Download an Alignment From LDD to Survey Pro?

Seems to me the short answer is yes. The center line of a road (profile) has to be set up in LDD as an alignment (polyline) and one can assign elevations to critical points (and survey pro can figure points between).

The road width/ slope. curb heights/ slope has to be entered in survey Pro after the centerline is imported.

Sorry for not being very specific, but it's been a few years.....

It should be possible to export an alignment from LDD to an xml file, and then import that to TDS. You can also transfer a profile the same way - if you follow the rules.

• The start station of the profile must be exactly the same as the start station of the alignment.
• The length of the profile must be equal to or greater than the length of the alignment.
• If you screw up somehow Survey Pro will import the horizontal data anyway, but it ignores the profile - and doesn't provide any warning or error message.

Survey Pro calls the imported alignment a "polyline." You can combine this with superelevation data, widening data, a point of beginning and template data to create a Road in TDS. The new road will be stored in a .RD5 file. This old version of the manual provides some more information, starting on pg 79

Thanks John and Steve.

I see where I can load an XML file in Survey Pro. I'll work on that angle.

Dave

I used to do that when I had a paying job (almost 5 years ago), so I don't remember the exact steps or menu selections off the top of my head.

I may have an old (really old) copy of AutoCADD on an old machine, have never been able to "borrow" a copy of Survey Pro. I remember the process as being relatively easy. So, if I have time, I can "fire up" the old machine and perhaps get the exact steps from the AutoCADD perspective anyway.....

Thanks John. If you get time, that would be cool.

Dave

All right, had a few minutes and got somewhere.....

On the cad side, what I did was create the road center line, join them all into one polyline, then go to "projects/ export/ land xml" and save the polyline to somewhere I could remember. The name of the polyline would typically include the street name.

Fuzzy memory follows

I would open that polyline in Survey pro (on the computer, not the data collector)

(do not remember the menu commands here) Import the polyline into survey pro

Assign elevation to the critical points (pob, pc, pt, end). Save/ export the polyline to the data collector.

Once in the DC, the polyline (fuzzy) has to be imported into the job. Open the job, open the polyline which defines the centerline of the road. Now, the road profile has to be defined (only once per road unless the profile changes for some reason). Grade percent and width from the centerline to edge paving, curb height and width.

Once the element gets imported into the data collector, the DC is fully capable of figuring elevations at whatever station is specified.

Sorry about the fuzzy nature of the last part, it has been a few years since I did this, but I hope it helps.

Hi John,

Yep, that's it. Thanks. It's my first time using LandXML, and it's so much easier than the mistake-prone, hand-entering method of staking an alignment. I even tried this on Civil 3D, and it worked great. (I prefer to use Land Desktop because my plotter doesn't work with Civil 3D/Vista.)

Dave

Agreed, personally, I would much rather use a desktop computer for many tasks. I find it so much easier.

A true shame that Autodesk has chosen to arguably leave the survey crowd behind and convolute the software to no end....