Profile Grades in Plan

Sometimes we miss some helpful features in Civil 3D. One such feature is the ability to label profile elevation grades in plan view. There are two ways to accomplish the task.

The first is to use an Alignment Profile Geometry Points Label.

The trick to this dialog box is to make sure to select the profile to use and select the geometry points to label. This is important since you probably want only one label at each point. If you profile doesn’t have vertical curves you’ll want to uncheck the label low point and high point. For if you don’t then you’ll end up with both a low point/high point label and grade break label when the occur at the same PVI.

The other way to label profile grades in plan is to use reference text in a line/curve label. Adding the instantaneous grade to the label component will provide the capability.

Now you can label the alignment with the line and curve label to get the grade. This may also be used on polylines or lines if you want to label on the curb line or another location. I sometimes use this to label swale slopes if I have a profile on the centerline that represents the swale slope. Unfortunately this usually is a case where I’m faking in the slope, since the slope of the swale won’t be the correct slope since the centerline of the slope slopes towards or away from the centerline of the roadway due to the length of the swale being different then what is at the centerline. But that’s usually what is shown on the plans and is kind of correct since it will be staked based on the centerline elevations. It’s just good to keep mindful of the faking to make sure a minimum slope is achieved.