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Calcing points by station and offset in civil 3d
I’m fairly new to civil 3d but I think what I’m trying to do is pretty simple. I have a dxf of some centerlines and underground pipes in a subdivision. I basically want to make a centerline alignment with stations and elevations and calc points by typing in a station and offset. Ideally I would like the points to automatically hold the elevations of the alignment along the station. I’ve watched some videos and can’t seem to find a simple routine. The linework is already there but there are no elevations and no surfaces. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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3 Replies
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Not a pro by any means but I might try tracing over the .dxf centerline with a polyline and then using the create alignment tools in Civil 3D to convert that polyline into an alignment. I think the tool will let you assign a starting station to the beginning of the line and will auto-label the rest.
When I’ve worked from an alignment in the past I just loaded it into my data collector and did stakeouts from it; I’ve never tried to prepare calcs ahead of time from an alignment.
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Can be done. I’ll assume you’ve created the alignment from your linework (if not, can go over that).
Lets say your alignment is named Ho Drive and it goes from 0+00 to 16+00
On Home tab go to Profile View – not Profile, but Profile View
Pull it down and select Create Profile View
Make sure your Ho Dr alignment is selected, name stuff, set the style
On the Next screen, you can use an automatic station range, it’ll go from 0 to the end of your alignment
On the next screen this is where you want to set your displayed min and max elevations to include the elevation range of the roadway alignment data you have. Lets say 1100 to 1600.
You can look at the next 3 screens, but it’s probably default so could just Create Profile view
Now since you don’t have a design surface to sample from, hopefully you have design elevations of your roadway somewhere. Your going to have to create a profile, Ho Drive CL, inside this profile view that mimics your design elevations.
To do that – Home tab, Profile (not Profile View) and Profile Creation Tools. Select your profile view (the grid you just created) on the screen and give it the name and properties you want on the dialog box that pops up.
On the Profile Layout Tools pull down the icon on the far left, Draw Tangents
Here you can set the vertical Curve Settings and then use the Draw Tangents or Draw Tangents With Curves to start drawing in the profile that you want to associate with Ho Dr alignment (using your design elevations and design curve geometry if you have it). You can also just slap the profile in and modify it after if you’d like, using the Profile Geometry Editor.
Once you get that profile drawn in correctly you’re ready to do those points in the way you wanted.
For that go to Home tab, Points pull down, Create Points – Alignments and Station Offset
watch the command line
Select the alignment
When the dialog pops up, select the profile that you want to associate with the alignment
Hit OK and start inputting the station/offsets. It will place points at the offset location with the design profile elevation for that station on CL
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Thank you so much!!! That was exactly what I was looking for. Surprisingly more complicated than I thought and the videos online weren’t very helpful. The step by step instructions were great. Thanks again, that is going to streamline a lot of calcing and cutsheets.
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