Section Line

This video shows how to create an alignment labels that look like sections going across in plan view.

Subassembly Composer Targets Sucks

When using Subassembly Composer you quickly realize that targets suck big time. The call to check if they are valid is .IsValid. Unfortunately this only checks to see if it was assigned to the region, not if the target was found at a particular section. This has disastrous results when trying to do a design, because the cause of the issue isn’t readily identified. Often times an error message is sent to the Event Viewer, but you think your SAC is correct since you included the check for .IsValid.

In order to get around this pain in the butt, since Autodesk appears to have no inclination to correct the call, is to create an Auxiliary point that uses the target. If the elevation of the Auxiliary point is a dummy value we will enter then the target isn’t present and we should adjust for it, if an elevation is found that will then mean the target is there and should be used.

The first thing we need to add to our subassembly is an Auxiliary point that is from the origin or any other point.

Then add in another Auxiliary Point that is going to go from AP1 down to –1000, unless it finds the target in which case it will have the correct elevation.

Then we need to add in a Define Variable to get the elevation value. I used this formula and name. Although you can use a decision or something else to get your design intent.

Disclaimer I did not test this particular subassembly, my math may not work and I might need to adjust the expression to be what the actual value is. But the concept is sound and I’ve used it in other subassembies.

Convert Profile from File or Surface to Profile from Layout

For some unexplained reason Autodesk has decided to prevent you, the user, from changing the profile data source type. This can be extremely frustrating when you want run reports on profiles originally sampled from a surface that is now static, or imported from a file. Or when you want to tie the profile to the alignment geometry changes that where added in Civil 3D 2015.

The easy way to solve this is to use the SincPac’s feature to convert a profile from surface to one by layout.

The harder way is to create a dummy profile by layout. Create a profile by layout and there is no reason to add data to it. Next select the profile you want to convert to a Profile by Layout profile. Instead of creating a new profile when doing the copy, overwrite the profile data.

Now you have a copy of the profile with it being by layout instead of the original source data.