POLY-LINE CREATED AROUND MAPPING BOUNDARY IS SHOWN IN WHITE

06 Jul POLY-LINE CREATED AROUND MAPPING BOUNDARY IS SHOWN IN WHITE

Civil 3D: How to create topographic maps from survey data

1

Before you start, make sure you downloaded your .CSV file from the data collector in a location you can browse to in Windows.

Also, do a pre-validation check on your data by opening the file. You should have downloaded it in the format “Point #, Northing, Easting, Elevation, Description (PNEZD).

Make sure there are only numbers in the first column (any letters will result in an error when you download your point file).

Numbers Only in This Column! Point Descriptions (Should

only contain letters/numbers – no symbols)

Northing

Easting

Elevation

2

Open Civil 3D Imperial, select New from the Application Menu (the big, blue

A at the top-left corner of the window), and choose _AutoCAD Civil 3D (Imperial) NCS.dwt template file.

3

Now, we are going to import our points. Go to the “Insert Tab” and select “Points from File” in the Import panel.

Select “Points from File”

Click the “+” sign to add file, browse to your saved .CSV

4

Under “Specify point file format”, scroll to the bottom until you locate “PNEZD”

The preview window should show your points organized in the same format as the .CSV that you uploaded

Click “Add Points to Point Group”, and follow instructions on the next page

5

Click “Add Points to Point Group

Then click this icon and when it asks for a group name in the pop-up dialogue, enter “Surface Points”

Click “OK” 6

If you cannot see your imported points, they were mostly likely imported to a location outside your viewport. Go to the bottom command line, type in “Zoom”, hit enter, then type “E” for Extents, hit enter. Your points should appear in the screen now.

Points with the description “TR” will automatically upload a tree shape symbol over the point.

7

Depending on your point style settings, your points may have imported with the descriptions, point numbers or elevations attached to them. If this is the case, your map might look like below.

8

If you want to toggle your point labels “On/Off”, or change the information shown next to each point, go to the “Prospector” tab in Toolspace on the left hand side.

Expand point groups

Right click on “_All Points” and select properties

Change point label style as desired or toggle to “none”

At the bottom, click “Apply” before you click “OK”

9

Even if you turn off other point labels, the tree labels may remain.

To change this, go the the “Settings” tab in toolspace, expand “Point Styles”, right Click on “Tree” and hit “Edit”

Go to “Display” tab, and toggle the light bulb next to “Label”, Hit “Apply” and “OK”

10

Next, we are going to create a surface. On the left hand of the screen, locate the Toolspace bar. Click on the “Prospector” tab.

Right click on “Surfaces”

Select “Create Surface…”

11

Change the following parameters in the pop-up menu

Rename “Existing Grade

Rename “Existing Ground”

Select “Contours 1’ and 5’ (Design)” from the drop down menu

When you select “OK”, your surface will be created

12

Now we need to define our “Existing Ground” surface with the points we imported, to do this, go to the “Prospector” tab in Toolspace.

Expand “Surfaces”, “Existing Grade” and “Definition”

Right Click “Point Groups” and select “Add”

Select “Surface Points”, this will define the “Existing Grade” surface with all points in the group we created. Click “Ok”

13

Now 1’ contour intervals should appear on your plan. Each of these represents one foot of elevation change!

14

To create the surface, Civil 3D connects the 3 dimensional points with lines. These lines form triangles which define a 3 sided plane, the combination of these 3 sided planes form your 3D surface. This is known as a Triangulated Irregular Network or TIN surface. See the pictures below to better understand this concept.

TIN – Plan View

Shaded Orthometric View

15

As we can see from our plan, there are a few control points that are outside our mapping boundary. We probably manually created these points in our data collector, then used them for survey control.

Control Points outside mapping area

We need to put a boundary on our Surface so that it only reflects our mapping area. To start, create a polyline around the focused surveying area. Go to Home, “Draw” and Polyline. Draw a polyline around the area where grade shots were taken.

Polyline

16

Poly-line created around mapping boundary is shown in white

Restrict your topo using the polyline by coming into “Surfaces” in the Prospector tab, expand your surface. Go to “Definition”, “Boundaries” and right click “Add”.

17

Name the Boundary, “Topo Boundary”, hit “OK” and then select your polyline

Your topo boundary should be trimmed at your polyline

18

Now we need to outline your sidewalks and draw other features in your map. First, turn on the point labels as described in Slide 9. Use the “Description Only” label style.

19

Now, to allow us to focus on our sidewalk shots only, lets hide the other points from the drawing for the moment.

Right click on “All points” and select “Edit Points…”

A point list will appear, select all sidewalk points and click “Select”

20

In your drawing, all SDWK points should be highlighted, right click on one of them and select “Isolate Selected Objects”

This will allow you to see only the SDWK points for the time being, you can always right click on your drawing and select “End Object Isolation” to redisplay all of you points in the project

21

Now that you have only SDWK points shown, use your field notes to help you remember the limits and direction of the sidewalk.

22

Before we start drawing, create a few layers in your drawing for sidewalk, building, lightpoles and other manmade features in your drawing. Make sidewalks and building bolder by modifying their line weights, use at least 0.3mm. If you don’t remember how to create layers – watch this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQjgfPvVUjY