Dynamic Drawing Production Cheats for Civil 3D Objects – Slope Shading and More

Why we all eagerly await the day that all Civil 3D objects, like corridors, become data shortcuts or Civil 3D gets replaced with Infraworks (Not sure which is going to happen first). Until that day though we still need to get those Civil 3D models into our drawings in the most dynamic way possible. So here are a few sneaky tricks to do so, keeping everything as dynamic as possible and not exploding a thing.

  • Surface Slope Shading
  •  Surface Boundary Technique for Linework and hatching
  • DXREF’s data shortcuts in XREFS

Feeling Lazy watch the video. (Coming Soon)

While I love all the slope patterns that get generated from grading’s and corridors. I’m sick of exploding AECOBJECTEXPLODE all my linework from my model and copying it across to my xrefs etc. Every time I update, drives me crazy!

So what If I told you that the image below has not a single bit of exploding in it. Everything is produced via data shortcuts, even the linework, all dynamic. Interested? read on ->

Slope Shading
It’s so simple you will kick yourself for not working it out earlier. To produce the grey slope shading on the surfaces is quite simple. Using the surface slope analysis. Right Click – Surface Properties – >Analysis Tab – > Select Slopes from dropdown.

My embankments are 1:2 cut and 1:2 fill -> so >40% and my road cross fall is 3 %. So im going to drop down two ranges

  • 0.0001% – 10 % and (< -you can’t type 0 exactly)
  • 10% – 999999999999999% (type lots of nines in case you make even steeper areas than you have, then it always updates)

Change the colours to 254 (light grey) and 253 (Slightly darker grey) respectively.

image010image001

Then you should have what I have above, dynamic updatable surface shading. If you can’t see anything then you will need to choose a surface style that has the slopes turned on under the “display tab”. See below. Make sure you set a layer for the slope objects if you want to utilize Autocad transparency.

Linework and Hatching – The Surface Boundary Technique
I unfortunately have to assume that if your reading this you know how corridor point, link and shape codes work. What we can do with these wonderful codes is create surfaces where the surface boundary represents the linework we are trying to display on plan. The Red, White and Orange dashed lines taht represent that linework.

So I create 3 additional surfaces in my corridor properties.

  • DS-ROAD_curb,
  • DS-ROAD_footpath and
  • DS-ROAD_pavement

You will then need to work out the boundaries for them. You can do an interactive boundary if you feel like wasting hours of time. Or just use the Angle/Length Trick.

Tod do so, go to the surface properties for the footpath for example. Definition Tab – > Expand the Build Section and make the maximum angle like 92º and the maximum length about 5m.

To explain what this is doing. It will analyse the footpath surface for triangles that have an angle greater than 90°, quite often these are the weird “spiderwebs” we get on the outside of the surface. Then it will analyse the triangles that have a length on any side greater than the number specified and remove them. It’s important to note that the “Maximum angle” only works on outside triangles, not internal triangles. The “maximum length” will remove triangles anywhere. See the diagram below.

Before Applying Angle/Length Parameters
After Applying Angle/Length Parameters

The finished result is just footpath. You can use this trick on all your surfaces though

Now do the rest of the surfaces as well in a similar fashion. You will need to create a style that has only border displayed to see the finished result. You may also need to play with your corridor frequencies to get the desired result.

Creating a surface style that only uses the border object

The finished Result is dynamic linework though. Using a surface border.

Surface that represent linework only using surface border styles

As for hatching well its as easy as using that hatch command

Putting it all together

The final step is to collate all this together for use in a drawing. Here is my recommended workflow.

  1. So i have data shortcutted my top surface and set the shading.
  2. Data shortcutted my linework surfaces in and created different “border only” surface styles that I needed.
  3. Added a hatch onto the pavement surface.
  4. I also brought in my alignments and station/chainage labels in as well.

Now I simple select it all and WBLOCK it out to an xref location.

The best part about the WBLOCK is that you only have the layers you need in the new drawing. Meaning improved performance when using it as an XREF as well as not doing your head in. WBLOCK does not destroy the data shortcuts either!

Let me know what you think below.

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