Explore how to utilize different types of data within a service, by navigating through the Prospector tab and understanding the use of boundaries, mid-ordinate distances, break lines, and more. Learn how to effectively input and manipulate these different data points to create a comprehensive and accurate surface.
Key Insights
- Data can be added to a surface through definitions found in the Prospector tab, which consists of different elements like boundaries, breaklines, mid-ordinate distances, etc.
- Boundaries can be outer, show, hide, or data clip, each serving a specific purpose, such as showing data that has been hidden, or removing data from a surface. Mid-ordinate distance helps in determining the accuracy of approximating a curve.
- Breaklines can be standard, proximity, wall, from a file, or non-destructive. Each type of breakline serves a specific purpose and most often, standard breaklines are used in Civil 3D. Supplementing factors and weeding factors help in adding or removing points from a line.
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In this video, we're going to talk about the different kinds of data that you can add into a surface. So to talk about the data that we're going to add into our surface, we're going to navigate over to the Prospector tab of the Toolspace.
We're going to go to the surface that we've created, and we're going to go to this dropdown here called Definition. So definitions are the different pieces of data that we can add into a surface. If I expand definitions, what you'll notice here is that we have a list of different pieces of information that can be added to our surface.
So I'm going to go through what each of these individual pieces is, and then in the next video, we're going to add a couple of these to our surface so that we can finally display it. So working downwards from the top, we have boundaries. Boundaries are, if I right-click here and I select Add, I have the options for adding boundaries.
You can name your boundaries, and then you can choose what type of boundary you have. So there are options for outer, show, hide, and data clip. An outer boundary is the outside edges of a surface.
A show boundary is showing data that had been hidden. So you have the option for hiding data. You can pick an area inside of a surface and hide it, and then show would show information that had been hidden.
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And then you have data clip where you can remove data out of a surface so that it's not being used and calculated. So show and hide, those are non-destructive, and then data clip actually removes data from your surface. So moving on from here, you can choose to create non-destructive break lines when you add these boundaries in, and then the mid-ordinate distance.
What a mid-ordinate distance is, it's setting how long a chord can be. It's basically how accurate you are going to approximate a curve. So what Civil 3D does is when you have a curve, it will draw a line between the points on a curve set at whatever your mid-ordinate distance is. A mid-ordinate distance is the distance from the chord perpendicular to the curve.
And so the smaller the mid-ordinate distances, the more lines you will have that will approximate that curve for you. The larger the mid-ordinate distance, the less accurate you will be modeling that curve. So in general, whenever I'm dealing with mid-ordinate distances, I generally set my mid-ordinate distance to 0.1. Civil 3D usually auto-populates a mid-ordinate distance of one.
I change it to 0.1 when I'm dealing with mid-ordinate distances. So I'm going to go ahead and hit Cancel here because we don't have a boundary to add yet. Next, we have break lines.
So inside Break Lines, you can define what the break lines are. You can choose your type. So you can choose a Standard break line.
You can choose a Proximity break line, which will draw triangular lines, triangulation lines to it. You can create a Wall break line, which will create a vertical face. You can bring in break lines from a file, or you can create non-destructive break lines, which will just give general locations but will give elevation to them.
So moving on from here, I generally always use Standard. I will actually use two Standard break lines instead of a Wall break line because I have a lot of trouble with Wall break lines. So more often than not, you'll be using Standard break lines inside Civil 3D.
So then you have your options for file link options. If you have a 'from file, ' what are you going to do with that file? Are you going to maintain a link or are you going to break the link? Then you have your weeding factors. So what weeding factors are, they are pulling points out of a break line that you're adding.
If a break line that you add has a lot of vertices to it, then if you choose to weed out the points in that line, if points fall within 15 feet in this distance factor of each other, then it will pull points out that are within 15 feet of each other so that you have points only every 15 feet or farther apart. Same thing with angle. If the angle of departure from one point to the next is very narrow, then they'll remove some points so that you don't have a lot of points that normally would fall on a straight line and you're just adding in extra points.
So those are your weeding factors. Then you also have supplementing factors. Supplementing factors will add extra points if you have a long line.
Let's say you have a 500-foot line and you want to add in supplementing factors on distance, so every 100 feet, Civil 3D will put a new point in interpolated between the two points that you actually have based on your break line. And then same thing with our boundaries.
We have mid-ordinate distances on our break lines, and that is the distance between the chord on an arc and the arc itself. And so the smaller the mid-ordinate distance, the more accurately you'll model that curve inside Civil 3D. So I usually put this as 0.1. So I'm going to go ahead and hit Cancel.
Then we have contours. If you're adding contours, these are basically some data someone has given you. I generally use contours as polylines. If I have a surveyor who has handed me polylines, I can take those polylines and turn them into contour data inside Civil 3D.
If it's a polyline that has a set elevation, I can then add it in, do weeding factors and supplementing factors. And then I can also fill in gaps in contour data, swap edges, add points to flat triangle edges, and add points to all flat edges and turn that contour data into data that is triangulated for our surface. So I'm going to go ahead and hit Cancel.
Then if you have a DEM file, this is how you import it. You right-click on a DEM, Add, and then bring in the DEM file. Same thing with drawing objects.
You can add drawing objects and you can add points, lines, blocks, text, 3D faces, and poly faces. If you have any of this data and you want to bring it in, these ones are a little less common. I can't say I've ever used a DEM file.
I've never used a drawing object to define a surface. And then moving on from here, you have Edits. If I right-click on Edits, you have all of these options for adding lines, deleting lines, swapping edges.
And we're going to go over these options once we've added in our basic data. We're going to have Add Lines, Delete Lines, Swap Edges, Add Points, Delete Points, Modify Points, Move Points. You can Minimize Flat Areas, Raise and Lower your surface, Smooth your surface, and Simplify your surface.
So once we get some data added in, we'll do some surface editing using the Edit command. Then you have Points files. If you haven't done a survey import and you just have a couple of points that somebody else gave you and you want to do a surface from points files, or say you don't want to do a survey import and you want to just create a surface based on a set of points that somebody gave you.
They said, I have these points. This is a ground-based survey of my site. Can you take these points and create a surface? You can go ahead and just right-click Add.
And then just like we've had anytime we've imported points into a drawing, you select the file, you select the point file format, you get a preview of the points, then do elevation adjustments or coordinate transformation. And then you bring those points in and add them into your surface as data. Then we have the options for Point Groups.
So any of the Point Groups that we create inside of Civil 3D up here, if I right-click on Point Groups and select Add, I have the options to add those Point Groups to my drawing or to my surface as data. Then you have Queries for point surveys and figure surveys. So the data that we have inside of surveys, you can query them and bring that data into your surface as data.
In the next video, we'll actually add some of this data.
