Discover how to create an alignment from an object within Simul3D, specifically from a polyline that represents the centerline of a surveyed road. Learn how to navigate the program to create the alignment, set the direction, name it, choose its type, and apply relevant settings.
Key Insights
- This tutorial walks users through creating an alignment from an object in Simul3D, using a polyline that represents the centerline of an existing, surveyed road.
- Simul3D allows for customization to the alignment, including setting its direction, naming it (e.g. EXHWY for existing highway), choosing its type (centerline, offset, curve return, rail, miscellaneous), and even inputting a starting station if known.
- The program also provides more advanced options like applying design criteria based on certain governmental or municipality standards, placing the alignment into a specific site, adjusting how the alignment is displayed in the drawing, and selecting label sets.
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So, as I said, we're going to go ahead and create an alignment from an object inside of Simul3D. So, what we're going to do is we're going to use the alignment that's up the top of our surface that is the centerline alignment for an existing road that has been surveyed.
So, if we go and we zoom in, what you'll notice here is we have points that have been labeled as CL road for centerline of road. We have edge of pavement and we have edge of shoulder. So, what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to use this polyline that's inside of this drawing and create a centerline from it.
So, what we're going to do is we're going to navigate up to the ribbon bar. We're going to drop down our alignments dropdown. We're going to go ahead and select create alignment from object and then inside of Simul3D, we're going to be prompted to select our first line arc or polyline.
So, we're going to go ahead and select our polyline. We're going to zoom out so we can see the entire polyline and I'm going to hit ENTER. So, once I have hit ENTER, Simul3D is going to prompt me to pick a direction for my alignment.
So, Simul3D is showing me an arrow right here that is pointing in the direction that the polyline was drawn in. So, the polyline was drawn starting here and drawn in that direction and so therefore Simul3D is showing me an arrow pointing that direction. If I didn't want to have my alignment starting with the station at this point here and ending at the station of this point here, what we could do is we could choose reverse or we could type R for reverse and we could then hit ENTER and that would reverse the orientation of our alignment.
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I, however, do like to have this alignment drawn from this point here to this point here. So, I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER. So, now that we've hit ENTER, we are in the create alignments from objects window.
So, what we have options here for is to name our alignment. I'm going to go ahead and name this alignment EXHWY for existing highway. We know that this is a centerline alignment, so we can choose the type which is centerline, but you have options for offset, curve return, rail, miscellaneous.
So, I'm going to go ahead and go with a centerline type and this will organize your alignments over in your tool space. So, we're going to go ahead and leave it as centerline. We're going to not type in a description.
If you wanted, you could type in existing highway. If we knew the highway number, maybe we would say existing highway 79 and then we could move on from there. Starting station, if you have an existing roadway and you happen to know a previous record plan that has a station and you know what your station is for the alignment that we're creating in this drawing, you could put in a start station so that you can match up those stations.
We're working in a fictional world here where we have this alignment that doesn't actually tie to anything, so I'm okay with doing a starting station of zero. If you didn't have anything to tie to, you could also start at zero. So, from here, we have the general tab and the design criteria tab.
So, the design criteria tab, I'm going to quickly talk about it, but we're not going to go over it in this class, but you have options inside Civil 3D to use design criteria when you're creating roadways. So, you have design speeds, you have criteria-based designs that if you check this box, you can apply them and they are based on certain governmental or municipality standards that you can get from different varying locations online. So, what I'm going to go ahead and do is uncheck use criteria-based design.
I'm not going to modify the starting design speed, and so I'm going to navigate back to the general tab. So, inside the general tab, this is a more common tab that we're going to make modifications to. So, inside of here, you have the option for placing your alignment into a certain site.
For our case here, we're going to go ahead and choose none, but if you had a site that you wanted to apply this alignment to, then you could go ahead and choose that site. Then, from here, we have our alignment style. So, this is how Civil 3D is going to display our alignment inside of the drawing.
So, from here, you can drop down and you can choose options that are already inside of our drawing that have been created, or you can go and you can select create new or edit any of the ones that you have. So, what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to select existing because this is an existing highway alignment. From there, you have your alignment layer.
I'm okay with being C road. If you wanted to pick a new layer, you could select this button and then select the alignment that you or the alignment layer you would like to choose to have this alignment placed on. From there, we have our label sets, and we'll get into creating and managing label sets in a future video, but just know that you can select a label set here to work with.
I'm going to go ahead and go with our major and minor only. So, from here, what we're going to go ahead and do is have the options for conversion options. You can add curves between tangents, or you can erase existing entities.
Now, I don't want to add any curves between the tangents because I have picked a polyline that I want to convert into an alignment. So, I'm going to uncheck add curves between tangents, and then I am going to leave erase existing entities as checked so that it will delete the polyline that's in my drawing when I click okay. So, I'm going to go ahead and click okay, and now what civil 3D is showing me is it has given me an alignment on the same location as my polyline, and then it has given me tick marks and labels for the stations along this center line.
So, one thing that you will notice is that there is an error that has shown up inside of the drawing when we turned this polyline into an alignment, and the reason that we have this error is, as you can see, it says tangency violated. So, if I hover over the warning, it tells me what that warning is about, what that violation is, and then you can then make your decision on if you want to do something to correct that or leave it as it is. I'm going to go ahead and leave it as it is, and we'll talk about this issue of tangency violated once we've created an alignment that actually does have tangency.
So, from here, we're going to go ahead and save our drawing. We're going to go and select file, save as. We're going to go and save this file as civ 202 align, because we're going to be working with alignments now.
So, we're going to go ahead and type align over the top of this, and then I'm going to save it to the file that I have my drawings inside of. So, I'm going to click save, and then I will meet you in the next video, and we will start creating alignments from the alignment creation tool.
