Now in this example you’ll see three different aspects to our surface you’ll see these little pluses right here which represent our Point data you’ll see all of these lines connecting our Point data and those are what’s known as Tim lines and then those 10 lines are what create our surface Contours so let’s dive into that a little bit more now the reason why we have so many points out here is mainly due to the fact that this looks like a mountain that was actually shot out here and you can’t necessarily get a field crew to shoot individual points with a rod um you know of course on a mountain so what they did is they probably used a drone with lidar and what lidar does is it actually creates all of these points as it’s flying over it so you can get a a drone to go out and go just back and forth across the site and collect all of these different points as it’s flying around in this example all of our Point data was entered in directly into the drawing as opposed to importing them with the survey database like we’ve done in the past so all of these points are just housed within our drawing if we click on our prospector
you’ll see under surfaces we have an existing surface and the surface is defined by a point text file that we brought into the drawing so everything again is all housed within the drawing itself so when we zoom in on our Point data you’ll see that each point is connected to each other and these lines are what they call 10 lines now all of these 10 lines create triangles between each of these Point vertices and in doing that civil 3D does what’s known as interpolation so the grade is calculated between each of these points and that’s what helps to develop our surface Contours in this example again we created our Contours based upon point data that we inputted into the drawing but you don’t necessarily have to go that route instead you can always bring in 2D or 3D Pi lines and just so long as those lines have X Y and Z coordinate data you can add them into your Surface by clicking on Contours and clicking add now there are two different types of boundaries there are destructive and non-destructive and what these boundaries are used for is to encapsulate our surface so say for example we don’t want to include all of this triangulation in between these areas right here so there this could be say a lake or it could be um it could just be an area that we don’t want to include maybe in our surface volume so what a boundary will do is it won’t include this triangulation now the difference between destructive and non-destructive is that if it’s destructive then it’ll chop out all of these 10 lines in between but non-destructive it’ll it’ll include all of these 10 lines it just won’t include them within say a volume calculation
we can also use the same concept to create an inner boundary as well so we’ve got our outer boundary and we can also have an inner boundary save for a existing detention Pond that we would like to uh you know we can omit all of this information from our volumes lastly I want to introduce you to the concept of brake lines now say for example there was an existing wall
that was right along this area right here now with a break line we don’t want triangulation to cross our wall if our ten lines cross our wall it would create an inaccurate surface because it’s not accounting for our wall itself so say for example if this was a retaining wall you know a three foot retaining wall creates an obvious grade change which are 10 lines are not accounting for so break lines account for that now in this video we’re going to go through the process of creating a tin surface in a brand new drawing we do that by clicking on new
and then go ahead and go to your desktop and go to your civil 3D training shortcut brings you to your civil tutorials folder and then click on the surface drawing template go ahead and click open now next what we’re going to do is we’re going to create a Surface by going up to the Home tab and you see right here we have the surfaces panel we go ahead and click on that drop down menu and then click create surface now next you’ll see in this dialog box here we already have our type set to 10 surface which is what we want and we have our surface layer set to C Dash toppo now note that by default a new Surface layer will be created named C Topo Dash followed by the name you enter in the name cell which we’re going to go ahead and do that right now we’re going to type in EG for existing grade and we’re going to go ahead and give this a description we’re going to call this existing ground surface from imported Point data
now under style rather than Contours let’s switch this to points and border click ok and then for render material we’re going to go ahead and leave this on by layer so after we’ve done that go ahead and click ok and now under the prospector and under surfaces click the little plus icon and now you’ll see our created surface but currently you’ll see that under the definition it’s currently empty meaning that the surface currently does not contain any data so let’s add Point data to our surface go ahead and open our example file
and our examples are within a pre-packaged copy of civil 3D right here on my desktop I actually have a shortcut to get to that folder you can see where that’s located right here
so go ahead and click on civil tutorials drawings and we’re going to browse for the surface tutorials
and I want surface 1A go ahead and click open click yes to open and read only now since this drawing is currently in read-only I’d like to go ahead and save a copy to my desktop
go ahead and click save now if you remember in previous examples we imported survey data through the survey database now the survey database is again a shared location to where if people are working on multiple drawings they’re able to pull that data but in this particular example we’re going to import the the point data directly into our drawing so this data isn’t being shared amongst other drawings now if we click on surfaces we have an existing surface defined however if we look under definition there isn’t any data that’s added to it so let’s go ahead and do that go ahead and click on the modify Tab and click surface and go ahead and click add data what we have is an example text file that has all of our data that’s comma delimited go ahead and click Point files click the little plus icon right here and then our exercise file actually has this text file click open scroll down until you get to the pnezd option
click ok
now at face value it looked like nothing happened but if we type in Ze for Zoom extent there it is there is all of our data and in fact if we look under definition we can see that data under Point files which is listed below so that’s how you add Point data to a surface in civil 3D all right guys in this video we are going to display the source polylines and change the surface Style now note this exercise uses the drawing you created in the previous exercises or you can open the surface 1B drawing by clicking open drawing
click on your civil 3D training shortcut simple tutorials drawings and scroll down until you get to surface 1B
now click on the Home tab go to your layers panel click on the drop down and navigate to the underscore EG underscore break lines layer which can be found up here let’s go ahead and thaw that layer
click on it and you can see how our polylines showed up right here now the 3D polylines let’s go ahead and select them
these 3D polylines represent the edge of pavement of an existing Road that are displayed on the east side of the site note that the edge of pavement polylines were included in the drawing template you used in exercise one creating a tin surface let’s go ahead and exit out of this deselect our polylines now select the surface and then right click click surface properties and now in the surface properties dialog box we want to look at the information tab and under surface styles we want to click on Contours and triangles because we want to see our 10 lines now click ok there’s a lot going on there isn’t there now the surface now shows Contours and triangles that illustrate the existing surface triangulation now let’s create break lines from the 3D polylines in the tool space under our prospector tab which we’re already in I want you to go under surfaces click that little plus icon and you see right now for our existing surface we have this little circle with a slash through it right now it says that this surface is locked in the drawing let’s right click our surface and click unlock next go to the plus icon and click our definitions and right here we have a definition for break lines go ahead and right click on that click add and then we get our add break lines dialog box here under description type in edge of pavement
Dash existing Road
and then we’re going to use the default values for the rest of this stuff right here next go ahead and click ok now you see how right now next to our cursor and in our command line it says select objects so let’s go ahead and do that let’s select our edge of pavement and hit enter now the surface triangulation is now modified as you can see the edge of pavement and break lines are applied and the tin surface is adjusted along the brake line Edge so we just modified the surface triangulation so that’s how you add break lines to a surface in civil 3D 2020. because surfaces can contain large amounts of data it’s important to use only as much data as necessary for the current task for example when building a surface from lidar data the corresponding Point file can contain millions of points as you can see in this example if all of these points are included in the surface definition it can take a considerable amount of time to rebuild the surface however if you restrict the points that the surface uses to a given area the surface rebuilds a lot faster and the drawing size is smaller okay so go ahead and go over to The Big C ycle
browse to your civil 3D training shortcut click civil tutorials and go to drawings next scroll down to the surface-2 drawing
now in the tool space panel go to the prospector tab expand the surfaces and expand the existing surface now you’ll see under the definition that the surface is currently empty in the following steps you’ll use this red polyline in the drawing to create a data clip boundary which will restrict imported surface data to the extents of this boundary then you’ll import a relatively dense lidar Point file and examine the results so go ahead and expand the existing surface definition right click on boundaries and then click add now in the add boundaries dialog box specify under name let’s go ahead and put cite under the type drop down we want to click data clip and the mid ordinate distance we’ll keep that at one go ahead and click ok now in the drawing window click the red polyline let’s zoom in a little bit here click it just like that now the polyline is added to the existing surface definition as a boundary the presence of a boundary in the surface definition is indicated by the marker next to the boundaries you’ll see this little black box right here when the boundaries collection is selected the boundaries that have been added to the surface appear in the prospector tab next in the following steps you’ll add a relatively dense lidar Point file to the surface definition now the point file will be added only within the extents of the data clip boundary that you just added so let’s get started with that go ahead and expand the existing surface definition collection like we did before right click Point files click add now in the add Point file dialog box go ahead and hit this plus icon right here now in the select source file dialog box be sure that you set the file type to CSV which is a comma delimited file and go ahead and select lidar underscore Enz and this file can be found under the Civil tutorials folder click open
now in the format list select the Enz meaning easting northing endpoint elevation now in this instance uncheck the do elevation adjustment if possible go ahead and click ok now the point data is added to the drawing a reference to the point file is listed right here and the presence of the point data is shown by this little black box right here now zoom in to the right corner of the surface now when we zoom in you’ll see that imported data is actually triangulating outside of our data clip boundary now let’s try something different click on the Home tab and go to your layers go ahead and thaw this layer C Dash Topo Dash boundary Dash corridor
you can see a brand new boundary just showed up now let’s go through the same process that we went through before when it came to adding a boundary
right click on boundaries click add this time in the add boundaries dialog box type in the following corridor
keep the type on data clip and keep the default mid ordinate distance click ok and select our line now you’ll see in the drawing window it looks like nothing really happened you’ll see that there’s an orange polyline and an instance of our brand new boundary but nothing’s changed that’s because the points were added to the surface before the corridor boundary the boundary currently does not affect the point data but in the following steps you’ll arrange the surface definition operations so that the points will be restricted to the extents of the new Corridor data clip boundary in tool space on the prospector tab right click on the existing surface and click surface properties now in this dialog box go to definition now under operation type you can see the order that we have going on here the operations you perform in this exercise are listed in the order in which they were performed the site data clip boundary was added first which is listed right here and it affects the operations that follow it the corridor data clip boundary was added last which you can see right here so it currently doesn’t affect any other operations select this last boundary and add it to the top of the list next select the other add boundary and bring that to the bottom now click ok go ahead and click to rebuild the surface and there you have it when the surface rebuilds the points outside of the orange Corridor data clip boundary are excluded from the surface so that’s how data clip boundaries work in the Civil 3D so I’m currently in drawing 1B which is a continuation from our tutorial based upon how to import break lines but now we’re going to create an outer boundary from a polyline so first go ahead and go to your home tab then go to your layers
scroll up until you get to underscore existing boundary go ahead and thaw that boundary and what you’ll see is we have this blue outer polyline that surrounds our entire site now this blue polyline represents the extents of the site the polyline was imported with the original surface Contours but go ahead and go into your tool space and under prospector I want you to go under surfaces click the little plus icon click it again underneath the existing grade go to your surface definition collection expand that out next I want you to go to boundaries right click on boundaries and click add we’ll get our little dialog box right here for add boundaries next I want you to type in EG space Dash outer
we’re going to keep our boundary type as outer clear out this checkbox for non-destructive break line because we don’t want to do that in this instance and keep the default mid-ordinate distance of one click ok next it’s going to ask you to select that blue polyline go ahead and zoom into an area right here
and when we zoom out you can see that this blue outer boundary has clipped out a lot of the other information that was there before next I want you to hide this blue polyline we go back under home go to our layers panel scroll up until we get to underscore existing grade Dash boundary again go ahead and click the freeze icon and now that blue polyline will disappear
next go ahead and select your surface right click on the surface select surface properties
and now under the information tab I want you to change the surface Style to Contours five foot and 25 foot background
click ok and now you can kind of see a ghosted in surface right here where Contours are displayed as muted colors at Broad intervals this display allows major surface features to remain visible while you focus on other aspects of the site design in this exercise you will use the point removal method of simplifying a surface this method randomly selects points from the surface and reduces them based on the point density at different areas of the surface more points are removed from areas in which the concentration of points is very dense than from areas that contain fewer points now note you can’t specify which points to remove points that are used to define surface borders and brake lines are not removed with these simplified surface command note that this exercise is a continuation with the use of the surface-2 drawing so let’s continue go ahead and click on the Home tab
go to your layers panel and browse till you get to the C Dash Topo Dash Contour major original let’s use this little scroll bar right here this might work a little bit faster
there we go we’ve got a couple of these layers that need to be thawed select that and select that go ahead and click out of your layers panel so here are our Contours now these layers they contain polylines that represent the original major and minor Contours these polylines will enable you to observe the results of the simplify surface command so go ahead and click on the modify tab click on the surface and next go ahead and go to the edit surface pull down and go to simplify surface
now this wizard gives you a few options what I want you to do is click on the point removal click next
and then I want you to select objects and see right now the total points selected in region is currently at zero let’s change that by picking our objects in the drawing now the object that I want you to pick is the orange Corridor boundary note that we have all of these points that are selected within that region that’s quite a bit wouldn’t you say all right the next thing that we’re going to do is go ahead and click next and we’re going to cut the amount of points that we have in this region in half let’s go ahead and clear out the maximum change in elevation we’re not going to be focused on that for right now now the next thing to do is go ahead and click apply see what happened the total points removed was about half of the original number now note that you can click apply again to repeat the simplify surface command and keep the wizard open if you click finish the simplify surface command is repeated and The Wizard is closed let’s go ahead and click cancel now currently the amount of points in this area which you can faintly see in blue is not as dense as it was before now the new gray surface Contours that we have right here they match our original polylines fairly close to what we originally had you can see the little deviations that we have right here now the simplify surface command can reduce the amount of data that the surface uses without sacrificing much of the surface accuracy the upcoming tutorials will demonstrate how to change and constrain the surface Styles and display using Styles is an efficient way to control surface display rather than answering prompts for numerous variables every time you create a surface you can reference a predefined style that sets all of the variables as required surface styles are managed the way all object styles are managed in civil 3D by using the toolspace settings tree all objects have a standard object style grouping on this settings tree called the object style collection you can create edit copy and delete the styles for an object surface Styles Define how the surface components are displayed in the drawing if you want to change the appearance of a component either apply a different style or edit the style the surface Styles contain the following component parameters and component display settings for the creation of surface data objects such as borders Contours grid points triangles watersheds and Analysis so let’s edit the surface style go ahead and open your surface-3 drawing in your tutorial drawings folder and then what I need you to do is I need you to go under settings within your tool space and right now you’ll see up at the top that we have the active drawing settings View if you click on that we’ve got a lot of different options right here but I want you to stick to this one right here next go underneath surface
and pick the drop down menu for surface styles go ahead and right click on standard click edit and then we get our surface style dialog box what I need you to do next is click on the display tab and currently we have all of these red tick marks for our points I’d like to go ahead and turn those off so I click off the visibility click apply so we see those changes take effect then go to Contours
and you’ll see right here we have an option under properties for Contour depressions this will give us some options here and it gives us the option to display depression Contours right now it’s currently set to false let’s make that true now for the tick mark interval I’m going to leave that at 50 but the tick mark length I’m going to turn that into five feet what I want to do is show tick marks along the entire length of each one of these depression Contours so go ahead and click apply and then click ok so if I zoom in here you’ll see all of these tick marks are every 50 feet and the length of each one is about five feet and they all go along the length of the entire depression Contour so let’s go ahead and change the surface Style now note that this exercise uses the surface-3 drawing with the modifications you made from the previous exercise in the tool space under the prospector tab go ahead and maximize our surface collection and then click on our existing surface right click and click surface properties
next let’s go ahead and change the surface Style we’re going to change it from standard to borders triangles and points go ahead and click apply and we can see how this surface is constructed with all of the 10 lines okay now this style is set to display the borders and the tin faces with three times the vertical exaggeration these display settings make it a lot easier to see the vertical relief on the surface so go ahead and click ok the surface representation updates to display the 10 triangles and the Border so let’s see how this looks in 3D click the view tab and click the free orbit drop down click free orbit and as you drag you can see this vertical exaggeration Now using the free orbit tool rotate the surface and the drawing to display the exaggerated elevations these elevations are most evident along the bottom of the surface where the prominent Ridge appears to return to the regular plan view of the surface go ahead and go back to the view tab click this drop down menu and click top now to return to the original surface style go ahead and right click on the surface surface properties
and change the style back to standard click apply and we’re right back to where we were
in this exercise you’ll add labels across surface Contours you will place individual labels manually and a series of labels automatically using the AutoCAD polylines as a guide note that this exercise uses the surface-3 drawing with the modifications you made from the previous exercise let’s start by clicking on The View tab now in the name views panel go ahead and click this drop down menu and click on Surface labels see how we have three different circles right here we’re going to use these as a reference on the command line go ahead and type in PL for polyline and click the center of the first Circle
the circle of the second and then the Third what we’re going to do is we’re going to use this polyline as a guide for our labels next go up to the annotate tab and click on the add labels
we’ll get this little add labels dialog box right here and then click on the drop down menu click surface and then for label type rather than slope let’s select Contour multiple because by doing this this will automatically add multiple labels to our Contours we’ll go ahead and leave all of our defaults and click add notice down at the bottom in our command line it’s asking us to specify the first point or objects what we want to do is we want to select objects and select our polyline so go ahead and click on objects or you can type in O and then press enter next the command line asks us if we want to erase the original entities meaning do we want to delete our guideline I’m going to go ahead and click yes
and zoom in and select the polyline press enter and there you have it all of our Contour labels are now shown along our guide this method of surface labeling is useful when you want to lay out the path of surface Contour labels before you actually create the labels but what if I wanted to create the path and labels simultaneously without first drawing a polyline let’s go ahead and do that go back into your add labels dialog box right here let’s go ahead and erase what we created originally
and then go ahead and click add
instead of selecting objects we’re going to specify the first point which would be the center of the first Circle
then the second then the Third
so essentially it accomplishes the same thing but what about spot elevations how do we go about showing that on our surface we’ll go back into our dialog box right here we want to stay on Surface we want to change our label type to spot elevation for right now let’s keep the defaults for spot elevation style and marker Style go ahead and click add and just pick a point right here along the ridge
next it asks us for another point instead I’d like to change the elevation label style to something different let’s change it to foot meter
go ahead and click along the ridge again and then we get a totally different spot elevation Style so that’s how you label a surface in civil 3D Edge swapping is used to change the direction of two triangle faces in the surface to create more of an accurate surface model for example edges can be swapped to match the triangle edges to ridges or swales so right now I’m in the surface Dash 4A drawing which is located in the tutorial drawings folder and in this drawing the surface is displayed as 10 lines in red right here and it’s overlaid with an externally referenced land base image so what we’re going to do first is we’re going to zoom in to the lower edge of the surface right around here now in the tool space within the prospector tab go ahead and expand the surface go down to edits right click and click swap Edge
so right now civil 3D is asking us to select an edge
so let’s go ahead and zoom into an area right here and let’s swap this Edge and this Edge let’s try swapping some other edges and go through here we can do that but that would break this little Edge that we have for our Ridge so let’s go ahead and
swap that back
how about over here we could do no it won’t allow us to select that edge so that edge can’t be swapped let’s try another one here or here
over here
so optionally you can continue to click other 10 edges to swap them but once you’re finished go ahead and hit enter to end the command now you’ll see that the edits are added as swap Edge operations to the edits list view on the prospector tab now note that the description column in the list view provides the coordinates of the pickpoint along the edge that was swapped deleting 10 lines may be required for example if the surface has 10 triangles on the perimeter that are long and narrow in this case the triangles might not be accurate for the surface and should be deleted surface tin or grid lines can also be deleted within a pawn for example to create a void area by removing these lines you can prevent Contours from being drawn through these void areas when an edge is removed either an interior border that follows the adjacent lines is created or an exterior border is modified to follow the new lines in this exercise you’ll delete 10 lines from a surface the 10 lines that fall within a pond
we’re going to remove these lines and by removing these lines you can prevent Contours from being drawn through the pond area this exercise continues from the swapping 10 edges exercise
go ahead and open up your surface Dash 4B drawing which is located in your tutorials folder in this drawing the surface is displayed as 10 lines that are overlaid on an externally referenced land-based image zoom into the rounded Pond area in the upper left of the surface
in the tool space on the prospector tab go ahead and expand the surface
now right click on the edits collection
select delete line now on the command line you’re now prompted to select an edge to remove click these edges that cross the surface of the pond
and then press enter The Edge is removed and an interior boundary is created following the adjacent lines the edits are added as delete operations to the edits list view in the prospector the description column and the list view provides the coordinates of the vertices for the edge that was deleted so that’s how you delete 10 lines in civil 3D hide boundaries mask areas of the surface so triangulation and therefore Contours are not visible in the area use hide boundaries to create holes in a surface for example to Mark a building footprint when you use a high boundary the surface is not deleted the full surface remains intact if there is a Surface tin line that you want permanently removed from the surface use the delete line command in this exercise you’ll create a hide boundary on the surface which will mask unwanted triangulation a boundary can be created from any polygon or polyline but in this exercise you’ll use an existing brake line this exercise continues from deleting 10 lines so let’s get started open up the surface Dash 4C drawing located in the tutorial drawings folder in the tool space go ahead and expand your surface
and then under the definition collection go underneath boundaries right click on boundaries and select add now go ahead and type in the following parameters X g n d Dash pond
space hide change the type from Outer to a high boundary and we want to keep the non-destructive break line option checked and in mid ordinate distance at one go ahead and click ok in the drawing go ahead and zoom in to our pond and then select the blue line hit enter and now the hide boundary is added to the surface definition the surface displayed in the drawing is modified to display the pond as a hole in the surface so that’s how you add a hide boundary in civil 3D surface smoothing is an operation that adds points at system determined elevations using natural neighbor interpolation the result is smooth Contours with no overlap you perform smoothing as an edit operation on a surface you can specify smoothing properties and then turn them on or off when the smoothing is turned off the surface reverts back to its original state however the smoothing operation remains in the surface operation list and it can be turned on again natural neighbor interpolation is a method used to estimate the elevation of an arbitrary point from its set points with known elevations this method uses information in the triangulation of the best known points to compute a weighted average of the elevations at the natural neighbors of a point to use natural neighbor interpolation specify only the output locations of the interpolated points the elevations of the interpolated points are always based on the weighted average of the elevations of the existing neighboring points natural neighbor interpolation interpolates only within the surface in this exercise you will smooth a surface using the natural neighbor interpolation method this exercise continues from the adding a high boundary exercise so let’s begin open the surface Dash 4D drawing which is located in the tutorial drawings folder and in the tool space in the prospector tab go ahead and expand your surfaces
next go under edits and right click choose smooth surface now in this dialog box we’re going to keep the defaults for the smoothing method and our output locations the grid-based output location interpolates surface points on a grid defined within specified polygon areas selected in the drawing after the areas are defined you can specify the grid X and Y spacing and orientation properties for the select output region go ahead and click on these three dots next the command line is asking for a region or these three different options go ahead and enter in surface and the smooth surface dialog box go ahead and enter in the following for X grid spacing type in 10 . for y enter in 10 as well now in the drawing window notice that there are contour lines that are especially angular go ahead and click ok to smooth the surface
now you see the display of the surface is now smooth and Contours are less angular a smooth surface item is added to the edits list as you can see right here and you can see under description we use natural neighbor smoothing you can delete the smooth surface edit from the list if you want to go ahead and select delete press ok
go ahead and rebuild the surface and it goes right back to the original surface configuration now you can also reverse the smoothing operation by pressing the undo command which is you
and it goes right back to surface smoothing so that’s how you go about smoothing a surface in civil 3D this tutorial demonstrates how to create two kinds of surface analysis Watershed and water drop you use Watershed analysis which is one of the several types of analysis that you can perform on a surface to visualize and analyze the surface watersheds you use water drop analysis which is a separate utility to trace the path that water would take across the surface Autodesk civil 3D uses 10 lines to calculate the areas that water would flow along the surface from these areas the drain targets and watersheds are determined other types of surface analysis include slope aspect elevations and Contours hey everybody welcome back to the channel in this tutorial we’ll be configuring a style for Watershed display in civil 3D so let’s get started in this exercise you will configure a style for Watershed display go ahead and open up your surface-5a drawing in your tutorials folder go ahead and go over to your tool space and click on the settings tab look over to your surface and expand that expand the surface styles right click on standard and click copy
so we get our surface style dialog box here go to your information tab and enter watersheds
on the watersheds tab go ahead and expand the depression Watershed group change the hatching to true let’s go ahead and change the hatch pattern
we’re going to select sand click ok the scale we’re going to go with is 15.
click ok now go to your display tab now under the component type column we have watersheds go ahead and turn that on
click ok next go into your prospector and then expand your surfaces right click on your surface and select surface properties
now right now the surface style is set to standard let’s change that to watersheds click ok
and all of our Watershed information is now included with this style so that’s how you configure a style for Watershed display in civil 3D in this exercise you’ll generate and display the Watershed analysis this exercise uses the surface-5a drawing in your tutorials folder so let’s get started in the tool space go ahead and navigate to your surface in the prospector right click on your surface and select surface properties now go ahead and choose your surface Style let’s select watersheds after that go up to the analysis tab and for the type select watersheds now ensure that standard is selected in the Legends list next you see this little downward Arrow right here go ahead and select that now our Watershed analysis has been developed next click this light bulb off to the far right
now next to boundary point and Boundary segment we want to turn off these Watershed types click OK once and then click OK the second time now go ahead into your surfaces and expand those out click on your watersheds and then you get a tabulated list of all of our Watershed areas right here
and what it does is it fixes an ID and a particular type of watershed so for example as we scroll down here we have boundary Point boundary segment and then it gets into depression and it also lists where this Watershed drains to so go ahead and select 112 right click and select Zoom 2. and this will take us right to our watershed area
shows us where this is draining to we select 130 Zoom to that then it shows us the catch Basin that it’s draining to so that’s how you go about generating a watershed analysis in civil 3D this exercise continues from the modifications you made from the last exercise in surface 5A so let’s get started go ahead into your tool space and click on the settings tab now you’ll notice that we have some other types of styles within our surface Style click on and maximize the table styles and maximize The Watershed then go ahead and right click on standard and select edit
now we’re in the table style dialog box go ahead and click on the data properties tab now if it isn’t already you have to make sure that the sort data is cleared out and unchecked and click ok next go under the annotate tab select the add tables button and click add surface Legend table next we have some prompts down here in the command line go ahead and select watersheds next you’re prompted to specify whether you want the table to be automatically updated if the analysis information changes go ahead and enter dynamic because we do want to enable automatic updating so now if a change is made to the surface and the Watershed analysis is regenerated the legend is automatically updated next it’s asking us to click a location in the drawing where you want the upper left corner of the table I want the legend table to be displayed over here so now you’ll see what we’ve got going on here
so that’s how you go about creating a watershed Legend in civil 3D in this exercise you’ll use Watershed data to create non-destructive AutoCAD objects from the surface so let’s get started this exercise uses the surface-5b drawing with the modifications you made in the previous exercise
but in this drawing what we need to do first is we need to bring back our watersheds so go ahead and right click on your surface click surface properties then choose analysis bring up the analysis type which is watersheds
click on the downward Arrow to run the analysis
and click ok so when we go to select our watershed you’ll notice that it’s still tied to the surface object but what we want to do is we want to extract that information from our tin surface object first we need to select our surface which brings up our contextual menu and then if you look under surface tools there’s an extract from surface button go ahead and click that drop down and click on extract objects now in the extract objects from surface dialog box we want to uncheck everything except for watersheds go ahead and click ok and go ahead and escape from the command to deselect your surface now what you’ll see is that if we click on our watershed now it’s created AutoCAD objects from each of the watersheds within the drawing so that’s how you go about extracting objects from a surface in civil 3D in this exercise you’ll create lines that illustrate the path that flowing water would take across a surface then you’ll create a polygon that defines the catchment region and its area on the surface go ahead and open up your surface-5c drawing in your tutorials folder next go into your analyze tab and choose the flow paths drop down click water drop
and then we get the water drop dialog box now in this box go ahead and specify the following parameters the path layer we’re going to change that click this button right here and choose this layer click ok
we’re going to leave the path object type at 2D polyline and then we’re going to place a marker at the start point we’re going to leave that at yes and then the start Point marker style we’re going to leave that at WD start click ok now in the drawing go ahead and zoom in to this area
and click several locations in this area
a 2d polyline is drawn representing the flow of water from the spot you selected now the start point is represented by these markers right here let’s go ahead and create a few more paths
let’s continue up here up here
you can start to see how the water path splits as you create additional lines go ahead and press enter to end the command now if you notice that most of the water drop paths drain to these existing culverts next you’ll use the water drop paths you just created to define a catchment area that influences these culverts now we do that by going back into our analyze tab and click on the catchment drop down and click catchment area now we’re looking at our catchment dialog box let’s make the following changes we’re going to keep the display discharge point at yes but we’re going to change the discharge point
and we’re going to choose catchment
click ok
we’re going to change the layer
C Topo catch click ok
and we’re going to leave it at a 2d polyline and click ok now in the drawing go ahead and begin to Click on each one of our markers
now note if you receive a message indicating that the specified location results in a catchment area with no area it means that there is no flat area or high spot on the specified point now we can go about combining multiple catchment areas because we do have a lot going on in here so let’s go about combining multiple catchment areas in the drawing go ahead and isolate your catchment areas go ahead and select your polygons now in the command line type in Line work
shrink wrap
a polygon that contains the combined area of the catchment areas is displayed the line work shrink wrap command creates a single outside boundary of a selection of touching polygons the original polygons are not deleted now this is a tip that you can transfer individual or shrink wrap catchment area polygons to a hydrology application for further analysis so that’s how you go about analyzing surface water runoff in civil 3D
