ArcGIS Connector and surface creation for road design

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This video series will focus on workflows and best practices for creating a roadway project.

00:09

We'll begin by demonstrating the ArcGIS Connector by gathering existing data for the project,

00:15

and we'll also create surfaces from different data sources.

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GIS data is generally available from owners or public agencies.

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We can create an ArcGIS map that will link directly to the county's live database.

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In this case, we can connect to Douglas County.

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Once we've added the layers that we want, we can actually view the map under the My Groups tab in ArcGIS.

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So, this connection between ESRI and Autodesk gives users an expanded library of data that can be sorted, classified,

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and imported into their own project files.

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In Civil 3D, we begin by defining the project coordinate system for a blank file.

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The project we are showing here is in Colorado State Plain, Central Zone, in US feet, in the United States.

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Once the coordinate system is set, we can save the file to our project folder on BIM 360 Design.

01:13

Then, we can start adding layers and elements to our drawings from ArcGIS.

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So, under the Insert tab, we'll select the Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS.

01:23

This will take us to the ArcGIS view space where we can identify the project area.

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We have a few options to select our area, but for now, we'll just draw a rectangle around the area of interest.

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Under the Public tab, we can search for any data that's available to us in our area of interest.

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Here, we can view the roadway center lines near our project, as well as several other data maps that are available to us.

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We can also refine our search for more detailed items.

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In this case, we can search for traffic data and view the layers that are associated with that map.

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It looks like we've got quite a few of those.

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When we select My Groups, we can view the items that were created previously.

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So, when we choose the Douglas County map, we can see several layers of information that we can import.

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For now, we'll just use the roadway center lines and simply select Add to My Design Project.

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These lines will be imported into the drawing, and once that's loaded, we can view the line work.

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Now, these items were brought in as alignments, and we can actually see the geometry in the Prospector tab.

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We can also bring these in as feature lines as well, but we would need to specify that in ArcGIS before we add the items.

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There's a number of other items that we can add to our drawing.

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We have access to contour data, flood maps and airport clearance maps, rivers, trails, and a few other existing features.

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We want to include the data that may impact our design and provide as much detail as possible about existing conditions.

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Some of those items will be the 100-year floodplain that's shown here

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as well as any parcel or property data or right of way maps that we have access to.

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All of this data could be vital to include in the base mapping for our project.

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Now, in the next part of the workflow, we're going to create a surface from contour data that we downloaded from the county.

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We will set up the new drawing in the same way where we identify the coordinate system and save that file to our folder on BIM 360.

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These contours were imported with the map import feature, and we use the data from the downloaded files

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to add elevation to the contours.

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Checking here, we can see that the lines do have the correct elevation information.

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So, with the line work set up with the correct elevations, we can create a new surface, and we'll call this EG, for existing ground.

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So, under the definitions options, we can right-click to add contours to our surface.

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We have a few options here to control the surface creation.

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We can also describe the items that we are importing.

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For this surface, we want to include all the lines from our contour map, so once that surface processes,

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we can view the contour data and compare it to the map lines.

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We can do this by selecting the surface properties of our surface and changing the contour display interval.

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We'll actually turn off the imported contour lines as well.

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So, once a surface has been inspected, we can now make it available to other team members by creating a data shortcut.

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That data shortcut folder has been set to reside on BIM 360.

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So, we simply select the surface, and now we can see that that will be available for use in the project.

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Civil 3D can also create a surface from 3D Poly Lines, or feature lines.

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And in this example, we have a number of brake lines that represent existing edges of pavements, or cut and fill lines as well.

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And we want to add those to our surface.

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We will call it Brake Lines.

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Similar to the last surface where we have a number of options, we'll actually select brake lines and provide a description for those lines.

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We could describe each line that we add to the surface, but in this case, we'll use the same description for all the lines that we import.

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Once all those lines are added to the surface, we see that we have some triangulation that needs to be cleaned up.

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Here, we want to display the surface with contours and triangles.

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This will allow us to delete some of those extra triangles.

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So, we do that by selecting Edit Surface and Delete Line.

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Any lines that we cross will be removed from the triangulation.

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Once our surface is complete, we'll add this to our data shortcut list of surfaces available as well.

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And now that's ready for other team members to access.

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So now, I would like to demonstrate how to combine these surfaces when they're referenced into a new drawing.

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We can add each surface to our file.

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Once we've added the surface, I'll just double-click the mouse wheel to zoom to the extents of the surface.

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Then, we'll add the next surface and see that they overlap.

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I’m just adding these as data shortcuts.

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So, for this step, we want to actually create an empty surface file and combine those files.

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And so, we'll call that new surface combined.

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We’ll go down to edit options and select Paste Surface.

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First, we want to choose the existing ground surface.

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Then, we can add the brake line surface after we've added the first one.

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We can continue to add surfaces to this combined surface if needed.

06:43

We can see that those break lines were added nicely to our existing surface.

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If we need to remove any of these elements, we can just simply choose Edits in the options tree and select the surface from the list to delete.

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Surface does not immediately update, but we can see that there are warning messages that indicate that the surface needs to be rebuilt.

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So, once it's been rebuilt, we can now see that those brake lines are gone, and we can add boundaries, or hides to the surface if needed.

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When we add the surface, we'll select Hide from the drop-down option.

07:15

From the Command line, we can actually choose Surface and then specify the surface that we want to act as a hide boundary.

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This works great for any areas of the surface that we need to be clipped, or hidden, or may act as a boundary.

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There are a variety of other modifications that we can actually make to the surface depending on the data that is available to us

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and what kind of modifications we need to make to the surface.

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So, we could use a similar workflow if survey or LiDAR data needed to be added to the surface.

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There's a number of other surface creation options that exist, including creating a surface from point clouds or from GIS data,

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and the prompts for creating each of those options are similar to the ones that we followed in creating these surfaces.