From the Ground Up
A European perspective on design and out of the box thinking with Civil 3D.
About Jack About OveLatest Post
- posted 03/14/08 by Ove Cervin Corridors and Sections in separate DWGs
- Yo!
This week we are in Vegas - trying our very best to spend every $ we have... No! ;-)
The event in Vegas is a great way to meet all partners, some customers and also colleagues from everywhere. Looking forward to a meeting on the Survey Topic. (Will be back here on that topic)
Some people asked about how to get the Corridor Cross Sections (Multiple Views) stored in a separate DWG. It is very common that users have all data in the same DWG, although we have Vault and Data Shortcuts.
Anyway - here is the way to do it:
Below is my design drawing, a lot of things in it.

Create a Data Shortcut (.xml-file) with at least the Alignment you need for your sections.

Open a new DWG and set the proper Scale in it.
Use the UI for Data Shortcuts again to bring in the Alignment as a Reference.
(Here is a Blog Post on Data Shortcuts in general)

Once the Alignment is in you will also have to XREF the DWG that has the Corridor in it.
Use normal XREF to bring it in (also works from Vault) and set it placed on origo 0,0,0

This looks a bit much in terms of needed graphics and I'll tell you how to make it a bit better here, on another blog post. (Fading Layers)
Well, once you have the Corridor DWG in - Create Sample Lines the normal way. If needed - use "Send to back" on the XREF to be able to select the Alignment more easily (or use right click).
Sample lines created!

Now you can create the Multiple Views - on a scale that is normal for those Sections.

Now all is fine - but to avoid having all graphics presented like this - see this solution.
There might be other ways as well to hide the Xref with the Corridor.

Hope is explains how easy it actually is... ;-)
// Ove

User Comments
Please note, in this configuration where you're cutting cross sections from an XREF'd corridor, if you move a sample line (up or down station) the corridor section for that sample line may vanish from section view. We use this configuration a lot and outside of this bug, it works fine. This is a known issue with Autodesk.
Posted 3/15/2008 7:25 AM by Jason Ellis