Using Civil 3D to Create a Cut & Fill Earthwork Exhibit

in this session we'll look at how to create a cut and fill earthwork exhibit for a proposed site plan as you can see I've got a drawing open on screen this site plan represents a proposed fast-food restaurant now I've got a couple surfaces here I've got one surface if I select this we can see it this is called survey that represents the existing conditions let me select this other surface if I hover over this we can see this is called P lot this represents the proposed grading in fact if I come up and choose object viewer we can orbit this and you can see what that surface looks like let's close the object viewer I'll press escape to deselect the surface I would like to create an earthwork exhibit for this site let's start by calculating the earthwork I'll do that by going to the analyze tab and then I'll choose the volumes dashboard from here I will create a new ten volume surface 8 in volume surface is a surface whose elevations are based on the difference between two other surfaces for a name we'll call this earth work calcs and then for the style for right now I'm going to choose triangles only I'll click OK for the base surface I'll select the survey or the existing ground and then the comparison surface I will choose the proposed lot I'll click OK I'm not going to make adjustments to the cut & fill factors we could adjust these if we were going to compensate for expansion or compaction of material going to leave those at one for right now and let me click OK there we go my earth where calculations are finished if I drag this down to the right we can see that I have a net of approximately 2,500 cubic yards of cut so my site is long we can also see that here in the graph let me click the check to close the panorama so we've done our calculations and now you can see this triangulated surface here that represents the volume normally we don't display a surface like this one thing I can do is use this surface to colorize the areas of cut and fill let's do that I'm going to start by creating a new surface style I'll do that by going to the Settings tab I'll open the surface category and then I'll right click on surface styles and I'll choose new we'll go to the information tab and then for the name I'm just going to use initials here we'll call this JB earth work display then I'll come down to the display tab and I'll say whenever I use this surface style only component that I want to see are the elevations so I'll turn that one on and I'll click OK I will then assign that surface style to my ten volume surface we'll do that by selecting it I'll go to the properties palette and then I will select the style here from the list I'll press escape when finished as you can see the surface elevations are now colorized although this colorization doesn't have much meaning let's change that I'll do that by selecting the surface and then I'll come up and choose surface properties and here on the analysis tab I'd like to do an elevational analysis number of ranges will set this to two and then I'll click the arrow to push that down to the details area using these two colors I can highlight the areas of cut and Phil will take care of cut first we can see the deepest cut is five point five nine feet we'll take this up to a negative point five feet I will then click in the color field and we'll choose a nice red color next we'll take care of the areas of Phil for my minimum elevation will set this to 0.5 we'll go all the way up to the maximum Phil of two point four seven feet we'll click in the color field and I will set this to green and I'll click OK basically what I'm saying here is if the existing surface elevation fluctuates up or down by six inches it's essentially no change therefore we are only colorizing cut greater than six inches or fill greater than six inches let me click OK we can see that colorization now the surface is still selected let me right click and I'll push this to the back I'll choose display order and I'll choose send to back now in addition to knowing my earthwork calculations I can actually see where the cut and fill areas are located let's go one step further I'd like to have an idea of how much cut and fill is going on in these shaded areas we can do that by creating some labels once again we'll come over to the settings tab and then I'll open up label Styles here under the surface category will create a new spot elevation label style I'll right-click on that group and I'll choose new for the name once again we'll go with initials I'll just say JB grid ticks we'll go to the general tab quickly let me click in the preview here and I'll zoom in we can see an example of the label there let's go to the Layout tab currently we just have the one come opponents surface elevation I'd like to set the anchor point to the middle center of the location being sampled and then for the attachment I'll choose the middle center of the text this centers the text on the sample location next we'll go to the contents field and I'll click the ellipsis button we'll make a modification of the label itself I'll do that by selecting this program code over here and then we'll change the precision to the even foot I will also change the sign we'll open this up and I'll say drop the sign I don't need to see the negatives because I'll know it's a negative 5th in the red area because it's cut now that I've made those changes I'll click the arrow to create the new code I will then click OK and ok now that I've created that style let's back up a little bit and we'll assign it to the surface I'll do that by choosing the annotate tab I'll click Add labels I would like to label a surface I'm going to label spot elevations on grid I'll use my new grid tix style I'm not going to use a marker in this case the label will be the marker let's click Add I will then select the surface I'd like to label and then I'll click in the lower left corner here my grid rotation is going to be 0 so it's going to run horizontal my grid spacing let's put a label every 6 feet in the x direction and y direction you can see the grid on-screen there all I have to do is pick the upper right corner and I don't have to be real specific with this it's not going to create labels in an area where the surface doesn't exist so I'll click right up here and then I'll press Enter I can then zoom in and we can see the nice grid labels there now that I have these labels I can see the deepest area of cut is going on right here and then with respect to the fill the area of most fill is right along the curb and gutter here now as you look at these labels you may be thinking you know what's in the area of no change I have a lot of zeros here is there a way I can eliminate those yes we can we can do that through an expression let's do that I'm going to close the add labels dialog box and then in the spot elevation group let me expand that in here there's an expressions option I'm going to right click and create a new expression for name I'll call this no zeros generally speaking what I'm going to do here is say if the label falls within my or range I'm going to give it a zero text type therefore it won't display so the expression that we'll use let me click in the expressions area I'll open functions here and I'll say if and we'll open properties if the surface elevation is greater than 0.5 or the surface elevation is less than negative 0.5 I will then put in a comma so if it falls in that range I'm going to enter the text height I'd like to use point zero zero eight I will then add another comma and then I'll use zero this represents the text height if it doesn't fall within this range let's wrap this up by adding a closed parenthesis and I'll click OK now that I've created my expression let's add this to my grid tick style I can do that by right clicking I'll choose edit and then for text height let me click in this field I'll click the drop down and I'll choose my no zeros expression and I'll click OK there we go the zeroes have disappeared let me back up and I'll Center this on screen at this point I've done my earth work calculations for this site I've also identified where the cut and fill is going to occur and I've got a nice schematic that identifies the amounts of cut and fill the best part is that all of this information maintains a dynamic relationship to the existing and proposed surfaces this means that my earth work exhibit is essentially maintenance-free if I were to make changes to the existing or proposed surfaces this exhibit will update automatically would you like to explore other Autodesk infrastructure ideas and workflows if so please visit the civil immersion blog by scanning the QR code or by following the URL listed below

Channel: Jeff Bartels

Views: 204,766

Keywords: Bartels, akn_include, Autodesk, Civil 3D, earthwork, volume, cut, fill, advanced, tutorial, train, learn, analyze

Id: 1_NeMLI7Is0

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2016