When we worked up our procedure for importing Lidar into Civil3D, we realized there were way too many steps and way too many hoops to jump through. Hoops preparing the data, through Recap to prepare a RCP/RCS, through Civil3D creating a point cloud, and finally creating the surface. Highly trained professionals have more important things to do with their time than spend it like a well trained circus animal jumping through hoops, so we did something about it.
You may have noticed that when you try to copy named objects in Civil3D (or use the same name) that it will append a (1) to the name. What you might not have noticed is that if the string case of the named object varies, Civil3D will let you create what we consider to be a duplicated name !
When we were approached to add a Catchment Report tool to our Civil3D tools package, we were pessimistic at first, since the API exposes very little about catchment objects. However, if there’s one thing we have plenty of it’s determination and after some experimentation we found a way to collect the necessary data. The results turned out better than we initially hoped.
If you receive a drawing from a Civil3D user, there is a possibility it contains CogoPoints that appear locked. You can’t move them, you can’t rotate them, etc. Since you don’t have the Survey Database you can’t unlock them like the original creator did. If this happens to you, read on.
Like a lot of things in Civil3D, it is possible but not easy to do. This post is an attempt to provide a step-by-step procedure on how to add additional properties to AeccCogoPoints.
Deleting parcels (by name) in Civil3D can sometimes be difficult. Right clicking the parcel name doesn’t work, erase on the parcel label does nothing. Here is a step-by-step procedure to quickly delete multiple parcels by name, without picking a single segment.
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Like many things in Civil3D, they can be done but how it’s done isn’t so obvious. In the process of adding a DEM surface to your drawing you may notice that you can’t project it to another coordinate system (that of the drawing). Here is a step-by-step procedure including assigning a coordinate system to the current drawing.
A frequent question is how to import Lidar data like LAS/LAZ or other point cloud formats into Civil3D. Here is a step by step procedure on the process, using Civil3D 2018 as the target. The procedure assumes you have your Lidar data files downloaded and ready in a folder.
Civil3D users notice that sometimes they can delete a surface by right clicking it’s name in the Prospector tab of the Toolspace, and sometimes they can’t (here’s one reason at least).
With many things in Civil3D, it’s not readily apparent what you need to do. Here is a step by step procedure on how to import FLT fault files. These files are ASCII files you can drag/drop into a notepad and you will see “#AdCADD DTM 12.00 User defined fault file” followed by numerous lines of coordinates.