Between Civil 3D and Autocad

[Doove]

Hi

 

no experience with Civil 3D, need to know whether a terrain or landscape object (or whatever it is called) can be converted or exported into something that vanilla acad or Architecture can edit.

 

Ideally a slim 3d solid / surface or groups thereof, not a mesh.

 

Eg. Architecture uses 'drape' mass elements to create approximate landscapes from contours (apparently it uses Civil 3D technology but doesn't create civil 3D entities). It can then convert back and for between mass elements and solids. So I can create a landscape, convert to solid, email to a supplier who can cut his holes etc, then he emails it back and I convert it back to a mass element.

 

Is there a way to do this so I can ease my task and that of the civil 3D designer?

 

cheers

 

Doove

[lpseifert]

File > Export > Export to Autocad... - Exporttoautocad... -Aectoacad

The dwg will lose it's 'intelligence'. Don't expect to open the new dwg in C3D and have surfaces etc.

[rkmcswain]

 

no experience with Civil 3D, need to know whether a terrain or landscape object (or whatever it is called) can be converted or exported into something that vanilla acad or Architecture can edit.

 

Ideally a slim 3d solid / surface or groups thereof, not a mesh.

 

In C3D, adjust the surface style so that the triangles are shown.

Explode the surface twice.

Now the triangles are 3D Face entities (which are native to AutoCAD), at the correct elevations.

[sinc]

There is considerable question as to whether or not this process will actually make anything easier...

 

Converting a C3D Surface to 3D-Faces basically destroys the surface. It is possible to then edit those 3D-Faces in such a way that they create very unexpected results when turned back into a Surface. For example, a TIN surface cannot have any vertical faces. So your edits would need to be performed VERY carefully, and it might not really be the easiest thing to do.

 

Around here, it's actually not the process we would follow. Usually, quantities are a concern, so an Architect would not adjust the FG surface. That would generally fall into the domain of the Civil Engineer.

[sdoolan]

New to the forums here, but I found this through a google search since I'm trying to establish a similar workflow.

 

I'm not too familiar with C3D, but having worked with scan data and contour drawing data in regular ACAD, converting these to mass objects using the Drape command, I can say that this process can be really time consuming to takeoff quantities for excavation if the design changes. This is especially true if you don't have just one top-of-rock or bottom level of excavation and you have footings at many different elevations since creating the "underside" of the mass objects requires many boolean operations that can't be undone if the engineer decides to change footing depths, sizes or locations.

 

I think there is a benefit to generating the masses in ACAD though. Slicing these up according to areas and pushing these masses into something like Navisworks to visualize excavation sequence for our project managers and executives has been useful in helping them visualize this phase of the project.

 

I'm wondering if there is a similar way to create mass objects instead of surfaces in C3D. All the data I've gotten so far from our Civil Engineer using C3D is just surfaces or 3D faces, which are kind of useless in regular Autocad to generate objects with reportable volumes (i.e. mass objects or solids). I've been having to go back to the original contour lines or boring data to generate my mass objects.

 

Does anyone have a method to generate mass objects or solids from TIN/surface models from C3D to plain ACAD?

[Doove]

thanks for the replies everyone.

 

sinc - you mentioned this is not the process you follow, if it's alright with all concerned, could you explain how you workaround this (to me) hitch in the design process?

[sdoolan]

If there was a way for the C3D user to insert a point at each intersection of the TIN/surface model, you could generate the exact same surface as a mass object using Drape, irregular mesh. I'm not sure if C3D can do this easily, though.

[sinc]

Around here, I've never seen an Architect design a site.

 

In a typical project for us, the Surveyor creates the starting original ground surface. The Architect would then design the building, along with a Structural Engineer. The Architect and Structural Engineer would then give the building pad parameters to the Civil Engineer. The Civil Engineer handles the rest of the site design, since there are typically a lot of constraints on the FG surface (minimum slope away from the building, constraints and regulations for parking, and more), and it is also usually desirable to balance quantities, so that if possible, no dirt is trucked either to or from the site. The Architect generally does not worry about any of that stuff.

 

So in our line of work, the Architect would never start off by creating a topology as mass elements, and the back-and-forth conversion problem doesn't even happen. The tools in Civil 3D are far more suitable for such tasks than mass elements. It seems strange to me that an Architect would be calculating site volumes.

 

But part of that could also be that we seem to work with a lot of old-school Architects. I know several of them are still using R14.

[sinc]

If there was a way for the C3D user to insert a point at each intersection of the TIN/surface model, you could generate the exact same surface as a mass object using Drape, irregular mesh. I'm not sure if C3D can do this easily, though.

 

Yes, it can do that very easily.

[BIGAL]

You can have as many surfaces as you like so I would probably have existing then a design1 this would be a pad design surface reflecting the "grading" changes you could then add to a 3rd surface (paste 1&2 together) trenches and footings.

 

Whilst true vertical faces will generally not work you just need to taper the bottom to the top, were are metric so a vertical of 10mm change overall would be ok. Only problem is you probably need a lisp etc to create the relevant points easily.

 

Else use polylines offset 10mm and reset lower to new elevation drape top on surface you may also need to break up the top polyline if the slope is not a single plane. if the footings change you can move the points xy&z surface will remodel.

 

Make bottom breaklines!

 

It can be achieved there may be some earthwork add ons that will allow the footings etc to be added easily.

 

In final, build multiple models as you go delete old ones when happy.