Dive into the detailed process of setting up grading criteria in Civil 3D. This article intricately explains how to use the grading creation toolbar, set up grading criteria, select the correct surface, check the layer, and create grading objects in Civil 3D.
Key Insights
- The grading creation toolbar in Civil 3D allows you to set up grading criteria and objects. This is done by first selecting your grading groups correctly, and ensuring you are on the correct surface and layer.
- When creating grading objects, it is essential to ensure that cut and fill slopes are displayed correctly. The cut and fill slope styles should be set up when the drawing template file is set up.
- Once grading objects are set up, Civil 3D allows you to select a feature, apply it to the entire length, select your cut and fill slopes, and automatically create a grading object outside of your feature line that targets the surface below.
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Now that we've created our grading criteria set, we're ready to start working in our grading creation toolbar. In order to do that, we're gonna go ahead and navigate to the home tab of the ribbon bar.
We're gonna drop down on our grading options. We're gonna go to grading creation tools. Now that we've opened our grading creation toolbar, we're gonna go ahead and set up all of our grading criteria before we set up our grading object.
We're gonna go ahead and select the first button here to make sure that we have our grading groups set correctly. We wanna make sure we're in the DevMain site and on the DevMain grad grading group. We're gonna go ahead and click okay.
We're gonna select the surface. We're gonna go ahead and make sure that we are on Civ 203 for our selected surface. We're gonna go ahead and click okay.
We'll check our layer. We have our CTOBO grad layer set up correctly. So I'm gonna go ahead and click okay.
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And then we're gonna go to our grading criteria sets. We're gonna make sure we drop down, change off of basic set to DevGrad and select okay as well. So once we've set up our parameters for our grading objects inside Civil 3D, we do have the option of dropping down and selecting our different grading criteria.
We're gonna end up working with our surface grading criteria. So I'm gonna go ahead and select surface. And then from here, we could start just creating our grading objects inside Civil 3D.
But before we do that, if you don't remember what your grading criteria set was or what the set parameters were for that grading criteria, you can click on these double down areas to expand the toolbar. When we do that, what we're gonna see here is that we're gonna see the criteria for the grading set that is currently selected. So the grading criteria for surface, we have it set as target surface, cut and fill slopes, slope of one and a half to one, fill slope of two to one, and then our average slope for our interior corner overlap.
So moving on from here, the one thing that we wanna make sure we set up though is that we are displaying our cut and fill slopes properly. We set up our cut and fill slope styles when we set up the drawing template file. So I'm gonna go ahead and drop down my cut slope style.
I'm gonna make sure I select cut, and then I'm gonna drop down my fill slope style. I'm gonna make sure I select fill. So from here, now we can go ahead and drop down and select our create grading.
Now, if for some reason you saw what you had here in the parameters and it didn't look correct, you'll notice that if you click into these boxes, you cannot change any of them. The way that you would go ahead and edit these is you would drop down and select edit current selection, or if you wanted to create a new criteria, you could go ahead and select create new. We don't need to do that.
So I'm gonna go ahead and go with create grading. We've dropped down, select create grading. Civil 3D is going to prompt us to select a feature.
I'm gonna go ahead and navigate so that my feature lines are over here. We remember from selecting our grading group that we are working with our dev main group here. We can start working with any of these feature lines.
I'm gonna start here at lot 11. I'm gonna pick the feature line. Civil 3D is going to prompt me to select a grading side.
I'm gonna pick to the outside because on the inside of the feature line, we already have our infill object. So I'm picking the outside. Civil 3D is going to prompt me to apply it to the entire length, yes or no.
If we select no, we get to pick how much of the grading object we want to create around that feature line. I want it to do the entire feature line. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit ENTER for yes.
From here, we select our cut slope. We already set our slope up correctly at one and a half to one as our maximum cut slope. If you wanted to soften it, you could soften it by typing in a different ratio.
I'm gonna leave it at one and a half to one and hit ENTER. Then same thing with the fill slope. My maximum fill slope ratio is two to one.
I could soften it by changing it to something like three or four to one, but for my purposes now, I wanna leave it as two to one. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit ENTER. When I do that, Civil 3D automatically creates a grading object outside of my feature line and targets the surface below, which we set to CIV203.
So from here, now I can march around and do that for every pad inside of my dev main grading group. So I'm gonna go ahead and select the feature line, select the outside, hit ENTER to select yes, hit ENTER, select two, except one and a half to one, hit ENTER to select two to one. So then from there, I'm gonna go ahead and select feature line, click outside, enter, enter, enter.
Feature line, outside, enter, enter, enter. And I'm gonna do that as I march around all of these feature lines that we have created for our grading pads. Now, this is the benefit of setting up a grading criteria that has all of the information that you need and want in your drawing is that you don't have to go through and modify any of the numbers as you go.
So that's why I tend to edit these numbers on the fly before I go into my grading creation button or my grading creation maneuver is that it allows me to select my feature lines and then not walk through any of the prompts that Civil 3D is giving me. I'm going ahead and just clicking along and creating my grading objects with no thought for how I'm gonna fill in my cut or fill slope ratios. And then I'm gonna go ahead and now that I've created all my grading objects, I'm gonna hit escape to get out of the command.
I'm gonna close my grading creation tools and then I'm gonna zoom out. I'm gonna select two of my diamonds, my infill and my slope diamonds. I'm gonna go ahead and right click.
I'm gonna select similar. So I'm selecting all of these objects. I'm gonna go to object viewer so that we can see what these individual grading objects look like.
I'm gonna expand this out and as I rotate this, what you're going to notice is that each of these pads now has a slope associated with it that is targeting the existing surface below. So I'm gonna go ahead and close this window. I'm gonna hit escape to unselect all of these grading groups.
I'm gonna go ahead and save my drawing and then I'll meet you in the next video.
