Stringing Survey Points

An oldie but a goodie. Worth posting as it can save literally hours for anyone that is manually stringing survey points - (If you don't have Civil 3D set up to automatically process survey data). The drawing used below is from the Civil 3D Essentials book by Eric Chappell.

If you have surveyed a string of points and the numbers are sequential then you can use transparent commands when you are joining them in Civil 3D to speed up the process. Below I have a fence that was surveyed from start to finish (1 to 5 in the image).

There are 27 points surveyed along the fence, starting at point number 123

and ending at 150...

To string these quickly start the 3DPOLY command (or polyline command). Select your start point by clicking with the mouse. When it looks for the end point type 'PN (apostrophePN). Then press enter. Type 123-150 and press enter. Civil 3D will automatically string all the points between the numbers for you.

Cogo Points from Text

Very often I come across survey drawings that have AutoCAD blocks and text representing the surveyed points.

If we want to create a surface in Civil 3D from these points we will need to add in the blocks (cross where the point was surveyed in image above) if they have levels. If they have no levels then second best is to add in the text (13.18) if this has a level. (the insertion point of the text wont be at the same location as the surveyed point but the difference this would make for a topo survey would be negligible in most cases). In my case neither has any level information - they are both at zero elevation. There is a workflow available that uses queries in Map 3D to raise the text up the elevation value in the text itself. I am going to show a different approach here using the AutoCAD Data Extraction command to create a csv file which contains the x ,y coordinates of the text and also the contents (elevation). we then import this back into C3D as cogo points.

First isolate all the 'elevation' pieces of text. Then type DATAEXTRACTION. On page 1 of 8 create a new extraction and save it. On 2 accept the defaults and click next. On 3 tick Text or MText - whichever the elevation text is, click next. On 4 on the RHS tick Geometry and Text, on the LH pane tick Contents, Position X & Position Y, click next.

On 5 untick Show Count Column and Show Name Column, click next. On 6 select 'Output to external data file' and choose a save location and file type. Step 7 is skipped if you just export to external file so on 8 just click finish. Job done. You now have a csv file with x,y,z for the survey points (with the point location at the insertion point of the text but close enough for a lot of surveys!)

You can then inport this back into Civil 3D as you would normally and create cogo points from it. One thing to be aware of is the first line of your csv file will be header info so delete this before trying to import into C3D or it will fail.

Creating a 3D Ground Model from AutoCAD Data

If you have a topo survey in AutoCAD format only then the following video demonstrates a workflow for creating a ground model from that data in Civil 3D.

It is best to tidy up your drawing first and hide or remove any AutoCAD objects that you will not be using to define the ground model. This may include any objects with zero elevation (lines, text, blocks etc), or any other objects that you don't want to include. Performing this step first will make the Civil 3D part much easier...

Watch on highest quality for best results...

http://youtu.be/etGKbD_W86c

Rotate Survey Point Levels to Align with String

When using the survey tools in Civil 3D there will likely be things that the software (or any software for that matter) appears to not be able to do at first glance. Digging a little deeper usually provides a solution or workaround. One of those cropped up today.

Can you automatically rotate survey point labels to match the orientation of the survey figure? The answer is... well no actually you can't as far as I am aware but there is a decent workaround that gives the same result.

After playing around with survey point settings I concluded that you couldn't rotate the label based on the orientation of the survey figure - you cant reference another object in the label settings. Likewise with the figure labels you couldn't reference the elevation of anything in the definition. Similarly nothing of use in creating a marker point label to label the vertices of the figure. The answer lay in regular line and curve labels which I hadn't thought of using on survey figures before.

Open the Add Line and Curve Labels dialog box as below:

Next create new labels styles for both lines and curves. Set the anchor point for the text component of the label to the start of the line and then in the text contents dialog box set the property to read the 'General Segment Start Z' - see below:

Delete any unnecessary label components. Next add the labels to the desired survey figure and you will have labels that are now rotated with the survey figure.

Pre-configure Survey Database Settings

I was training some users recently on the survey side of Civil 3D and was showing them how to create a survey database and edit the survey database settings. In the company there would be a number of teams surveying each day on a number of different jobs and a team of processors in the office on the CAD end. There would be multiple survey databases created by the processors each day. A question that arose was how they might ensure that each processor would enter the correct survey database settings, could you pre configure the database settings so that you didn't have to rely on the user entering them each time? I am unaware if you can do this from within Civil 3D but it is possible to do it through Windows explorer...

When you create a survey database in Civil 3D it is stored outside of the drawing and is effectively a folder in Windows that contains the settings and survey data. We can use this to create a 'default' survey database with the required settings and then before each new survey is imported, create a copy of this folder in Windows and rename it. It will then appear on the survey tab in Civil 3D.

First set your working folder in C3D - this is the location where your survey databases will be stored.

Hover you cursor over Survey Databases and you will see the path to the working folder.

Next create your 'default' survey database with the necessary settings. In my case I am going to create two 'default' databases...

...each with different coordinate systems and set to apply scale factor on import along with a number of other settings.

Now browse in Windows Explorer to the location of the working folder. You will see folders for each of the survey databases created in C3D. Before you import survey data in C3D you can create your survey database here by copying and editing the 'default' database to suit the job you are working on:

...and renamed to Cladd Reach in this case. You will need to close Civil 3D in order to be able to copy and edit the survey database folders.

Reopen Civil 3D and on the survey tab of toolspace now you will see the new database. To use it right click on it and open for edit.

Right click on the database and click on edit database settings to see that the default settings are already configured...