Civil3d versus 12D

It seems that 12d is taking over the civil software market in New Zealand at the moment particularly with the recent Christchurch earthquake and the fact most rebuild teams seem to be using 12D, Autodesk seem to have missed the boat completely here.

I keep joking with my reseller on a bad day with Civil3d that perhaps I should be moving to 12d as well, so I asked a colleague who used to work exclusively with Civil3d before moving company to use 12d, what his thoughts were on which package was best and have posted his reply below as it maybe of interest to others

In regards to your question about which is best, well…….each has its own strengths & weaknesses really.

From my own perspective:

• I am using V9.0. V10 is due to hit soon, which has a lot of improvements apparently.
• First off, 12d is a PAIN to learn. The menu system is very counter-intuitive and the help system is a DOG. That aside…
• 12d handles large datasets better (e.g. LiDAR), but no point cloud handling capability. It can pare down the data in a clearer fashion better than Civil3D seems to.
• Not that I have done field-to-finish work with 12d but from what I’ve seen they do here with it, I would give Civil3D the advantage here. The description key work that can go through to labels and how point groups works is a clear winner, PLUS manipulating and displaying (i.e. swapping triangles, changing surface styles) a surface is by far easier.
• Stability – 12d far excels C3D here. The only time 12d seems to futz out on the odd occasion is when is changing large amounts of data at a time or pad grading (a rudimentary version of C3D’s feature line + grading).
• Working with CAD – obviously C3D is a vertical of AutoCAD, so no guesses who wins here. In 12d you have export EVERYTHING to CAD. And then if you spot a mistake, you have to fix it in 12d and then export it all again.
• In addition to that, there is no real dynamism to 12d of the labels. If something changes (elevation/slope etc.), 95% of the time you have to clean the model (layer) and get them re-calced.
• In terms of design, it fairly even here – apples and oranges really. No such thing as sub-assemblies, only templates (which aren’t really visually-driven; more by figures/numbers). Alignments and profiles are combined into a single ‘SuperAlignment’ which is nice. The basic mechanics of it are the same though. 12d has a nice thing called computators, which come in handy for kerb returns as they act dependent on the incoming/outgoing roads, almost like a live intersection wizard, and can be used for other functions too. 12d seems to be able to do transitioning (crossfall/width/height) better though.
• Also 12d has a better recording system. It’s somewhere between the Action Recorder and a macro. Makes re-calcing a lot of instructions at once a breeze.
• Civil3D’s feature lines and the FL editor win hands down. Better calculation of grading along it and between objects.

That’s just off the top of my head really. There are a lot of other differences that I haven’t mentioned, but to explain them would take more time than I have.

Constructing Kerb Return Profiles based on quarter points

When building Intersections Civil3d gives you only one option for the shape of the kerb return profile a straight line or grade.

Rob Gadbaw who use to to be located in New Zealand and still provides support to us remotely has teamed up with the guys at CGSplus and have made a small app to create better create return profiles here. base on quarter points.

If you are not into purchasing third party apps then are some notes on what you have to do manually to achieve the same result.
New profile in white with incoming and out coming grade projected to quarter points.

New Vertical Curves Added at the quarter points

A couple of things to remember are that.

1. You should hold off to the end before making the final manual kerb return profiles encase the road intersections get moved.
2. Do not extend your kerb return profile to far past the PT just to the first end point snap next along the profile from the PT as this is the end of the triangle in the surface. If you do make the profile to long it starts to play around with your surface to much and does not match offset profile levels exactly
3. To check that the surface coming into and out of the kerb return is correct use the isolate region command on the ribbon just to see the bit of the surface made by the region before and after the kerb return section and compare that to your hand drawn profile.

Printer Settings reminder

Reminder to myself if pdf’s are not plotting to scale make sure page scaling is set to none 

and that in the printer driver have orientation set to landscape or the bottom of the page will be cropped off.

Adding a Subgrade Profile to a Profile View

There are a couple of ways I know of how to add the subgrade levels of a road to a ProfileView.
One of them is dynamic and will update with changes and the other is not.

Depending on what data you want in the ProfileView bands Subgrade or Finished levels will dictate the method you choose and if it is dynamic or not.

This is where the business case for a Dynamic Offset Profiles to be built into Civil3d comes into play as these could be used to create a road Subgrade Profile and they would live update. 

For now we have to use one of the following to methods

Method One (Dynamic but no grade and curve data in profile bands just surface levels & grades)
Create a subgrade surface from the corridor model bottom links and then create a surface profile of the subgrade surface.

Method Two (Not Dynamic)
Copy the Finished level profile and then raise and lower the new profile the depth of offset you want as follows.

Seeing this method is not dynamic it could be a good idea to add a profile of the subgrade surface with a noplot style to the ProfileView to compare against so any manual updates are picked up in the future.

xref’s and Layer 0 and Depoints

There are a couple of special layers in Autocad 0 and Depoints that are common to all drawings. So when you have something on either it always comes thru as turned on in the xref so it is good practice to put objects on there correct layer for whoever is going to xref your drawing.

Some labels not appearing in ProfileView Bands

A question from one of our team today was

“I have put the subgrade surface in all the profiles. It doesn’t seem to be providing points for all the chainages though, for example at CH0, 40 & 50 in the attached picture.”

This is usually because the profile in the profile 1 column for the bands is different as this is the profile Civil3d determines the spacing of the label points form unless the match vertical grid spacing is ticked. Check that the settings are correct for the bands as highlighted below.

Note : Sometimes additional tick and labels appear in the band only at horizontal and Vertical Geometry points this is because these are turned on in the Band style under the display tab.

Dealing with Locked Profile IP’s on side roads Profiles

When you use the intersection wizard you can lock the profile of the side roads to the crossfall of the through road. If the grip symbol is a paddlock it will be locked and you will not be able to move it therefore. to grade the side roads I normally to the following

If you really want to unlock the IP you can. Do the following. Select the profile right click->edit geometry->Profile Grid View->Scroll to the end and click the padlock in the lock column.