Is there a good way to handle sending files back and forth between Civil 3D and Carlson with IntelliCAD? I believe the Civil 3D version that the engineers use is 2016 and the Version of Carlson we use is 2013 with IntelliCAD.
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From Googling and searching this forum it appears that to send a surface generated in Carlson to Civil 3D we need to export the drawing/surface to a LandXML file and send an ASCII file with the point data. Is this still the "best" way to send surface files so the engineer do not have to recreate the surface on their end from the TIN file?
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We also receive Civil 3D files with surface data and Civil 3D objects embedded in the drawing. Usually we have them send us the DWG file and have Carlson convert it which works fine but doesn't retain the surface data. We typically use these files for construction staking and I would like to retain the surface data of the Civil 3D generated drawing so it's easier and hopefully faster to plot staking points/line-work. Are there specific file formats we need to request to be able to retain the surface data and Civil 3D objects?
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Any help is more than appreciated.
I use Civil 3D, current version, and work for an engineering company. I have little experience with Intellicad, and used Carlson for about a year while working for a surveying firm a few years back. These are my thoughts.
LandXML is the way with regards to sharing things like surfaces and alignments. Others may disagree, but I wouldn't bother including the ASCII file of the points. The engineering company will probably just take your XML file and create a surface directly from that. Unless there is some reason that they would want to revise your surface, the points are not needed. Also, unless they have a description key set that matches your descriptors EXACTLY, the points will just come in unsorted and would just become filler unless there aren't a lot of points, in which case maybe they could edit the ASCII file to match their description key set, assuming they have one. If they ask for a point file go ahead and give it to them if you want, but it's probably not a CAD tech asking for it, unless he's a glutton for punishment.
I'm not sure how you're getting Carlson to convert C3D objects, because to the best of my knowledge, no other software should be able to read them. Not even plain Jane Autocad can view them without object enablers, and I'm not sure that enablers are available for Intellicad, and even if they are, that only helps to view them, not to actually be able to use them for anything. I would ask the engineering firm to export their drawings. There are at least a couple of ways of doing this, including using the Export Civil 3D drawing command, and using eTransmit, which gives you the same capability. What this will do is it will explode all C3D entities so that they are no longer smart objects. You should then be able to open it directly in Intellicad. Then request XML files for smart objects such as surfaces, alignments, pipe networks, or whatever else you may need. I never used XML files with either Intellicad or Carlson, so can't offer suggestions on that end.
One other thing I would like to at least point out. Nobody really compares these XML files. I'd like to think that everything is all fine and dandy while sharing information this way, but to be honest, I've never known anyone to actually compare the information. I point this out because recently I shared an alignment, with the same surveying firm I used to work for, and when they sent back a topo survey, alignment included, the alignment did not exactly match what I had. Not off by much, maybe a couple of hundredths, if that. Did things go south in conversion to Carlson, or perhaps in the conversion back to Autocad? I have no clue. I knew our alignment was the correct one, and I didn't really need to use their version of the alignment, so I didn't spend two seconds thinking about it, but things like that do concern me slightly.
LandXML was developed just for this purpose, to share data between applications. So use it. You can save the surfaces, alignments and points to LandXML. Nearly every survey app created in the past 10 years that I have seen will import and export LandXML. For alignments with vertical curves and spirals, this is the one and only method of transferring data across platforms.?ÿ
Blitzkrieg - Thanks for the detailed response. Just to clarify, on our version of Carlson the Civil 3D objects are embedded in the drawing and I can not do anything with them except measure distances/inverses to them so Carlson is likely converting only the drawing file into a format it can open and not leaving the Civil3D objects as proxy entities. Usually I have the Engineering firm send me "exploded blocks" of specific objects so I can actually select them. This is obviously not the most efficient way to handle this and takes lots of time to ensure everything blocks in correctly.
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I will have to look further into the LandXML files and discuss this with the engineers to see if they know anything about this.
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LeeGreen - Thanks for the suggestion, as stated above I will be looking into the LandXML files more deeply on the next project.?ÿ
