Discover how to carry out a survey import in Civil 3D, a task involving the use of linework code sets, figure prefix databases and a survey database. Learn the steps of navigating the tool space, opening a survey database, importing survey data, selecting a data source, specifying a point file format and reviewing import options.
Key Insights
- The process starts by navigating to the survey tab in the tool space, selecting your survey database and heading to import events. If your database isn't open, you need to right click, close the survey database, and reopen it for edit.
- To import survey data, you need to select the data source. This could be a field book, a land XML, a point file, or points from a drawing. The point file format you choose will determine what your points look like, ensuring you have a number, a northern and eastern elevation, and a raw description.
- Import options review specifications made earlier and allow for new ones. They encompass point file format, point file name, point type, current figure prefix database, process linework during import, current linework code set, process linework sequence, import event name, and options for inserting network objects, figure objects, and survey points.
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Now that we have our linework code sets, our figure prefix databases, and we've created a survey database, we're going to go ahead and actually do a survey import. So like we did when we did a regular import event where we clicked points, point creation tool, and we went and selected our import points option, we're doing something similar, but this time we're doing it related to a survey database.
We're going to go over to our survey tab in our tool space. We're going to navigate up to our survey databases, and we're going to navigate to Civ 201 import, and we're going to work in our import events. If for some reason your import, your Civ 201 import survey database is not open, say you close the drawing and then came back in and it's closed.
So it looks something like this, where you don't have it open. If you were to double click on this, you get an error. You actually are not able to work in this by double clicking.
You are just opening this for basically looking at it. It's not editable. And you can see that here.
It says this item cannot be edited. And that for some reason, when you double click on a survey database inside of Civil 3D, it does not open it for working with. It just opens it for you to view it, but you can't change anything.
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So what you need to do, if you accidentally double clicked to open it, you're going to right click, you're going to click close survey database. Then you're going to go ahead and actually right click on the survey database and select open for edit. When you double click, for whatever reason, it selects open for read only.
We're going to go ahead and open for edit. And now you'll notice that we don't get that error that this is for read only or that this is not editable. We're going to go ahead and go to import events.
We're going to right click and we are going to import survey data. Now we get the import survey data. The database that we're working in is the Civ 201 import, just like we have up here.
So I'm going to go ahead and click next. Then I'm going to select my data source. So to select a data source, I choose what type of file I'm choosing.
So is it a field book, a land XML, a point file, or points from a drawing? We are working with a point file. We're going to go ahead and click the plus sign. We're going to choose our Civ 201 survey.txt. I'm going to click open.
And down in the specified point file format, we are going to, like we did before, choose PNEZD. So from here, we will get a list of what our points look like. And if this doesn't look right, you may want to check which file format you chose and ensure that you did PNEZD.
You should have a number, a northern and eastern elevation, and a raw description. So then from there, we hit next. If you had a survey network that you wanted to create and using
Your equipment databases and using certain other figure prefixes that we don't have defined in our survey database that we're working with, you could create a new network.
We're going ahead and skip past this. That's a more advanced feature. And we're going to click next.
Now we're into our import options. We're reviewing what we already specified here and specifying some new things. We're going to go to point file format.
We have PNEZD, our point file name. This is the name of the file that we selected in the directory that it's saved to. We have the point type.
This is not an option that's available to us. Current figure prefix database. You're going to drop this down and you're going to select CIV-201.
This is going to specify which figures are going to get drawn into the drawing based on our topo information or based on our survey data. So then we're going to go ahead and check yes for process linework during import. Then we're going to go to our current linework code set.
We have CIV-201 selected. If you had another linework code set that you wanted to work with other than this, you would select that one or, you know, we just basically stay with CIV-201. So then process linework sequence.
We have the options for how we want to sequence the linework. We can do it by import order or by point number. It's actually going to be the same thing for us because this is our first import.
But if we, perhaps we're doing a new import or our import data wasn't in numerical order, we know that our import data is listed one through however many points we have. If your survey data wasn't listed in numerical order, maybe you wanted to by point number rather than import order. We're going to go ahead and go with import order.
Then we have our import event name. It chooses the name based on the file that we chose. If you want to rename it, you can.
I'm going to go ahead and leave it as CIV-201-survey.txt. Then if you happen to have points that are already assigned, then this is a question of do you want to assign an offset to the point identifiers? So you can offset points by a set number. You know, if you know that you have points one through 50 and you're to import another points numbers one through 50 and you want to offset those new points that you're importing so that you don't have them colliding with each other or that you don't have them interfering or taking up the same space. So you can do that as a proactive measure or later Civil 3D will ask you what you want to do.
We have the options for inserting network objects. So I don't have any network objects. So I'm going to go ahead and leave this checked as no.
Insert figure objects. Yes. Insert survey points.
Yes. We're going to go ahead and click finish. And when we click finish, what you should have on your screen is something that looks similar to what we had previously in our COGO point window.
But instead, now we have additional line work brought in. So all of the points are going to accept what our description key sets were. But then we're also going to have the additional creation of these lines based on our figure prefix database.
So I'm going to go ahead and save. And then I'm going to go ahead and meet you in the next video. We're going to talk about editing some of these figures.
