& Construction

Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing

Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Any referenced datasets can be downloaded from "Module downloads" in the module overview.
Transcript
00:06
In this video, we're going to kick off our discussion of alignments,
00:08
by getting into just a general introduction of what alignments are and how we can create them.
00:14
So inside of Civil 3D, what alignments are is they are kind of the backbone of creating corridors or roadways.
00:20
They don't necessarily have to be the center line of a road, but they are going to be used to help build roadways inside of Civil 3D.
00:28
In order to create alignments, what you have to do is you have to navigate up to the Home tab of the ribbon bar in the Create Design section.
00:34
Top middle is going to be the alignment dropdown button.
00:38
So what we're going to go ahead and do is we are going to dropdown Alignments and we're going to walk through all the different creation methods.
00:44
So the Alignment Creation Tools is the first choice.
00:47
That's like any of the other creation tools options inside Civil 3D.
00:51
The points creation tools, the parcel creation tools, feature line creation tools, or grading creation tools.
00:57
Basically, you're going to pull up a toolbar that is going to allow you to use different parameters to create an alignment inside of Civil 3D.
01:06
Then we have our kind of more automatic alignment creation methods.
01:11
So we have a Create Best Fit Alignment which creates an alignment,
01:15
based on the best fit of some linework to be done between a set of points that you specify.
01:22
Then we have Create Alignments from Objects, so you can take objects inside of AutoCAD or Civil 3D, like we did for our feature lines,
01:30
and you can create an alignment from that.
01:32
So you can use lines, arcs, and polylines to layout an alignment that you want to have,
01:37
and then take those objects and convert them over to an alignment.
01:41
The next option we have is Create Alignments from Corridor.
01:44
What that does is it's like our create feature lines from corridor moving along to the network parts and pressure networks,
01:50
when we create pipe networks inside of Civil 3D, whether they be gravity networks, sewage networks, or pressure networks.
01:59
What you can do inside of Civil 3D is you can use those networks to create alignment, so you would end up selecting the objects in those networks,
02:08
and then assign them as the kind of the center line of where our alignment would be created from those objects.
02:15
The next option is Create Alignments from Existing Alignments,
02:18
so we would take an existing alignment and create a new alignment based off of that existing alignment.
02:24
Then we have a more specific creation of alignment based off of existing alignments, which is Create Offset Alignments.
02:30
So we can create left and right offset alignments based on a parent alignment and then we can dictate that those alignments have dynamic links,
02:42
to not only the horizontal alignment of that roadway but also it can have a dynamic link to the parent profile associated with that alignment.
02:54
Along similar lines, the Create Connected Alignments does kind of the same thing.
02:59
However, it doesn't require that it has to be an offset alignment.
03:02
So you can create a new alignment that has a dynamic link to an existing alignment so that they will interact with each other,
03:11
profiles will work with each other, and the horizontal information will work with each other as well.
03:16
So it creates dynamic links between one or more alignments.
03:21
And then Create Widening.
03:23
What create widening does is it takes either a existing created offset alignment or it creates a new offset alignment.
03:30
And it takes a standard offset and then it creates a widening of the offset so you can have,
03:35
for example, a 10-foot road and then create a turn pocket at another 10-foot offset,
03:43
and so the road will go from being 10-feet wide to being 20-feet wide using that Create Widening command.
Video transcript
00:06
In this video, we're going to kick off our discussion of alignments,
00:08
by getting into just a general introduction of what alignments are and how we can create them.
00:14
So inside of Civil 3D, what alignments are is they are kind of the backbone of creating corridors or roadways.
00:20
They don't necessarily have to be the center line of a road, but they are going to be used to help build roadways inside of Civil 3D.
00:28
In order to create alignments, what you have to do is you have to navigate up to the Home tab of the ribbon bar in the Create Design section.
00:34
Top middle is going to be the alignment dropdown button.
00:38
So what we're going to go ahead and do is we are going to dropdown Alignments and we're going to walk through all the different creation methods.
00:44
So the Alignment Creation Tools is the first choice.
00:47
That's like any of the other creation tools options inside Civil 3D.
00:51
The points creation tools, the parcel creation tools, feature line creation tools, or grading creation tools.
00:57
Basically, you're going to pull up a toolbar that is going to allow you to use different parameters to create an alignment inside of Civil 3D.
01:06
Then we have our kind of more automatic alignment creation methods.
01:11
So we have a Create Best Fit Alignment which creates an alignment,
01:15
based on the best fit of some linework to be done between a set of points that you specify.
01:22
Then we have Create Alignments from Objects, so you can take objects inside of AutoCAD or Civil 3D, like we did for our feature lines,
01:30
and you can create an alignment from that.
01:32
So you can use lines, arcs, and polylines to layout an alignment that you want to have,
01:37
and then take those objects and convert them over to an alignment.
01:41
The next option we have is Create Alignments from Corridor.
01:44
What that does is it's like our create feature lines from corridor moving along to the network parts and pressure networks,
01:50
when we create pipe networks inside of Civil 3D, whether they be gravity networks, sewage networks, or pressure networks.
01:59
What you can do inside of Civil 3D is you can use those networks to create alignment, so you would end up selecting the objects in those networks,
02:08
and then assign them as the kind of the center line of where our alignment would be created from those objects.
02:15
The next option is Create Alignments from Existing Alignments,
02:18
so we would take an existing alignment and create a new alignment based off of that existing alignment.
02:24
Then we have a more specific creation of alignment based off of existing alignments, which is Create Offset Alignments.
02:30
So we can create left and right offset alignments based on a parent alignment and then we can dictate that those alignments have dynamic links,
02:42
to not only the horizontal alignment of that roadway but also it can have a dynamic link to the parent profile associated with that alignment.
02:54
Along similar lines, the Create Connected Alignments does kind of the same thing.
02:59
However, it doesn't require that it has to be an offset alignment.
03:02
So you can create a new alignment that has a dynamic link to an existing alignment so that they will interact with each other,
03:11
profiles will work with each other, and the horizontal information will work with each other as well.
03:16
So it creates dynamic links between one or more alignments.
03:21
And then Create Widening.
03:23
What create widening does is it takes either a existing created offset alignment or it creates a new offset alignment.
03:30
And it takes a standard offset and then it creates a widening of the offset so you can have,
03:35
for example, a 10-foot road and then create a turn pocket at another 10-foot offset,
03:43
and so the road will go from being 10-feet wide to being 20-feet wide using that Create Widening command.
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