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Design a rail assembly and use the sub-assembly composer in Civil 3D.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
12 min.
Transcript
00:00
In this rail back-to-basic video, we will review the rail subassemblies that are available to us in Civil 3D,
00:11
and we will briefly look at the subassembly composer.
00:14
We will set up our assemblies prior to creating a rail corridor.
00:19
For this example, we will mostly discuss A2 track layout,
00:23
but we will look at some of our expanded capabilities for multi-track or yard layouts.
00:28
To create the assembly, we will go in the Home tab to Assemblies and pick Create Assembly.
00:35
In the assembly dialog box, we will give our assembly a name.
00:39
And generally, we want to pick something that makes sense that we can identify, and we'll pick the type as Railway.
00:45
And the rest of the default settings are fine as they are.
00:47
And we'll pick a point in our CAD file, and then we'll see the assembly targets.
00:52
For this workflow, it's a good idea to have our Properties window open.
00:56
And we can access the out-of-the-box assemblies by opening the tool palette,
01:02
or we can go to the Rail tab and pick the Subassemblies icon.
01:06
For this example, we will mostly use the metric rail subassemblies, but the workflow is going to be the same either way.
01:13
And we'll start by creating a double-track assembly, and we'll pick the rail double-track cant with extra layers.
01:19
That is a mouthful.
01:20
And in this properties dialog box, we can see all the parameters that are available to us when we create this assembly.
01:27
So, we can choose to customize these values now, or we can revise them later.
01:31
Let's pick our target and we'll see this subassembly appear with the default values.
01:37
When we select the assembly, we will see those parameters appear again in our Properties box, and we'll edit some of those values now.
01:45
So, let's change the sub-ballast slope.
01:47
We'll change that to 50:1 and we could adjust the gauge value here if we wanted to.
01:53
We're using standard gauge, so we'll stay with 1435, and we have control over nearly every other element of our rail section,
02:02
including the ballast shoulder and the depth.
02:06
And we'll revise the track spacing now.
02:08
But when we create a corridor, those locations will be based on our rail alignments.
02:15
We can also adjust or remove sub layers if we need to.
02:19
And for each layer we can control the side slope, depending on the specifications of our project.
02:25
And here we can create a deeper subbase layer, and we'll add nearly vertical sides.
02:31
And then from the Basic tab, we will pick our side slope condition.
02:36
Again, we have control over a lot of these parameters.
02:40
We can set up a decision table here for our in conditions that will create our cut and fill slopes.
02:46
We can also create a ditch or berm if we needed to, and then we will add those to both sides.
02:53
So now, let's make an assembly for our station platform area.
02:58
And we'll create a new assembly.
02:60
Again, give it a name that we’ll recognize, because we'll need to choose from multiple assemblies when we create our corridor.
03:06
We'll pick dual track assembly and revise the parameters.
03:11
And one key change that we'll make here is that we want to make the side slopes nearly vertical by making that ratio .001:1.
03:20
And when we do this, we might have some abnormal shapes in the center.
03:24
We can revise this by adjusting the drainage channel.
03:28
We'll make that basically level, and then we can revise the step ballast and the side slopes there.
03:34
Now, we'll add the platform.
03:36
With this side platform, we'll have a lot of perimeters to wade through here as well.
03:41
Critical dimensions that we care about are the wall width, and that controls the width of our platform, and the foundation shift.
03:51
In this case, we want to be immediately up against our ballast section.
03:56
We can measure this distance, and, in this case, it is .156 meters, so we'll add that dimension to the shift.
04:05
And in the subassembly platform overhang, and the foundation shift really should be the same value.
04:13
We could also remove the overhang entirely if we wanted to.
04:17
In this case, we'll leave that small overhang.
04:20
We have a few tools that will save us some time when it comes to subassemblies.
04:24
When we select a subassembly, we can choose from a few options in the ribbon.
04:29
And here, we want to mirror that platform on the other side.
04:33
It is exactly the same thing on the left side.
04:35
And so, we can then pick our insertion point.
04:38
And just looking at this, we really should have revised the foundation depth so we can do that.
04:44
Now sometimes, we do have to test some of the values that are available, and that looks like that's pretty good for our purpose.
04:51
So, let's create another subassembly.
04:53
In this case, we want to copy the subassembly from a previous assembly that we created.
04:60
So, we'll select the part that we want, and pick our insertion point, or our target.
05:05
And here, we want to add retaining walls on both sides of our assembly.
05:09
We'll adjust those parameters from the retaining wall,
05:14
and we can view the changes that we've made when we make those.
05:19
For instance, if we want to remove the key, we can do that.
05:22
And let's mirror that to the other side.
05:25
And looks like we're set this time.
05:28
Let's copy an entire assembly, move that over here, and rename that in the property dialog box.
05:36
This one would have just one wall, so let's get rid of the left wall, make changes to those parameters,
05:42
and add the ballast and subballast side slopes.
05:46
This time for our in condition, we will go to the daylight tab and use the daylight general subassembly.
05:53
This way, we can view our ditch that we create.
05:56
With this parameter set, we can customize our cut condition to include a ditch near the corridor.
06:02
And when we place it, we can see we inverted our values.
06:06
OK, so let's fix that.
06:08
Keep in mind -3 goes down, 3:1 goes up.
06:12
Make those adjustments, that looks more like what we want.
06:15
We can also create single tracks for yard or multi track condition.
06:20
We'll look at one for the left side.
06:24
Update those parameters and side slopes.
06:27
Now, let's create a center track.
06:29
Update those as well, and let's create a right-side track.
06:34
And with this one, let's add a wall to the right side, just like we did with some of those other sections.
06:42
One more section that we want to make is a skeletonize track.
06:47
So, let's pick that middle track.
06:49
We'll copy everything, move it over, and we're going to turn everything off except the rails and the sleepers,
06:56
and we'll show how this is to be applied when we create our corridor.
07:00
And with that, let's make a ballast-only section.
07:04
Copy our standard section, go with this one, and we'll keep everything except the rails and the sleepers.
07:12
And again, we'll explain how this will work a little later on.
07:17
Now, let's briefly get into Subassembly Composer.
07:21
We'll show some simple examples here.
07:24
In the Composer window, we can see our point lines and shapes in the flow chart, and we have a preview of our section.
07:32
As we select any of those elements in the flow chart, we can see the corresponding parts highlight in the preview.
07:39
We can see the point codes.
07:40
We can define the point codes.
07:43
We can see the values that are used to control these different elements.
07:46
And we can also set up our assemblies with adjustable parameters.
07:51
And here we can see a preview of what happens when we adjust those.
07:55
We can also set up target parameters that give us more control when we are creating corridors.
08:03
And we can see how these values change in our assembly when those values adjust or when those markers move.
08:11
So, let's make a simple rail platform.
08:14
The first thing to do is drag and drop a point into our flow chart, and we can define the codes for each point as we place them.
08:23
This one will be the center line of our track.
08:27
Let's grab another point, and that will be our platform edge line.
08:32
We don't need to link these because we're not going to have a point to connect these two dots.
08:37
And it's about a meter above our rails, and we'll define that point as the platform edge.
08:43
Now, let's draw the top width of our platform.
08:46
We have a number of ways that we can define this point.
08:49
And we'll make this based on slope and Delta X.
08:53
Our slope is pretty flat, we'll pick -.3%, and the platform width will be set at 4 meters.
09:00
We'll define those with targets, but we've not defined those yet.
09:03
So, let's zoom to our section preview and we'll continue to work around the shape of our platform.
09:10
And our last point will be based on the Inside Edge platform.
09:14
And we need a link to complete that shape.
09:18
And that is between .5 and .4.
09:22
We’ll create a shape.
09:23
And if our shape is closed, we can just select inside that area with the selection tool, and it will fill in.
09:30
In our parameters, we can create a material type.
09:32
And so, let's do that.
09:34
Let's make it concrete and define that as material.
09:38
And now, we can create a foundation that is similar to our platform, and we'll make a bit of an overhang.
09:47
Next, let's make some target parameters.
09:49
We want to be able to target both the inside and the outside of our platform and target the elevations.
09:57
This way, we can utilize those platform edge lines that we created in our drawing earlier.
10:02
So, we'll define those targets with something that makes sense.
10:07
And once we do that, we'll see target arrows show up in our preview.
10:11
We can move these, but nothing happens because we haven't linked those in our assembly yet.
10:16
So, let's set these up now.
10:18
We'll do that by defining the geometry properties with slope and Delta X.
10:24
So, we'll pick the point we want to define and the locations.
10:28
We'll do that for the inside and outside points, and for the elevation.
10:33
We’ll also do that for both platform edge points.
10:36
We have a few other items that we want to set.
10:39
We can make as variable parameters that we can define in our drawing, our platform depth, and our foundation depth.
10:48
Now, we should be ready to use this subassembly.
10:53
So back in our CAD file, we will copy the platform assembly, and we'll rename it, then replace the out-of-the-box platforms.
11:03
So, let's go to the insert tab.
11:06
And in this latest version of Civil 3D, we can insert subassemblies directly into our drawing.
11:13
Generally, we would go through the tool palette to add subassemblies that we've created.
11:18
So, we'll pick our assembly name.
11:21
This one is the platform.
11:23
And in the command line, we will pick replace, and pick our right platform.
11:27
Now this is offset.
11:29
And if you recall, we set our origin point to the center line of the track.
11:34
So, we'll pick our assembly, and we will move that to our insertion point at the center line.
11:40
And it looks like we're in good shape now.
11:43
Now we can also just delete part of this subassembly that we don't need.
11:47
We've actually created a left platform that was similar to our right platform.
11:53
We'll set that up the same way.
11:54
And this time, we'll pick platform left, pick our insertion point.
11:59
This time it's the center line, and now we're all set.
Video transcript
00:00
In this rail back-to-basic video, we will review the rail subassemblies that are available to us in Civil 3D,
00:11
and we will briefly look at the subassembly composer.
00:14
We will set up our assemblies prior to creating a rail corridor.
00:19
For this example, we will mostly discuss A2 track layout,
00:23
but we will look at some of our expanded capabilities for multi-track or yard layouts.
00:28
To create the assembly, we will go in the Home tab to Assemblies and pick Create Assembly.
00:35
In the assembly dialog box, we will give our assembly a name.
00:39
And generally, we want to pick something that makes sense that we can identify, and we'll pick the type as Railway.
00:45
And the rest of the default settings are fine as they are.
00:47
And we'll pick a point in our CAD file, and then we'll see the assembly targets.
00:52
For this workflow, it's a good idea to have our Properties window open.
00:56
And we can access the out-of-the-box assemblies by opening the tool palette,
01:02
or we can go to the Rail tab and pick the Subassemblies icon.
01:06
For this example, we will mostly use the metric rail subassemblies, but the workflow is going to be the same either way.
01:13
And we'll start by creating a double-track assembly, and we'll pick the rail double-track cant with extra layers.
01:19
That is a mouthful.
01:20
And in this properties dialog box, we can see all the parameters that are available to us when we create this assembly.
01:27
So, we can choose to customize these values now, or we can revise them later.
01:31
Let's pick our target and we'll see this subassembly appear with the default values.
01:37
When we select the assembly, we will see those parameters appear again in our Properties box, and we'll edit some of those values now.
01:45
So, let's change the sub-ballast slope.
01:47
We'll change that to 50:1 and we could adjust the gauge value here if we wanted to.
01:53
We're using standard gauge, so we'll stay with 1435, and we have control over nearly every other element of our rail section,
02:02
including the ballast shoulder and the depth.
02:06
And we'll revise the track spacing now.
02:08
But when we create a corridor, those locations will be based on our rail alignments.
02:15
We can also adjust or remove sub layers if we need to.
02:19
And for each layer we can control the side slope, depending on the specifications of our project.
02:25
And here we can create a deeper subbase layer, and we'll add nearly vertical sides.
02:31
And then from the Basic tab, we will pick our side slope condition.
02:36
Again, we have control over a lot of these parameters.
02:40
We can set up a decision table here for our in conditions that will create our cut and fill slopes.
02:46
We can also create a ditch or berm if we needed to, and then we will add those to both sides.
02:53
So now, let's make an assembly for our station platform area.
02:58
And we'll create a new assembly.
02:60
Again, give it a name that we’ll recognize, because we'll need to choose from multiple assemblies when we create our corridor.
03:06
We'll pick dual track assembly and revise the parameters.
03:11
And one key change that we'll make here is that we want to make the side slopes nearly vertical by making that ratio .001:1.
03:20
And when we do this, we might have some abnormal shapes in the center.
03:24
We can revise this by adjusting the drainage channel.
03:28
We'll make that basically level, and then we can revise the step ballast and the side slopes there.
03:34
Now, we'll add the platform.
03:36
With this side platform, we'll have a lot of perimeters to wade through here as well.
03:41
Critical dimensions that we care about are the wall width, and that controls the width of our platform, and the foundation shift.
03:51
In this case, we want to be immediately up against our ballast section.
03:56
We can measure this distance, and, in this case, it is .156 meters, so we'll add that dimension to the shift.
04:05
And in the subassembly platform overhang, and the foundation shift really should be the same value.
04:13
We could also remove the overhang entirely if we wanted to.
04:17
In this case, we'll leave that small overhang.
04:20
We have a few tools that will save us some time when it comes to subassemblies.
04:24
When we select a subassembly, we can choose from a few options in the ribbon.
04:29
And here, we want to mirror that platform on the other side.
04:33
It is exactly the same thing on the left side.
04:35
And so, we can then pick our insertion point.
04:38
And just looking at this, we really should have revised the foundation depth so we can do that.
04:44
Now sometimes, we do have to test some of the values that are available, and that looks like that's pretty good for our purpose.
04:51
So, let's create another subassembly.
04:53
In this case, we want to copy the subassembly from a previous assembly that we created.
04:60
So, we'll select the part that we want, and pick our insertion point, or our target.
05:05
And here, we want to add retaining walls on both sides of our assembly.
05:09
We'll adjust those parameters from the retaining wall,
05:14
and we can view the changes that we've made when we make those.
05:19
For instance, if we want to remove the key, we can do that.
05:22
And let's mirror that to the other side.
05:25
And looks like we're set this time.
05:28
Let's copy an entire assembly, move that over here, and rename that in the property dialog box.
05:36
This one would have just one wall, so let's get rid of the left wall, make changes to those parameters,
05:42
and add the ballast and subballast side slopes.
05:46
This time for our in condition, we will go to the daylight tab and use the daylight general subassembly.
05:53
This way, we can view our ditch that we create.
05:56
With this parameter set, we can customize our cut condition to include a ditch near the corridor.
06:02
And when we place it, we can see we inverted our values.
06:06
OK, so let's fix that.
06:08
Keep in mind -3 goes down, 3:1 goes up.
06:12
Make those adjustments, that looks more like what we want.
06:15
We can also create single tracks for yard or multi track condition.
06:20
We'll look at one for the left side.
06:24
Update those parameters and side slopes.
06:27
Now, let's create a center track.
06:29
Update those as well, and let's create a right-side track.
06:34
And with this one, let's add a wall to the right side, just like we did with some of those other sections.
06:42
One more section that we want to make is a skeletonize track.
06:47
So, let's pick that middle track.
06:49
We'll copy everything, move it over, and we're going to turn everything off except the rails and the sleepers,
06:56
and we'll show how this is to be applied when we create our corridor.
07:00
And with that, let's make a ballast-only section.
07:04
Copy our standard section, go with this one, and we'll keep everything except the rails and the sleepers.
07:12
And again, we'll explain how this will work a little later on.
07:17
Now, let's briefly get into Subassembly Composer.
07:21
We'll show some simple examples here.
07:24
In the Composer window, we can see our point lines and shapes in the flow chart, and we have a preview of our section.
07:32
As we select any of those elements in the flow chart, we can see the corresponding parts highlight in the preview.
07:39
We can see the point codes.
07:40
We can define the point codes.
07:43
We can see the values that are used to control these different elements.
07:46
And we can also set up our assemblies with adjustable parameters.
07:51
And here we can see a preview of what happens when we adjust those.
07:55
We can also set up target parameters that give us more control when we are creating corridors.
08:03
And we can see how these values change in our assembly when those values adjust or when those markers move.
08:11
So, let's make a simple rail platform.
08:14
The first thing to do is drag and drop a point into our flow chart, and we can define the codes for each point as we place them.
08:23
This one will be the center line of our track.
08:27
Let's grab another point, and that will be our platform edge line.
08:32
We don't need to link these because we're not going to have a point to connect these two dots.
08:37
And it's about a meter above our rails, and we'll define that point as the platform edge.
08:43
Now, let's draw the top width of our platform.
08:46
We have a number of ways that we can define this point.
08:49
And we'll make this based on slope and Delta X.
08:53
Our slope is pretty flat, we'll pick -.3%, and the platform width will be set at 4 meters.
09:00
We'll define those with targets, but we've not defined those yet.
09:03
So, let's zoom to our section preview and we'll continue to work around the shape of our platform.
09:10
And our last point will be based on the Inside Edge platform.
09:14
And we need a link to complete that shape.
09:18
And that is between .5 and .4.
09:22
We’ll create a shape.
09:23
And if our shape is closed, we can just select inside that area with the selection tool, and it will fill in.
09:30
In our parameters, we can create a material type.
09:32
And so, let's do that.
09:34
Let's make it concrete and define that as material.
09:38
And now, we can create a foundation that is similar to our platform, and we'll make a bit of an overhang.
09:47
Next, let's make some target parameters.
09:49
We want to be able to target both the inside and the outside of our platform and target the elevations.
09:57
This way, we can utilize those platform edge lines that we created in our drawing earlier.
10:02
So, we'll define those targets with something that makes sense.
10:07
And once we do that, we'll see target arrows show up in our preview.
10:11
We can move these, but nothing happens because we haven't linked those in our assembly yet.
10:16
So, let's set these up now.
10:18
We'll do that by defining the geometry properties with slope and Delta X.
10:24
So, we'll pick the point we want to define and the locations.
10:28
We'll do that for the inside and outside points, and for the elevation.
10:33
We’ll also do that for both platform edge points.
10:36
We have a few other items that we want to set.
10:39
We can make as variable parameters that we can define in our drawing, our platform depth, and our foundation depth.
10:48
Now, we should be ready to use this subassembly.
10:53
So back in our CAD file, we will copy the platform assembly, and we'll rename it, then replace the out-of-the-box platforms.
11:03
So, let's go to the insert tab.
11:06
And in this latest version of Civil 3D, we can insert subassemblies directly into our drawing.
11:13
Generally, we would go through the tool palette to add subassemblies that we've created.
11:18
So, we'll pick our assembly name.
11:21
This one is the platform.
11:23
And in the command line, we will pick replace, and pick our right platform.
11:27
Now this is offset.
11:29
And if you recall, we set our origin point to the center line of the track.
11:34
So, we'll pick our assembly, and we will move that to our insertion point at the center line.
11:40
And it looks like we're in good shape now.
11:43
Now we can also just delete part of this subassembly that we don't need.
11:47
We've actually created a left platform that was similar to our right platform.
11:53
We'll set that up the same way.
11:54
And this time, we'll pick platform left, pick our insertion point.
11:59
This time it's the center line, and now we're all set.
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