Explore the process of creating a profile inside Civil 3D, where the first step involves the creation of a surface profile. Learn how to navigate the ribbon bar, use profile creation tools, create a best fit profile, a quick profile, a superimposed profile, a profile from a corridor, and associate a surface profile with the right alignment.
Key Insights
- Creating a profile in Civil 3D involves several steps, starting with the creation of a surface profile through the ribbon bar.
- The profile creation toolset offers a variety of options including creating a best fit profile using points, creating a profile from a file, and creating a quick profile, among others.
- Surface profiles can be associated with the correct alignment, with the options to specify the ranges, start and end alignments, and sampling stations for cutting the surface.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we're going to start talking about profiles. So the first thing that we do when we create a profile inside Civil 3D is that we go ahead and create a surface profile.
So in order to do that what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to navigate to the ribbon bar. We're going to go to the profile drop-down and inside profile drop-down you'll see the option for create surface profile. Now below create surface profile we have the options for profile creation tools which is just like alignment creation tools toolbar.
We have a create best fit profile which you can use points and create a best fit profile from those points. You can create a profile from a file. You can do a quick profile which we'll talk about later.
You can create a superimposed profile and you create a profile from a corridor. So from here the first thing we're going to do is we're going to select create surface profile. So once we've done that what Civil 3D is going to ask us is it's going to ask us what alignment do we want to have this surface profile associated with.
And so what a surface profile is is it's a profile of the surface as the alignment runs along that surface. We have three alignments that we're going to go ahead and create profiles for. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to select our alignment EX highway.
Learn Civil 3D
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
The surface that we're going to use is the Civ 202 surface and then we have the options for the ranges for how where we're going to cut this surface. We have the options for the start and end alignments and then we have the options for if we wanted to sample it and what sampling stations we would have it at. We're going to go ahead and leave these as they are starting at zero ending at the end station.
These are auto-generated for us and then we're going to go ahead and have this surface selected. We're not going to do a sample offset and we're just going to go ahead and hit because we don't want to have any offset alignments or profiles created. We're going to go ahead and click add and we're going to go ahead and click okay.
Now what Civil 3D is going to tell us here is that profiles have been created and listed in Prospector. Use the create profile view command to display in profile view. So that's what we're going to do in the next video but before we go to the next video we're going to go ahead and create those surface profiles for our other two alignments.
So I'm going to go ahead and drop down into profile create surface profile. Again what we have here is we have the same window and we have the same profile here for surface profiles. All of our surface profiles will populate inside this window.
So what we're going to go ahead and do is click dev main surface add and dev branch surface add. We're going to go ahead and click okay and Civil 3D again is going to tell us that we have profiles that have been created and they need to be displayed in a profile view window in order for us to view them. So what you may have noticed when we went ahead and we went into our surface profile window is that as you select different alignments this window down here changes.
The only profiles that show up in this profile list are profiles associated with the specific alignment that's highlighted. So EX highway has a profile, dev main should have a profile but it doesn't because I didn't apply and approve that and then we have branch. So I'm going to go ahead and go back click dev main surface add and click okay.
Now we have the three surface profiles that we need. I'm going to go ahead and save and then I'll meet you in the next video.
