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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
00:05
In this video, we're going to kick off our discussion of roadway cross sections.
00:10
When we create roadway cross sections inside Civil 3D, the first object that we need to create is sample lines.
00:16
Inside of Civil 3D, sample lines are the backbone of creating any sections,
00:21
that we're going to use to display what our roadway looks like inside of Civil 3D.
00:26
So in order to get to a sample line creation window, we're going to navigate to the Home tab of the ribbon bar.
00:32
We're going to navigate over to the Section Views section, and we're going to go to the Sample Lines option.
00:39
So I'm going to pick sample lines, and Civil 3D prompts me to select an alignment or press enter to select from list.
00:45
I'm going to select "Enter" to select from the list.
00:48
And I'm going to select my Dev-Align alignment.
00:51
So I'm going to go ahead and click "OK".
00:53
And then from here, we get into the Create Sample Line Group.
00:56
A sample line group is just a list of sample lines and then what information we're sampling from.
01:05
So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to name my sample line group, Dev-Xsec.
01:13
And then I'm going to leave it as a counter so that if we create more, this will be the first one and will move upwards from there.
01:20
I'm going to go ahead and leave my sample and style as road sampling.
01:23
But just like any other object inside Civil 3D, you can edit or create new ones.
01:28
The sample line options are pretty simple, all you have are lines and vertices.
01:34
Then in Model space, same thing, lines and vertices.
01:37
And then your Summary tab and what it's called.
01:38
So, not a lot of customization there.
01:41
So I'm going to go ahead and leave it as road sample line.
01:43
Then we have our sample line label styles.
01:46
Again, just like all the other label styles that we've talked about,
01:49
it's going to place a label on your sample lines so that you know which sample line you're looking at.
01:54
And then we go down into the data sources.
01:58
So when you do a sample line, you're effectively cutting a miniature profile across that sample line.
02:08
And so that miniature profile that's cut across that sample line samples from certain surfaces or corridors.
02:17
And so in our first sample line set that we're going to create, we're going to go ahead and just sample from our EG surface.
02:24
So I'm going to go ahead and unselect all of the other options.
02:28
And then later, what we can do is we can add some information back depending on what we want to have to be shown in our cross section.
02:34
So once you've done all of this, we're going to go ahead and click "OK".
02:38
And now we have the sample line tool to work with.
02:40
So the sample line tool has the options of what we're going to call our sample line, each individual sample line,
02:47
what alignment we're based off of, which we already selected as our Dev-Align, what our sample line group is.
02:54
And then we can create a different sample line group or edit the current group that we have, delete the current group.
03:01
We can pick a group from the drawing.
03:03
We can edit our swath widths, which we will talk about when we create our sample lines.
03:07
And then we can sample more sources.
03:09
We can also sample more sources later on using a different method.
03:12
So we're going to go ahead and move on to the next option, which is how to actually create our sample lines.
03:17
So when you create a sample line, you have five options here.
03:21
You can create by a range of stations, which is what we're going to go ahead and do.
03:25
Then you can add a specific station, so you can pick on the screen at what station you want to create a sample line.
03:32
Then you can choose from corridor stations.
03:34
So each station that we have placed a corridor cross-section, they will also place a sample line at.
03:40
You can also pick points on a screen, so you can basically draw a line on the screen using points,
03:46
or you can select an existing polyline to turn into a sample line.
03:51
So we're going to go ahead and go with by range of stations.
03:54
And we get the create sample lines by range of stations window.
03:58
So moving down from here, we have our station range.
04:01
Do we want to start it from our alignment start?
04:04
For this, I'm going to go ahead and select false because we want to pick a new start station.
04:08
So I'm picking the green box and then I'm going to go navigate down to the beginning of my alignment.
04:14
The reason we don't want to create a cross-section from the beginning of our alignment is that we don't actually have any cross-sections in this area.
04:20
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick this beginning of our corridor as the beginning of our alignment to start creating sections from.
04:28
Then I'm going to go ahead and go to alignment end and I'm going to also select that as false,
04:32
because our alignment end is in the middle of our cul-de-sac.
04:35
So I'm going to go ahead and pick the green box again to be able to pick on screen our endpoint.
04:40
I am going to navigate to the cul-de-sac.
04:45
And I'm going to select the end of an arc right here,
04:49
which is the end of our tangential section before we open up into our corridor, or into our cul-de-sac.
04:55
So from here, then we have the option for swath widths.
04:58
So what swath widths are is you have a left and a right, it's basically an offset.
05:04
How far do you want to offset from the centerline to create your sample line?
05:09
So if you want your sample line to be 30 feet to the left of your centerline and 30 feet to the right of your centerline,
05:15
then you would adjust your widths.
05:18
So if you want to snap to a specific alignment, if you had a swath width alignment that you wanted to sample to,
05:26
then you could go ahead and set this as true.
05:27
I don't have those so I'm going to go ahead and go with false.
05:30
But I am going to change my swath width because our roadway is only about 30 feet in half, so it's 60 feet wide.
05:36
I'm going to go ahead and set my swath width on both sides as 35.
05:42
So I'm moving from left to right changing both from 50 to 35.
05:46
And then we move on to how often we want to sample.
05:50
You can use sampling increments, true or false, then increment relative to, you can choose an absolute station or your station range start.
05:60
I don't want to have my sampling relative to my station range start because I'm starting my station at 29.11.
06:08
I don't want everything to have a 0.11 on the end.
06:11
So I am going to go with an absolute station and I'm going to change all of my increments from 50 to 25.
06:19
So I'm moving in here, changing everything to 25.
06:22
And then moving down, you can have additional sampling locations.
06:26
So at range start, at range end, horizontal geometry points, so like a beginning of a curve or end of a curve, and then superelevation criticals.
06:36
If we had set our superelevations to change based on our radiuses in a design setting,
06:43
then it would basically put a cross-section at the critical point of your superelevation diagrams.
06:49
So we're going to go ahead and leave these all as false and we're going to go ahead and click "OK".
06:53
And so when would we do that, it doesn't appear like anything happened because nothing showed up in the command line.
06:59
And we're now in another command, which is specify station along baseline because we're now in the at station command.
07:06
But if you go ahead and hit "Escape" twice, what you're going to see is that we now have these blue lines that are running along our corridor.
07:15
And at each one of them, it has a station equation that are 25 feet apart.
07:19
And so these are our sample lines that we just created.
Video transcript
00:05
In this video, we're going to kick off our discussion of roadway cross sections.
00:10
When we create roadway cross sections inside Civil 3D, the first object that we need to create is sample lines.
00:16
Inside of Civil 3D, sample lines are the backbone of creating any sections,
00:21
that we're going to use to display what our roadway looks like inside of Civil 3D.
00:26
So in order to get to a sample line creation window, we're going to navigate to the Home tab of the ribbon bar.
00:32
We're going to navigate over to the Section Views section, and we're going to go to the Sample Lines option.
00:39
So I'm going to pick sample lines, and Civil 3D prompts me to select an alignment or press enter to select from list.
00:45
I'm going to select "Enter" to select from the list.
00:48
And I'm going to select my Dev-Align alignment.
00:51
So I'm going to go ahead and click "OK".
00:53
And then from here, we get into the Create Sample Line Group.
00:56
A sample line group is just a list of sample lines and then what information we're sampling from.
01:05
So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to name my sample line group, Dev-Xsec.
01:13
And then I'm going to leave it as a counter so that if we create more, this will be the first one and will move upwards from there.
01:20
I'm going to go ahead and leave my sample and style as road sampling.
01:23
But just like any other object inside Civil 3D, you can edit or create new ones.
01:28
The sample line options are pretty simple, all you have are lines and vertices.
01:34
Then in Model space, same thing, lines and vertices.
01:37
And then your Summary tab and what it's called.
01:38
So, not a lot of customization there.
01:41
So I'm going to go ahead and leave it as road sample line.
01:43
Then we have our sample line label styles.
01:46
Again, just like all the other label styles that we've talked about,
01:49
it's going to place a label on your sample lines so that you know which sample line you're looking at.
01:54
And then we go down into the data sources.
01:58
So when you do a sample line, you're effectively cutting a miniature profile across that sample line.
02:08
And so that miniature profile that's cut across that sample line samples from certain surfaces or corridors.
02:17
And so in our first sample line set that we're going to create, we're going to go ahead and just sample from our EG surface.
02:24
So I'm going to go ahead and unselect all of the other options.
02:28
And then later, what we can do is we can add some information back depending on what we want to have to be shown in our cross section.
02:34
So once you've done all of this, we're going to go ahead and click "OK".
02:38
And now we have the sample line tool to work with.
02:40
So the sample line tool has the options of what we're going to call our sample line, each individual sample line,
02:47
what alignment we're based off of, which we already selected as our Dev-Align, what our sample line group is.
02:54
And then we can create a different sample line group or edit the current group that we have, delete the current group.
03:01
We can pick a group from the drawing.
03:03
We can edit our swath widths, which we will talk about when we create our sample lines.
03:07
And then we can sample more sources.
03:09
We can also sample more sources later on using a different method.
03:12
So we're going to go ahead and move on to the next option, which is how to actually create our sample lines.
03:17
So when you create a sample line, you have five options here.
03:21
You can create by a range of stations, which is what we're going to go ahead and do.
03:25
Then you can add a specific station, so you can pick on the screen at what station you want to create a sample line.
03:32
Then you can choose from corridor stations.
03:34
So each station that we have placed a corridor cross-section, they will also place a sample line at.
03:40
You can also pick points on a screen, so you can basically draw a line on the screen using points,
03:46
or you can select an existing polyline to turn into a sample line.
03:51
So we're going to go ahead and go with by range of stations.
03:54
And we get the create sample lines by range of stations window.
03:58
So moving down from here, we have our station range.
04:01
Do we want to start it from our alignment start?
04:04
For this, I'm going to go ahead and select false because we want to pick a new start station.
04:08
So I'm picking the green box and then I'm going to go navigate down to the beginning of my alignment.
04:14
The reason we don't want to create a cross-section from the beginning of our alignment is that we don't actually have any cross-sections in this area.
04:20
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick this beginning of our corridor as the beginning of our alignment to start creating sections from.
04:28
Then I'm going to go ahead and go to alignment end and I'm going to also select that as false,
04:32
because our alignment end is in the middle of our cul-de-sac.
04:35
So I'm going to go ahead and pick the green box again to be able to pick on screen our endpoint.
04:40
I am going to navigate to the cul-de-sac.
04:45
And I'm going to select the end of an arc right here,
04:49
which is the end of our tangential section before we open up into our corridor, or into our cul-de-sac.
04:55
So from here, then we have the option for swath widths.
04:58
So what swath widths are is you have a left and a right, it's basically an offset.
05:04
How far do you want to offset from the centerline to create your sample line?
05:09
So if you want your sample line to be 30 feet to the left of your centerline and 30 feet to the right of your centerline,
05:15
then you would adjust your widths.
05:18
So if you want to snap to a specific alignment, if you had a swath width alignment that you wanted to sample to,
05:26
then you could go ahead and set this as true.
05:27
I don't have those so I'm going to go ahead and go with false.
05:30
But I am going to change my swath width because our roadway is only about 30 feet in half, so it's 60 feet wide.
05:36
I'm going to go ahead and set my swath width on both sides as 35.
05:42
So I'm moving from left to right changing both from 50 to 35.
05:46
And then we move on to how often we want to sample.
05:50
You can use sampling increments, true or false, then increment relative to, you can choose an absolute station or your station range start.
05:60
I don't want to have my sampling relative to my station range start because I'm starting my station at 29.11.
06:08
I don't want everything to have a 0.11 on the end.
06:11
So I am going to go with an absolute station and I'm going to change all of my increments from 50 to 25.
06:19
So I'm moving in here, changing everything to 25.
06:22
And then moving down, you can have additional sampling locations.
06:26
So at range start, at range end, horizontal geometry points, so like a beginning of a curve or end of a curve, and then superelevation criticals.
06:36
If we had set our superelevations to change based on our radiuses in a design setting,
06:43
then it would basically put a cross-section at the critical point of your superelevation diagrams.
06:49
So we're going to go ahead and leave these all as false and we're going to go ahead and click "OK".
06:53
And so when would we do that, it doesn't appear like anything happened because nothing showed up in the command line.
06:59
And we're now in another command, which is specify station along baseline because we're now in the at station command.
07:06
But if you go ahead and hit "Escape" twice, what you're going to see is that we now have these blue lines that are running along our corridor.
07:15
And at each one of them, it has a station equation that are 25 feet apart.
07:19
And so these are our sample lines that we just created.
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