Corrupt Feature Lines

Occasionally a site may become corrupt and cause a drawing to become unstable. If the feature lines are utilized to create a surface it is possible to get the feature lines back if the bak file or last backup of the drawing isn’t available. To start export the surface to XML. Then open another file and import the XML surface, making sure to import the Source Data.

This will bring in the feature lines as 3D polylines which may be converted back into feature lines and if necessary fitting curves to the feature lines. While not ideal, it can save some work by recovering some of the work that happened before the drawing became unstable.

Converting a Civil 3D Surface to a Revit Surface

Sometimes it’s necessary to convert a Civil 3D surface into a Revit surface.

The first thing is to change the drawing’s Proxygraphics setting to 1. This will save a copy of the linework that makes up the surface in the drawing. Make sure the major and minor contours are shown and they are on layers other than 0.

Next on the Insert Tab in Revit use the Link CAD to bring in the drawing that contains the Civil 3D Surface. Go to a 3D view and using the Massing & Site tab, use the Toposurface button to create a new surface. Then use the Create from Import >> Select Import Instance. Select the CAD drawing and only select the layers the contours are on.

Here’s the steps in video form:

Line Labels

Have you created your profile view and profile labels only to find that the last or first segment is missing a line label? The cause of this is often the anchor point of the text label component is set to the midpoint of the tangent.

In order to always get it to show up, and not to use a separate label style, utilize a line label component set to be hidden. For the anchors of the hidden line use the Anchor Tangent Start In View and Anchor Tangent End In View.

Now set the text label component to the middle of the HiddenLine.

Now the label will show up in all of the views.

Look in the comments for a case where this doesn't work, split profiles.

Selection Set Utility

If you miss the functionality of the Selection Set Builder in Land Desktop then you may want to check out the Sincpac which now includes this functionality.

I never used the utility in LDT, but I have read of several requests for this functionality. I’ve spent some time thinking about creating it in the past, but never got around to creating it. Now I don’t have to because someone else has done it.

The Build Selection Set is similar to Quick Select, but you can run different queries at the same time. For instance if you wanted to select all circles that are red in the drawing you’d have to run the Quick Select command twice, first to select circles and next to exclude all circles that are not red. With the Build Selection Set utility you can run the query once from the dialog box. Additionally one can select the property check marks on the left and then pick an object and the properties of the object will be populated into the current selection criteria making it easy to create a selection based on a certain object.

To find more information about the command look at this page.

http://www.quuxsoft.com/SincpacC3D_Help/SP_BuildSelectionSet.htm

Disclosure: I’ve been provided access to the Sincpac without fee, but this post was not requested by the developer’s of the Sincpac, I just thought you might like to know it exists.

Utility Access Covers of Los Angeles

The City of Los Angeles owns quite a bit of utilities such as water and power. Here are some utility manholes and utility access covers I came across in a recent visit.

The next one is interesting, notice the manhole is slightly below the adjacent pavement surfaces. It seems that the City of Los Angeles’ utility departments do not want Public Works department hired contractors to adjust manhole covers to grade. Unfortunately it seems like the utility departments don’t want to do it either. What you end up with are manhole covers that were never raised to grade, but uncovered, or manholes that are hidden beneath asphalt pavement.

I’m kind of surprised advertisements are allowed on manhole covers such as this one.

A basic SD cover.

No doubt what this cover is for.

A decorative cover.