Using Laser Scan Data for Road Rehabilitation

Here is a video I put together showing a use of laser scan data as part of a road rehabilitation workflow.

The background to the workflow is that a section of motorway requires repaving. The repaved section is designed in C3D and is already complete. The design requires that there is adequate vehicle clearance after the section of the road has been repaved. There are a number of overpasses along the motorway which have been surveyed using laser scanners. The workflow in the video demonstrates how to use Autodesk Recap, AutoCAD Civil 3D and Navisworks Manage to perform a clash detection between the clearance envelope and the laser scan data to check for adequate clearance.

The dataset is from the Netherlands so thanks to Peter Ingles of Autodesk for putting it together!

Please make sure that the quality settings are set to the maximum in Youtube when viewing (see small cog/gear symbol in bottom right of screen).

http://youtu.be/u2ddQpuomRU

Create Profile for Watermain

This comes up that often that I'm surprised there isn't a command in Civil 3D to do this for you.
 
The issue is that for a watermain survey you may typically have only a single line of GPS points surveyed. How do you create a profile of the pipe route in Civil 3D? Well that is easy, of course it is, there is a create profile from file option in Civil 3D that will do it for me. Not so fast... the point file you have from your GPS logger will probably be in the format PENZ (point number, easting, northing, elevation). The create profile from file command requires a .txt file with two sets of values - chainage and elevation separated by spaces. To convert typical GPS survey points from coordinates into chainage is a long winded process but is possible using Civil 3D and Excel.
 
There is an Alternative
If you create a surface from the single line of points it will not triangulate properly and you wont be able to pull a sensible looking profile along the entire pipe route. As a way of getting around this you can create dummy levels to allow you to create a proper surface and then create your profile along the route. You can do this by joining the points using a featureline and then offset this line left and right by a nominal amount, then create a surface from them. The steps are as follows (there is a video at the bottom with me narrating, Morgan Freeman wasn't available):

1. Import your points into Civil 3D.
2. Join the points using a 2D polyline (a quick tip here is to use the transparent commands. When you start the polyline command and it asks you for the first point type 'PN and press enter and then type the point numbers you wish to draw the lines between. eg to join between point 1 & 100 type 1-100 and press enter. This will join up the points in one quick step).
3. Use the create alignment from object command and select the polyline to create an alignment along the pipe route - we need this to create our profile.
4. Repeat step 2 except create a 3D polyline using the 3DPOLY command. You can use the quick tip again.
5. Use the Create Featureline from Objects command to create a featureline from the 3D Polyline. Untick the box to assign elevations when the create featurelines dialog appears.
6. Select the Featureline after you have it created and click on Edit Geometry on the ribbon. Click on the button for Stepped Offset and enter 1mm for the offset distance, select the offset side and enter zero for the level difference. Repeat for the other side.
7. Select the 3 featurelines and choose Add to Surface as Breakline on the ribbon. Create a surface if not already done so and accept the defaults.
8. Select your alignment created in Step 3 and choose Surface Profile on the ribbon. You should now see your surface  and be able to create a profile as usual.

There is a video of the workflow at the following link:

http://youtu.be/jDazetIjbt8

 
For anyone who might be interested in doing this using the other method mentioned above, the workflow to convert point coordinates to chainage is as follows:

1. Follow steps 1 to 5 above.
2. Select the featureline and click on Edit Levels on the ribbon. Open the Elevation Editor and right click on the values and select Copy All:
3. Paste the values to excel and delete the columns you don't need (we only need chainage and level columns)
4. Save as a csv file and open in Notepad. Use the Replace command (under Edit menu) to replace all the commas with a space. Save as .txt file.
5. In Civil 3D use the Create Profile from File command and select the txt file and this will give you the profile.

Wind Turbine Hardstand Videos

The following 4 videos show how to model the hardstand areas for a wind turbine access road into your C3D corridor.

I have written about this before (http://civilintentions.blogspot.ie/2012/05/wind-farm-access-roads-hardstand-area.html). The videos should fill in any gaps when following the workflow:

Step 1 - Create Hardstand Edge Alignments:
http://youtu.be/cZIiAWJZcLc

Step 2 - Create Profiles for Hardstand Edges:
http://youtu.be/NnSlQctVx58


Step 3 - Modelling Hardstand Corridor:
http://youtu.be/ML8j9sXhwIw

Step 4 - Finalising Hardstand Corridor:
http://youtu.be/A1zLV-Hijs4

Checking Sight Distance Against Obstructions

Here is a quick (very quick) video showing how to add obstructions such as parapet walls to a surface for the sight distance tool to check against...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pY2cAhZGnY&feature=youtu.be

Quick Sports Pitch Design in Civil 3D

Below is a video that was created to demonstrate a workflow for designing sports pitches in Civil 3D.

The basic workflow is to create 3D linework (featurelines) to define the outline of the pitches, applying the proposed levels at the corners as we create them. The grading of the pitches was at either 1/100 or 1/140 and we can apply this as we create the featurelines, grading tools weren't required. The boundary featureline is created by snapping to the existing ground surface along the site boundary line. (you can quickly do this by turning the boundary polyline into a featureline and get it to pick up the levels from the existing surface). We then simply added all these featurelines into a new surface to create our proposed surface.

The volumes were then balanced by raising or lowering the featurelines as necessary, keeping an eye on the numbers in the volumes dashboard until they are close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD5FAU7bfnQ

Noise Mapping

On a training course recently one of the trainees described a situation where they were attempting to hatch decibel 'contours' to create a noise map along national roads for an entire county.

When they tried this the AutoCAD hatching was too large for their PC to handle and continuously crashed. The decibel contours came in DWG format from the NRA. Also provided with the drawing was a shape file. Using the shape file to visualise the decibel range along the roads is a quicker and more efficient way of achieving the same result.

The following video shows how to connect to and stylise noise level shape files that come from the NRA in AutoCAD Civil 3D:

http://youtu.be/k9r8VCPXHK4

Autodesk Sync Settings

A couple of recent projects have involved using Autodesk Cloud services - both for storage and for online services (AIM 360). One thing that cropped up was how to prevent Autodesk Sync from automatically syncing information to the cloud from certain software.

If you are logged into your Autodesk account in one piece of software and accessing cloud services you are also logged in for any other Autodesk software you have open at the same time. In other words you have one login for all software. So for example I am working in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller (AIM) and am sharing scenarios to the cloud. At the same time I have Civil 3D open and am working away on a project. I want to stop Civil 3D syncing to the cloud but cannot log out of my Autodesk online account because I am uploading from AIM.

The solution is to prevent C3D from automatically syncing. In C3D type OP at the command line and in the options dialog box, online tab you can untick the boxes in the following screen grab. This will prevent C3D automatically uploading to the cloud.