Field to Finish. Surface Modeling

Transcription

1 New Jersey SurvCon 2014 Field to Finish And Surface Modeling with Carlson Survey Presented by

2 Who Is That CAD Girl? Jennifer DiBona is a long time CAD consultant and trainer doing business as That CAD Girl. She is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jennifer has a degree in Surveying Technology and has worked for surveying and civil engineering consulting offices in North Carolina and Illinois. She also worked for an Autodesk reseller for several years and built their technical services division from the ground up. Today, That CAD Girl provides sales, support and training for Carlson, AutoCAD and IntelliCAD software and Carlson hardware and data collection. We specialize in Field to Finish, Surface Modeling, CAD standardization and Carlson Software implementation. Jennifer is one of the charter members of Carlson College which is the certified program for authorized Carlson Software trainers. Jennifer also writes the "CAD Picks and Clicks" column for Professional Surveyor Magazine and has been a featured presenter at: Autodesk University 2004 and 2007 World of Concrete/Technology for Construction 2004 and 2005 AEC Science & Technology 2005 NC Society of Surveyors Institute 2009 Carlson Software User Conference 2009, 2010, 2013 New Jersey SurvCon 2013, 2014 Maryland Society of Surveyors Fall Conference, 2013 Jennifer is a member of the Steering Committee for Version 6 of the National CAD Standard, serves as Chair of the Survey/Civil Task Team and co Chair of the CAD Layer Guidelines Task Team. The purpose of the Survey/Civil Task Team is to explore and propose changes that incorporate more civil and survey related content into the National CAD Standard. You can reach me at Jennifer@ThatCADGirl.com or (919) Carlson Self Study Manuals are available for purchase during the Carlson User Conference at a discounted price or from my online store at

3 Before You Start What Kinds Of Data Can Be Used? Creating surface models in Carlson Software can be done using many different types of data. The image below shows the data types that can be used in the current version of Carlson: Before You Start Do You Need To Create A Surface Boundary? In most cases you will want to apply a boundary to the surface to keep stray, unwanted triangles and contours from generating outside the surface area. You can manually create a closed polyline around the surface area or use the Shrink Wrap Entities command to create a polyline that can be used as the surface boundary. In newer versions of Carlson, the Shrink Wrap Entities routine is built into the Triangulate and Contour command allowing you to skip the step of manually creating the closed polyline boundary. Before you start You Will Also Need: a Drawing (.dwg) file that contains elevated entities or, a Coordinate (.crd) file that contains point and/or point group data or a Text/ASCII file that contains point data. (919) ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com Page 1 of 5

4 1 Creating a Surface (1 1) Open the drawing that contains the entities for your surface. (1 2) If you will be using points and/or a point group from a Coordinate (.crd) file, go to the Points menu and click Set Coordinate File. Browse to and select the.crd file that contains your data. (1 3) From the Surface menu, click Triangulate and Contour and then click on the Triangulate tab. (1 4) Select the check box for Write Triangulation File and click the Browse button to set the folder and filename for the new Triangulation (.tin) file. (1 5) Select the check box for Use Inclusion/Exclusion Areas to select previously drawn closed polylines to be used as surface boundaries. (1 6) Select the check box for Shrink Wrap Perimeter Reduction and set the level to None, Low, Medium or High depending on how tightly you need to wrap the selected entities. (1 7) Unless you specifically need otherwise, select Current Surface in the Erase Previous Contour Entities list. (1 8) Unless you specifically need otherwise, select the check box to Ignore Zero Elevations. (1 9) Enter or change other settings as needed. Note: The settings shown above can be considered default settings for creating surfaces from points and/or breaklines. When creating a surface from previously drawn contours, make sure the check boxes for Interpolate Ridges and Valleys, Interpolate Summits and Pits and Minimize Flat Triangles have been selected. (919) ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com Page 2 of 5

5 (1 10) Click the Contour tab. All settings on the Contour tab are unavailable until the Draw Contours check box has been selected. (1 11) Select the Draw Contours check box. (1 12) Type the new Contour Layer or click the Select button to choose a layer from the list of drawing layers or from the Layer Library. (1 13) If needed, select the check box next to Draw Index Contours and type the Index Layer and Index Interval values in the appropriate boxes. (1 14) Enter or change other settings as needed. (919) ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com Page 3 of 5

6 (1 15) Click the Labels tab. All settings on the Labels tab are unavailable until the Label Contours check box has been selected. (1 16) Select the Label Contours check box. (1 17) Type or select the Label Layer, Index Label Layer and Label Style as needed. (1 18) To have the labels masked with a wipeout entity in order to hide the contours behind the text, select the Hide Drawing Under Labels check box. (1 19) Select the preferred Internal Label Intervals button: Label Intervals or Distance Interval. Note: A rule of thumb for the Distance Interval is to set the distance 6x the drawing scale. When plotted, this will result in a contour label every 6 inches along a contour. (1 20) Enter or change other settings as needed. (919) ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com Page 4 of 5

7 (1 21) Click the Selection tab. All settings on the Selection tab are unavailable until the Specify Selection Options check box has been selected. (1 22) Select the Specify Selection Options check box. (1 23) Select the check box(es) next to each type of entity you plan to select and want to be used when generating the surface. Notes: Polylines representing contours are considered 2D Polylines because, even though they re elevated, they re flat and 2 dimensional. 0 Elevation polylines will be excluded as long as the Ignore Zero Elevations check box on the Triangulate tab has been selected. (1 24) From any tab, click the Save button to save a Triangulation Settings (.tri) file with all of the current settings. Note: I recommend creating one Triangulation Settings (.tri) file for existing surfaces and another for proposed surfaces. Then, when needed, click the Load button to apply the saved settings. (919) ContactUs@thatcadgirl.com Page 5 of 5