get only a few Arrows. That's because we get one Arrow per Triangle.
If we add more Points to the Feature lines, preferable after we have given them proper elevations, grades, mid/low/high points etc, we can get more triangles.


Use the button with the Yellow triangle "Insert PI". Then select the Feature line, and type "I". Set a distance that will divide the Feature line in to more segments. In my case I use 15 meters. See the small grey triangles presented.



This gives a more dense triangulation as the Feature lines gets more segments. See the orange Triangles below that correspond to the Slope Arrows.
Of course you don't present the Triangles in YOUR Style... ;-)



Now I am really looking forward to AU next week.
Hope to see some of you there!
Best regards / Ove Cervin

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