Topic: LandXML Funcionality?

[therock003]

What's all the fuss about the LandXML i keep hearing about lately? Can anyone give me a brief description of how it can be used and how can someone take practical advantage of it?

[sinc]

It is used to transfer Civil design elements between drawings.  Most Civil software these days understands it.  So, for example, you can dump a surface out into LandXML from Civil 3D, and import the LandXML into Bentley Power Civil or Carlson Civil, and end up with active, fully-built surfaces in those other programs.

[Dinosaur]

sinc, one thing I remember being frustrated with XML was when creating the files across network drives.  They seemed to be unbearably slow although we had near bleeding edge computers including the server and network setup.  I was wondering if you had (a) noticed anything similar and (b) since you have recently moved into the latest generation of workstation hardware have you noticed any significant difference in XML performance?

[therock003]

I see so it's used or drawing migration and software interoperability. Is the element translation accurate for complex entities like surfaces and stuff? Meaning will a surface created in civil match one that would have been created with a bentley vertical product?

Also it seems that on landxml page it has some instructional videos where you get to see how functionality is being applied. I really like the video where you overlay 3d renderings on a Google earth surface using landxml.

Where do you guys tend to use it mostly?

[Bakerman]

Where do you guys tend to use it mostly?

I'm on a construction site where there are two of us using CAD. I use C3D and my partner uses LDD. I use XML to send surfaces to him but it's easier for me to just grab a .tin from him when I need one of his surfaces. I really haven't used it for profiles, alignments etc. I've also used it to send a surface to Trimble Geomatics Office (TGO)......that works fine.

Heed the above caution, also. I work on a pretty nice network and writing an XML file that would take 30 seconds to the local hard drive can take 15 or 20 minutes writing to the network. Write it to the local drive and then copy it.

[sinc]

My "monster" machine is at home, and I only use it for Sincpac-C3D development.  It's not on a network, so I can't test the feature.

At Edward-James, I'm still using C3D 2009 on a Core 2 duo, and yes, despite our gigabit ethernet, certain operations are unbearably slow over the network.  The same operations go very fast to a local drive.  This includes dumps to LandXML.  It also includes re-importing a FBK while resetting the network,  and I think one or two other things, I forget what at the moment.

[sinc]

Is the element translation accurate for complex entities like surfaces and stuff? Meaning will a surface created in civil match one that would have been created with a bentley vertical product?

...

Where do you guys tend to use it mostly?

Surfaces tend to go accurately, but of course, both the exporting and importing machine need to behave correctly.  As far as I know, the latest versions of most of the software all seems to work pretty well.  There have been various problems with LandXML over the years, so if you are dealing with someone using older software, you may still encounter them.  But the latest stuff all seems to handle it pretty well.

The latest versions of Trimble data collector software are also using something similar to LandXML.  It's XML, and is very similar to LandXML, but of course, Trimble had to create their own "custom" version for some inexplicable reason.  So you can get Trimble Link from Trimble's website, and install it into C3D, and it will create Trimble's "RXL" files directly from C3D.  RXL files are basically the same thing as LandXML files, and except for Trimble's custom syntax, there isn't really much difference between the two.