Chapter 04 – AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 Essentials – The Essentials and Beyond

my name is Eric Japan author of autocad
civil3d essentials for 2013 and this is
the additional exercise for Chapter four
for the first part of this exercise
we're asked to create a surface from the
contour data in the drawing so I'll
start that by right-clicking the
surfaces node in prospector and saying
create surface and I'm just going to
call this eg from contours and give it a
style that's existing contours five feet
that sounds good for now click OK now
that the surface is created I can browse
beneath it under definition and locate
the contours node right click there and
pick add and I'm just going to accept
the defaults here click OK and just
select everything in the drawing except
for the green outline and just like that
I've created a surface from contours in
fact you can see how the gray contours
follow the originals for the next part
of this exercise we're going to use the
green polyline to create an outer
boundary for the surface so basically we
want to contain the surface inside of
the area bounded by the green polyline
to do that I'm going to right click on
the boundaries node beneath my new eg
from contours surface and I'll select
add this is an outer boundary which is
what is selected by default
I'll go ahead and click OK select the
green polyline and as you can see
there's only gray contours inside of the
area bounded by the green polyline so
it's that simple adding a boundary to
the surface
next we're asked to do an elevation
analysis of the surface to show the
distribution of high and low elevations
so to do that I'll select the surface
and go to surface properties and I'll go
to the analysis tab and I want to do an
elevation analysis now the book doesn't
really give you any instructions on how
many ranges to create or anything like
that so I'm going to take some liberties
here
and say we're going to break this up
into three ranges low medium and high
we'll call it so go ahead and set that
up and I'm going to make my low ranges
green my mid-range is yellow and my high
range is red now of course you could do
this with five ranges or ten or however
many you want use whatever color scheme
you want this just so happens to be the
way I'm going to break it down I could
also edit the numbers here and use round
numbers maybe 162 185 is one range
185 to 190 is another and then 190 to
205 is my third range okay now that's
one part of it the other part of it is I
need to go to the style and choose a
style that shows that that banding so
I'm going to pick the 3d version that
way I can look at this in 3d and it a
little kind of cool so I'll pick that
hit OK we can see the colors taking
place here and then if we call this up
an object viewer we can look at it in 3d
and color at the same time so let me
turn this up on its side change the
style to conceptual and there we get a
nice look at highs lows and middle
elevations okay
very cool way to visualize your surface
the next thing we're asked to do is to
assign the CIE existing contours 5-foot
style to the surface and if you're
working in the metric data set then
that's going to be a C existing contours
to meter let me close down object viewer
here and I'll click on my surface which
I change to my 3d elevation analysis
style and I'll just go back to surface
properties choose a style that we're
being asked to use see existing contours
5-foot there it is click OK and it's
actually back to what it was before this
is actually the default I used when I
created it in the first place so that
satisfies the requirement for the
the style that shows the contour
interval the way it needs to be shown
for this particular application next
we're asked to create several spot
elevation and slope labels on the
surface so as a general rule I typically
like to start all labeling with the
generic add labels command so I'll go to
the annotate tab click the add labels
command and that brings up the add
labels dialog and from here I can label
everything now you can go and do things
like click the surface and pick a label
command from here but even here I'll go
up and say add surface labels which once
again gives me the generic add labels
dialog now some people work in drawings
that don't have many styles can get away
with using some of these commands or you
go straight to a specific type of label
but the the downside of that that I see
is that you're going to be using a
default style and I tend to like to use
I tend to like to assign the style as
I'm working so I'm going to go here to
surface and then the first type of label
I'm going to put in is a spot elevation
elevation only existing sounds good so
I'll click Add pick a few spots in the
drawing this looks like a good one to
label high points low points giving the
viewers of the drawing a better idea
what some of these elevations are and
then we're also asked to provide some
sloped labels so I'll change my label
type to slope % existing sounds pretty
good I'll click Add and I'm going to do
a one point slope and I might be
interested in seeing what the slope is
here
some other sloops in the drawing now if
I want to go to a two point slope I can
click Add again and this time pick two
point and now I can slope in whatever
direction I want the final thing we're
asked to do is to create contour labels
for the surface so while I'm right here
in the add labels dialog I'm going to go
ahead and switch it to contour multiple
and these look like good styles they all
have existing in them I'll click Add and
I'll drag a line through several
contours and there you can see the the
contour labels that have been created
now what's cool about this is I can copy
this line to other places in the drawing
and stretch it out to whatever
configuration I like now if I want I can
continue to use the add command to draw
more lines
or I can copy these lines around in the
drawing or drag them through different
areas to make labels wherever I need
them and that takes care of the
additional exercise for chapter 4