This article takes a deep dive into the aspect of site interactions between feature lines in creating surface maps, highlighting the role of sites in determining interaction between feature lines. The tutorial further explores how to manipulate these interactions, providing key insights for novice and experienced users alike.
Key Insights
- Site interactions between feature lines play a crucial role in creating surface maps; they determine how feature lines cross each other. A line drawn last is considered the most important and can significantly impact the lines drawn before it.
- Feature lines on the same site interact with each other, with the most recent line considered the most pertinent. If you don't want feature lines to interact, it is recommended to place them on different sites.
- The article also highlights the flexibility in manipulating site interactions. It is possible to move feature lines between sites, allowing them to interact with different feature lines or isolate them from interactions by placing them in a 'none' site.
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.
So before we go ahead and create a surface from the feature lines that we've been drawing in the past couple of videos, I want to talk about site interactions between feature lines. If you remember, when we created these feature lines, we put them all onto a single site.
We put them all on the dev branch site. I'm going to go ahead and take this site one. I'm going to right click and choose properties, and I'm going to go ahead and put this, name it as test, and I'm going to hit apply and hit okay.
We're going to test out what site interactions look like between feature lines by using this test site. So I'm going to go ahead and create a couple of feature lines, and then we're going to draw them and see how they interact with each other. So I'm going to create a feature line.
I'm going to be working off of our drawing, and then at the end of this, we're going to go ahead and delete these feature lines because I don't want to keep them. We're going to go ahead and go with the test site. We are going to not change the name.
We're going to set it as grading design and a layer as seatope of feet, and that's it. I'm going to go ahead and click okay. I'm going to specify a start point here off to the left.
Learn Civil 3D
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
I'm going to specify an elevation of 150. Now I'm going to specify my next point. So I'm going to go ahead and click here.
At that point, let's go ahead and test our theory grade. We're going to type G for grade. I'm going to hit ENTER, and I'm going to specify a grade.
I want it to go up by two percent, so I'm going to go ahead and hit two for grade, and I'm going to hit ENTER. Then I'm going to go and click to the next one, and I'm going to go ahead and let's do a slope now. I'm going to do slope S. I'm going to type in negative two for a negative two to one slope.
I'm going to hit ENTER. This says requires numeric value or keyword specification. Specify grade.
It didn't like my negative two, so I'm going to go ahead and go with just a negative two for my grade instead. So the slope probably needed me to type in two to one rather than negative two, so I'm going to go ahead and try this again with slope and hit S, and then I'm going to type two colon one and hit ENTER, and it's again telling me requires numeric value or option keyword. Specify grade.
So I'm typing S again to try and switch to slope. Oh, Civil 3D was asking me slope or surface. S is not okay because S could be slope or surface.
I need to type SL for slope. Now I'm going to go ahead and choose a slope. I'm going to go ahead and choose negative two for a negative two to one slope, and then I'm going to hit ENTER.
Now I've got this feature line here. If I go to elevation editor, what we're going to see here is that I've gone to negative two and negative 50. So in fact, grade is percent grade.
Slope is ratioed slopes. We've confirmed that. That's great, but we haven't shown anything about site to site interactions.
So you'll notice when I look at this elevation editor, my first point is at 150. My second point is at 162.39. I'm going to go ahead and click to close that window, and I'm going to go ahead and place a new feature line. I'm going to leave it on the test site, and I'm going to go ahead and click okay.
I'm going to pick here, and what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to specify an elevation of 200, something well above what we were dealing with before. I'm going to come over to this side over here, and now I'm going to specify another elevation. I'm going to specify an elevation of 200 again.
So once I've done that, I'm going to go ahead and enter to get out of that feature line command, and if I click on this line here and I go to elevation editor, you're going to notice that there is an additional point being placed in here at a specific station, and if I go and I look at this line, you're going to notice this gray triangle. That's this point. It's where it crosses this feature line, and they're interacting with each other because they're on the same site.
Now I placed this line second, so Civil 3D thinks that this line is more important than this line, so I now have specified this line being a flat line from 200 to 200. Let's go ahead and see how that 200 line impacts this feature line here. I'm going to go to elevation editor, and what you're going to see here is that that point where this feature line crosses this feature line, because I put in a new feature line crossing my original feature line, it put an intermediary point at 200 at the crossing of those feature lines, and that's what we get when we're dealing with interactions between sites.
We have two lines on the same site. As you draw the lines, the most recent line that you draw is considered the most important line, and it brings everything to the new line that you're drawing. So another way that we can test this is I can go ahead and go to feature line, create feature line.
I can put it on a different site, so let's go back to dev branch. I'm going to go ahead and click okay. I'm going to pick here, and I'm going to tell it an elevation of 1,000.
I'm going to pick here. I'm going to pick the same elevation of 1,000, hit ENTER to get out. I'm going to select this line and go to elevation editor, and what you're going to see is no intermediary point was placed, and the same thing with this feature line.
If I go to elevation editor, no intermediary point was placed here either. That's because they're on different sites, and they will not interact with each other. If you don't want feature lines to interact with each other, place them on different sites.
If you want them to interact with each other, place them on the same site. Now we do have the option of moving feature lines to sites, so I could go to dev branch. I could go to feature lines.
I could go to the feature line that I'm trying to select. So this feature line here, if I right click and I go to properties, I'll see that the name of that feature line is feature three. So I can go ahead and I can go to feature lines.
I can go to feature three here. I can right click, and I can choose move to site. So I can take an object from this site and move it to another site.
If I want to, I can move it to none, and if it's on none, it will interact with no other feature lines, and any feature lines inside of the none site shouldn't interact with each other either. So I'm going to go ahead and go to test. I'm going to move this feature line over to test, and I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
When I do that, if I select this line and I go to elevation editor, you're going to notice I now have an intermediary point at a thousand, and if I go to this feature line, I now have a second intermediary point at a thousand, and it changes the grades of the adjoining segments that go through that point. So this is just something to keep in mind if you're creating feature lines and you want them to interact with each other. Make sure they're on the same site.
If you don't want them to interact with each other, make sure they're on a different site. I'm going to go ahead and delete these lines. I'm going to escape out.
I'm going to minimize all of these windows that I opened or expanded. I'm going to save my drawing, and I'll meet you in the next video.
C3D203—22—Site to Site Interaction
So before we go ahead and create a surface from the feature lines that we've been drawing in the past couple of videos, I want to talk about site interactions between feature lines. If you remember, when we created these feature lines, we put them all onto a single site.
We put them all on the dev branch site. I'm going to go ahead and take this site one. I'm going to right click and choose properties, and I'm going to go ahead and put this, name it as test, and I'm going to hit apply and hit okay.
We're going to test out what site interactions look like between feature lines by using this test site. So I'm going to go ahead and create a couple of feature lines, and then we're going to draw them and see how they interact with each other. So I'm going to create a feature line.
I'm going to be working off of our drawing, and then at the end of this, we're going to go ahead and delete these feature lines because I don't want to keep them. We're going to go ahead and go with the test site. We are going to not change the name.
We're going to set it as grading design and a layer as seatope of feet, and that's it. I'm going to go ahead and click okay. I'm going to specify a start point here off to the left.
I'm going to specify an elevation of 150. Now I'm going to specify my next point. So I'm going to go ahead and click here.
At that point, let's go ahead and test our theory grade. We're going to type G for grade. I'm going to hit ENTER, and I'm going to specify a grade.
I want it to go up by two percent, so I'm going to go ahead and hit two for grade, and I'm going to hit ENTER. Then I'm going to go and click to the next one, and I'm going to go ahead and let's do a slope now. I'm going to do slope S. I'm going to type in negative two for a negative two to one slope.
I'm going to hit ENTER. This says requires numeric value or keyword specification. Specify grade.
It didn't like my negative two, so I'm going to go ahead and go with just a negative two for my grade instead. So the slope probably needed me to type in two to one rather than negative two, so I'm going to go ahead and try this again with slope and hit S, and then I'm going to type two colon one and hit ENTER, and it's again telling me requires numeric value or option keyword. Specify grade.
So I'm typing S again to try and switch to slope. Oh, Civil 3D was asking me slope or surface. S is not okay because S could be slope or surface.
I need to type SL for slope. Now I'm going to go ahead and choose a slope. I'm going to go ahead and choose negative two for a negative two to one slope, and then I'm going to hit ENTER.
Now I've got this feature line here. If I go to elevation editor, what we're going to see here is that I've gone to negative two and negative 50. So in fact, grade is percent grade.
Slope is ratioed slopes. We've confirmed that. That's great, but we haven't shown anything about site to site interactions.
So you'll notice when I look at this elevation editor, my first point is at 150. My second point is at 162.39. I'm going to go ahead and click to close that window, and I'm going to go ahead and place a new feature line. I'm going to leave it on the test site, and I'm going to go ahead and click okay.
I'm going to pick here, and what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to specify an elevation of 200, something well above what we were dealing with before. I'm going to come over to this side over here, and now I'm going to specify another elevation. I'm going to specify an elevation of 200 again.
So once I've done that, I'm going to go ahead and enter to get out of that feature line command, and if I click on this line here and I go to elevation editor, you're going to notice that there is an additional point being placed in here at a specific station, and if I go and I look at this line, you're going to notice this gray triangle. That's this point. It's where it crosses this feature line, and they're interacting with each other because they're on the same site.
Now I placed this line second, so Civil 3D thinks that this line is more important than this line, so I now have specified this line being a flat line from 200 to 200. Let's go ahead and see how that 200 line impacts this feature line here. I'm going to go to elevation editor, and what you're going to see here is that that point where this feature line crosses this feature line, because I put in a new feature line crossing my original feature line, it put an intermediary point at 200 at the crossing of those feature lines, and that's what we get when we're dealing with interactions between sites.
We have two lines on the same site. As you draw the lines, the most recent line that you draw is considered the most important line, and it brings everything to the new line that you're drawing. So another way that we can test this is I can go ahead and go to feature line, create feature line.
I can put it on a different site, so let's go back to dev branch. I'm going to go ahead and click okay. I'm going to pick here, and I'm going to tell it an elevation of 1,000.
I'm going to pick here. I'm going to pick the same elevation of 1,000, hit ENTER to get out. I'm going to select this line and go to elevation editor, and what you're going to see is no intermediary point was placed, and the same thing with this feature line.
If I go to elevation editor, no intermediary point was placed here either. That's because they're on different sites, and they will not interact with each other. If you don't want feature lines to interact with each other, place them on different sites.
If you want them to interact with each other, place them on the same site. Now we do have the option of moving feature lines to sites, so I could go to dev branch. I could go to feature lines.
I could go to the feature line that I'm trying to select. So this feature line here, if I right click and I go to properties, I'll see that the name of that feature line is feature three. So I can go ahead and I can go to feature lines.
I can go to feature three here. I can right click, and I can choose move to site. So I can take an object from this site and move it to another site.
If I want to, I can move it to none, and if it's on none, it will interact with no other feature lines, and any feature lines inside of the none site shouldn't interact with each other either. So I'm going to go ahead and go to test. I'm going to move this feature line over to test, and I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
When I do that, if I select this line and I go to elevation editor, you're going to notice I now have an intermediary point at a thousand, and if I go to this feature line, I now have a second intermediary point at a thousand, and it changes the grades of the adjoining segments that go through that point. So this is just something to keep in mind if you're creating feature lines and you want them to interact with each other. Make sure they're on the same site.
If you don't want them to interact with each other, make sure they're on a different site. I'm going to go ahead and delete these lines. I'm going to escape out.
I'm going to minimize all of these windows that I opened or expanded. I'm going to save my drawing, and I'll meet you in the next video.
