Get a comprehensive understanding of surfaces and grips for label styles in Civil 3D. This article elaborates on the role of surfaces in creating labels, moving labels, changing the rotation of labels, and more.
Key Insights
- The article explains the function of grips for label styles, covering their use in changing the location and rotation of labels on surfaces.
- It details how surfaces play a role in the creation of different types of labels, like line segment labels and area labels, and the difference in their usages.
- Moreover, the article provides an extensive explanation for creating a surface in Civil 3D, including the various options and data types that can be utilized in this process.
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So, as promised, in this video we're going to start talking about surfaces, but before we do that, what I want to go ahead and do is I want to address some grip editing issues with the label styles for our parcels. So, inside of the labels, when you select them, just like when we had our label styles for our points, there are grips for our label styles for our segments and area labels.
So, if I select the line segment label L1, what you'll notice is there are two grips. There's this diamond grip, which is a slide label, which is basically the location and anchor point along the segment, and then you have this drag label, which turns your label from being a non-drag state to a drag state. So, I did that in the previous video with our start northing label here.
I grabbed that grip and I selected it and then picked somewhere else on the screen and that created a drag state. So, then once you're in a drag state, you have your options of adding a vertex because this is a spline. You also have an option for adding vertex on a regular leader.
Then you have the options for moving your leader vertex, moving your text, and changing the rotation of your label. And then you also still have your slide label. So, I can slide this up and down.
So, if I knew where my start northing was, I could go ahead and put it down where the start northing is. And same thing with this label here, I could slide it along the component anywhere along here and pick a new location. With the area labels, it's a little different.
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So, you have one grip and anywhere you place it inside of this parcel, it just changes the location. It doesn't do anything with that label until you move it outside of the parcel. And as soon as you move it outside of the parcel, it creates the drag state for the area label.
So, you don't get a drag state for a parcel area label until you move it outside, and then you'll have some new drag state information. You have the location of the head and then the location of the leader. If I move it back inside, it takes it back off of drag state and turns it back into a regular label.
So, moving on, we're going to start creating surfaces. So, to do that, the first thing that you have to do whenever you're creating a surface is you have to do exactly what I just said, create a surface. So, what we have to do is navigate to the Prospector tab, go to surfaces, and from surfaces, right-click and select create surface.
Because if you go to the home tab, you'll notice that inside of surfaces here, you also have the option to create surface. So, there are multiple types of surfaces that you can create inside of Civil 3D. We are going to be dealing in this class with just creating a surface and then adding data to it.
So, you have options for creating surfaces from a point cloud. We don't have point clouds to deal with. Creating surfaces from a DEM or a digital elevation model file.
We don't have a DEM file to create a surface from, but if you get these kind of pieces of data from somebody, you can use them to create surfaces and then model a topo map or something with them. So, you can create a surface from a TIN. If somebody gives you a TIN file, you can create a surface.
You can create a surface from GIS data. So, if you have a GIS file, you can import it into Civil 3D and create a surface. You can create surfaces from grading objects.
We're not going to get into grading objects in this class. That's in another class, but know that when you create a grading object, you can create a surface from that grading object. Same thing with corridors.
We won't create any corridors in this class, but you can create surfaces from a corridor. And then you can create a cropped surface. So, you can crop an existing surface and create a new cropped surface from that existing surface.
So, what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to create a new surface. Whenever I'm working with surfaces, I generally never come up here and drop down and select create surface. I generally always go to the Prospector tab, click surfaces, right click, click create surface.
When you right click and create surface, you also have the options for your DEM and your TIN. And then you have these options for create folder, export DEM, or export land XML. So, I'm going to go ahead and click create surface.
Inside of create surface, you have these options to you. You have the options for what type of surface is it. Is it a TIN surface? Is it a grid surface? Is it a grid volume surface? Or a TIN volume surface? So, the first most basic surface that you're going to deal with is a TIN surface.
So, I'm going to go ahead and go with TIN. And I'm going to go ahead and leave my name as surface next counter. If I want to change the name later, I can change it later.
I'm going to go ahead and just go with what the default option is. Same thing with description. I'm not going to write in any description.
I'm not going to choose a style. I'm not going to choose a render material. I'm not. And so, the first thing that you have to understand in Civil 3D is when you create a surface.
Inside the Prospector tab, in surfaces, if I expand out surfaces, I have my surface that I just created. This surface is nowhere to be found in this drawing, and that's because a surface does not exist in Civil 3D as an object until you add data to it.
And so, what we're going to go ahead and do next in the next video is start adding data to that surface.
