Topic: Elevations from Surface question (C3D)

[surveyor_randy]

Good morning all!  If I use Points -> Edit Points -> Elevation from Surface command to establish elevations along a curb & gutter, is there anyway to then offset the curb and gutter but maintain the elevations that were extracted from the surface layer?  I tried the station and offset, but it picks up the elevation from the surface at the offset point, not the baseline.  I hope that my greek makes sense to everyone.  Have a great day all!

[mjfarrell]

I think if you combined output from the Incremental Alignment report, and the similarly named report template in the Toolbox, you would get what you are after.  Your Greek looks a lot like English to me.

[mjfarrell]

Interestingly enough this produces a derivative that one can use.  If you write out the profile data to a separate file; then it would be possible to Verify the staking report against the actual design profile one was attempting to stake.

[surveyor_randy]

Thank you sir!  I will look into doing it that way.  Typical Autodesk making things more difficult then they should be.  The thing that I REALLY like about Terramodel is being able to create 'sets' (which are lines associated with points).  I can pull my elevations from the DTM and place points along the curb, create a set, then offset it however I want.  The neat thing about it is that the offset line contains all of the points with proper X,Y,Z geometry.  It maintains the Z value of the offset line and creates new points with the proper horizontal values.  I smell another VBA routine in the making.

[sinc]

There is a PT2FEATURE command in the SincpacC3D that datum-adjusts points using feature lines.  It might be useful for this situation.  Once the points are set, you can datum-adjust them to match the feature line.

[surveyor_randy]

Great!  Would I need to turn the C&G into a feature line?  It is coming from an assembly.

[mjfarrell]

you will be lifting that feature line from the corridor under utilities

[sinc]

Great!  Would I need to turn the C&G into a feature line?  It is coming from an assembly.

I can't remember.  I seem to remember that early versions of that routine only worked on Feature Lines, and I have since changed it so that it works on any piece of linework, but I'm not sure which version I have posted on the website.  I think it's still the old one that only worked on Feature Lines.

But in any case, if you are extracting a Feature Line from a Corridor, you already have a Feature Line, so it should work out.  Let me know what happens.  So far, in the cases where I'm using a Corridor, I've generated the points I need straight from the corridor.  For example, you can attach a LinkWidthAndSlope subassembly to the back of your curb.  Set it to a 0% slope and key in your offset distance, and tell it to Omit the Link to keep a surface link from appearing.  Then you can use it to generate offset points.  The offset is measured perpendicular to the alignment, which isn't always right, but in most cases it doesn't make enough of a difference to matter.

[surveyor_randy]

Wow!!  Thanks for the tips Sinc!  I REALLY appreciate it!  Since we are just jumping right into C3D, I can use any pointers that I can get.  I'm not going to be able to experiment with getting the design into the ground until our engineers finish their first design.  And, unfortunately, at that time, upper management is going to want it put on the ground ASAP so I'm not going to have a whole lot of time to spend on trying to figure things out.  The tarot cards are telling me that there will be many late nights and weekends spent at the office in the near future!  :doa:

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me out!  Ya'll here at the swamp are great people!  keep up the good work.