I have Survey, Civil Suite & GIS modules. Also have Point Cloud, but have never used it. I have a surface model (as a .tin file) that was created by another person from LiDAR data. My field crew has taken a number of topo shots with the total station. I want to check the elevation differences between their measurements and the LiDAR surface. Preferably, I would like to be able to label the differences in CAD, or get a report to keep for my records. Anyone have an "easy" method to suggest?
Couple of different ways;
For the points I would run a cut sheet using your ground run points and then select surface on the grade side.....Set the cutsheet report up how you want it and it will give you the grade differences between the tin and the shots.
In civil there is a cut/fill drop down, I believe in the 3D pull down menu, with various options to show cut fill....I use this pull down a lot when doing volume computations.
Thank you very much. That is exactly what I was looking for. I can make both reports and label the Cuts/Fills in CAD. There's even an option to change the color of the labels that exceed a tolerance, and also to put a symbol on them. Doing a happy dance now.
The way I would do it in Civil3D is to first make a surface defined by the points, then make a tin volume surface defined by the points surface and the provided surface, this new surface I usually call delta.
Then bring in the points again with new numbers, use the modify points elevation from surface to make them with the elevations from the delta surface, usually I call this point group delta to surface, then the elevations will show as the difference in surfaces.
The reports option in Carlson sounds better, does anyone have a suggestion for improving my workflow in C3D or how to generate a similar report.
I guess you could run the elevations from surface command to the provided surface and make something in excel pretty easy I just prefer to have the software do the work.
Wowza. What you are doing in C3D sounds brutal, and exactly what I was hoping to avoid by posting my question. After terminus-nc pointed me in the right direction, it only took 1/2 - 3/4 of an hour to tweak the Carlson Cut-sheet routine's settings to get exactly the reports and CAD labels I wanted. I hope C3D has something similar for you. If not, it would be worth the money to buy Carlson just for the Cut-sheet routine if you are making these kinds of checks regularly.
Import TIN/XML/DEM surface, whatever you have.
Import points.
Select all points, right click and run "Elevations from Surface" command. Pick the surface you just imported.
Export points back out.
Open up original point file plus the one with the elevations from the surface. Copy/paste columns to compare.
Or, if you want to add labels for the delta at each point, just compute the delta in the elevation field (or in a custom additional field) and re-import, using the point label style to display that delta.
5-10 minutes tops.
So funny that I did not think to do it that way, sometimes being shown how to do something one way closes the mind to other paths.
I really appreciate your contributions rover83! When I see your name on a post I read regardless of topic.
