Extract Objects/Polylines from Featurelines Part 2

Rainy weekend so decided to update the previous code I posted here into a command that extracts the base object 3dpolyline or whatever and adds it to the drawing

    Public Function GetPolylinefromFeatureline(ByVal Featureline As Civil.Land.DatabaseServices.FeatureLine) As Object
        'Refer to this forum post from some background
        'http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-Customization/Polylines-from-Featureline/td-p/3313009
        'http://msmvps.com/blogs/joacim/archive/2009/08/31/gettype-and-typeof-confusion.aspx

        Dim cv As Curve = Featureline.BaseCurve
        Dim oPline As New Object

        'The basecurve of a featureline can be a 3dpolyline, 2dpolyline or a curve
        'check if the base curve is a 3dPolyline
        If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline3d) Then
            'MsgBox("this is 3dpolyline")
            oPline = TryCast(cv, Polyline3d)
            'oPline.ConvertToPolyType(Poly3dType.SimplePoly)
            Return oPline
        Else
            'check if the base curve is a Polyline
            If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline) Then
                'MsgBox("this is polyline")
                'oPline = TryCast(cv, Polyline3d)
                oPline = cv
                Return oPline
                'Dim oPline2d As Polyline = cv
                'Dim oPline2dx As Polyline2d = oPline2d.ConvertTo(True)
                'oPline2dx.ConvertToPolyType(Poly3dType.SimplePoly)
            Else
                'check if the base curve is a 2dPolyline
                If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline2d) Then
                    'MsgBox("this is 2dpolyline")
                    oPline = TryCast(cv, Polyline3d)
                Else
                    'check if the base curve is a curve
                    If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Curve) Then
                        MsgBox("this is a curve")
                        oPline = TryCast(cv, Polyline3d)
                    Else
                        MsgBox("object of type " & cv.GetType().ToString & "not progammed for yet")
                    End If
                End If
            End If
        End If

        Return oPline

    End Function

Creating Custom Graded Corners in Civil3d

One of the first things people notice when moving from LDD to Civil3d is the lack of a mitred corner option for grading corners. There have been a number of discussions in the Autodesk Civil3d forum about work around this issue.But I would like to throw another option into the mix.
You can use the grading plane routines developed back in 2008 for the "Caffeinated Grading" paper at AU and shipped with Civil3d 2010 and 2011 as a .dvb file. or use the .net version  kindly updated here by Jeff Misher .

In the C3D Surface Working Plane.dll you get a number of additional commands

WorkingPlane2Point
WorkingPlane3Point
WorkPLaneMove
WorkPlaneResize
You can use these commands in combination with a temporary cut fill surface to create feature lines to generate a number external and internal corners and daylight lines to do this.

1. Download the .net .dll file for your version of Civil3d from here
2. Type netload and load the C3D Surface Working Plane.dll
3. Now try one of these methods to build a corner.

Option One
Extract zero cutfill line,trim and assign existing ground levels

Option Two

Trim up lines, assign surface elevations and add to surface as breaklines , infill grade the corner if you want  to avoid having to draw boundary.

Option Three

Trim up and add to surface as per above.

Extract 3dpolyline from Featureline

It is possible to extract a polyline from a Featureline here is an example

    Public Function PolylinefromFeatureline(ByVal Featureline As Civil.Land.DatabaseServices.FeatureLine) As Object
        'Refer to this forum post
        'http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-Customization/Polylines-from-Featureline/td-p/3313009
        'http://msmvps.com/blogs/joacim/archive/2009/08/31/gettype-and-typeof-confusion.aspx

        Dim cv As Curve = Featureline.BaseCurve

        'The basecurve of a featureline can be a 3dpolyline, 2dpolyline or a curve
        'check if the base curve is a 3dPolyline
        If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline3d) Then
            MsgBox("this is 3dpolyline")
        End If

        'check if the base curve is a Polyline
        If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline) Then
            MsgBox("this is polyline")
        End If

        'check if the base curve is a 2dPolyline
        If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Polyline2d) Then
            MsgBox("this is 2dpolyline")
        End If

        'check if the base curve is a curve
        If cv.GetType() Is GetType(Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices.Curve) Then
            MsgBox("this is a curve")
        End If


        Return cv

    End Function

New Terrain Grading tools to crash and bash at the Lab

Today the Autodesk labs website released civil3d terrain modeller available here http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/civil3d_terrain/ for download and testing for 64 bit systems only.

I have downloaded the tool and had a play for a couple of hours.

Comments so far would be.

1. Wow
2. It has not crashed Civil3d yet but a bit slow for some tasks. could be lack of ram or high spec video card on my part.
3. Like the over all concept.
4. Would still like to get the featurelines of intersections, etc. maybe I have missed it
5. Like the 3d view editing tools wish this worked on individual vertices of a featureline as well in 3d.

Complex Grading Boundary

I have been experimenting on trying to find a quick way to make a boundary around a complex assortment of grading and featurelines as shown below.

Basically the quickest way I have come up with to date is too.

1. Select all featurelines in the drawing (using my SF command in a lsp)
2. Isolate all the featureline
3. Hide all the internal featurelines
4. Close of the perimeter with temporary polyline as shown in white above
5. Use the Lineworkshrinkwarp command to generate the boundary around the perimeter.

Better yet It would be good if Autodesk could make the interactive corridor boundary tool work with featurelines and polylines objects outside of a corridor to generate a boundary.

Another couple of good AU papers on Grading by David Garrigues

The reason I was looking at waybackmachine the other day was to track down the code that David Garrigues demoed in his 2008 AU paper for doing temporary work planes surface. Could not download it from the archived community site.

But found an AU site with the 2008 papers. You can download the code and video presentation which are worth a watch for those doing grading. The paper does not download for some reason.

http://test42.dcheetah.com/?nd=class&session_id=2921

Also David’s presentation from 2010 is very good

http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=class&session_id=7215

Just have to upgrade the grading code to vb.net for 2012 unless some else has and wishes to share it.

The WayBackMachine

Sometimes websites get taken down for what ever reason and you wish you had a time machine.

Well check out the Waybackmachine remember the old Autodesk Civil Engineering Community site

http://web.archive.org/web/20080412100024/http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/

and some of the old utilities

http://web.archive.org/web/20081222202015/http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/content/utilities/

or Tony Tanzillo’s website

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://caddzone.com

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://autodesk.com

Adding Scale and other Fields to Title Block

Been updating the old title block to be a bit more automatic to save sometime I insert fields into the block attributes to give me the data I wanted as follows

Insert Copyright Year

Insert Drawing Name 

Inserting blanks as per link

Inserted Drawing Scale as per this video

Updated the scale bar values to update based on the scale as well

 

I did look at using a diesel expression first for the scale calculation but this did not work as the object ID is turned to a number straight away and the link to the viewport is broken here are some links on diesel for future reference anyway

http://civil3d.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/quick-to-the-diesel/

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%202010%20User%20Documentation/index.html?url=WS73099cc142f4875513fb5cd10c4aa30d6b-7b3c.htm,topicNumber=d0e393837

http://www.cadforum.cz/cadforum_en/qaID.asp?tip=3676

Another Interesting Grading Example

Been doing another urban infill job today here is a quick picture of the grading so far. Four building platforms in a gully with a driveway down the side and retaining walls all over the place.

Modelled with a corridor for the drive, featurelines break lines for the retaining walls and ETW from the corridor.

Breakline Supplementing Distance

For Site grading I generally up the supplementing of the breaklines to add extra triangles to my surface and smooth the contours out a bit. Instead of typing the value each time you can change the default value in the settings this is where you will find it.

More Acronyms

Doing another site grading job with lots of different features building pads,ponds,swales and roads

so I am and using the featureline commands a lot.

To access the commands quicker I have added a few more keyboard shortcut acronyms to my PGP file . Round on Christmas

Quickly Removing Breaklines from a Surface

I have to credit Bryce at KarelCad with this tip that made my day.

So you have a surface with a ton of breaklines and you want to remove one from the surface but cannot remember what you called it no worries. Zoom to it in the drawing (as you know where it is) select it and press delete now type “oops” the breakline is restored to the drawing but not into the surface.

Alter the breakline as you wish.

The reason I had to do this was I had a number of breaklines from a corridor in a surface that were extracted when the corridor frequency was quite wide to make my surface better I wanted to add a lot more supplementing to the breaklines, as extracted breakline do not up the supplement when you up the corridor frequency.

Featureline Priority

I am always referring back to this post on Featureline Priority by Mark to remind myself of what to do so I thought it maybe of interest to others

http://www.civil4d.com/2010/02/featureline-priority/

Crash Boom Bang

This drawing seems to crash because a grading object hang off a corridor does not play nice with a grading hang off a separate featureline go figurer.

A little LSP selection Gem for Civil3d that keeps on giving

I wrote this little bit of lsp code way back in 2008 for the quick and easy selection of civil3d objects, before the “Select Similar” and “Select Object” functionality was introduced to Civil3d under right click on the shortcut menu in drawing space and prospector. 
However these commands have not made this code redundant, it just seems it keeps on giving time and sums up my core philosophy to using Autocad and Civil3d. If I can, I will find a quicker way.
Basically the code was born back in the day thru the frustration of having to use the “qselect” to find those pesky little diamond grading object markers in a drawing and the amount of time and clicks that it took to rebuild the same selectionset over and over again to find the little things and check if you were in the drawing or the grading in the drawing was corrupt.
Here are examples of the commands I use most frequently and how I use them in my workflow to save time.

1. SelectGrading = SG , Type SG finds all the grading objects in a drawing. Right Click select Object View and there’s my model
   
2. SelectFeaturelines = SF, Type SF and find and select all featurelines
   
3. SelectAlignments =SA, Type SA select all alignments, Bring Alignments to the front, Make all Alignment Styles the same by pressing Ctrl+1 and changing the style in the property windows.
   

One advantage of this routine has over Select Similar is all similar Civil3d Objects in a drawing are selected even if the object styles are different.
The code consists of 10 simple lines of code as follows:-
;************************************************************************************* ;this routine selects all the alignment objects is a drawing ;saves having to use the qselect command and clicking three or four times
(defun C:SELALIGNMENT () (ssget "_X" '((0 . "AECC_ALIGNMENT"))) (setq sset (ssget "P"))   (if sset     (progn       (sssetfirst sset sset)       ;(command "_.PROPERTIES")     )   ) ) (defun c:SA () (C:SELALIGNMENT))
;************************************************************************************** You can create more Civil3d and Autocad object selection commands by copying the block of code above and say if you were wanting to select Parcels select a parcel in a drawing and list it   In the first line of the list you get the object type “AECC_PAREL” swap this for “AECC_ALIGNMENT” in the code block also change the SELALIGNMENT to say SELPARCEL and SA to SP. You can download the lsp file AH-Selectgrading.lsp I use here if you wish there are a few other routines included that you can delete out of the file if unwanted. https://sites.google.com/site/c3dxtreme/
If you guys like this sort of stuff leave I comment. If not tell me what you wish to know more about or what Civil3d should do you never know I may have been there and done it before.