XREF Manager Dissappearing Act

This isn’t exactly a Civil 3D 2011 tip, however; I have encountered a few times when the the XREF manager dissappears completely.  Not sure why this happens, but it can be a very frustrating incident when working with XREF drawings you have to constantly cycle through.  I posted this not for just for the general public, but myself as I seem to forget how to fix this.

Anyway….if it happens and you can’t find it ANYWHERE, try this……

TYPE: “CUI” at the command prompt.

This brings up the “Customize User Interface” dialogue box (shown below).  Make sure you are in the current “Workspace”.  In my case shown below – “Civil 3D Default (current)” on the left.  On the right side, expand “Palettes” then select “External References”.  Cycle through “Show”, “Allow Docking” as required.

Voilà!

Conditional Formatting of a Corridor

The following example is to show how to use conditional formatting.  Conditional formatting allows for more design flexibility in the modeling process.  Using conditional formatting avoids using excess assemblies when corridor building.

We will model between the two thick brown lines (shown below).  You have to determine what length of roadway you think you can cover with one assembly.  Typically the less assemblies you can get away with, the better.  

From the current model (profile and alignment of main roadway as well as adjacent roadways being modeled), it was already determined that a couple of retaining walls would be required.  The green dashed lines below represent the locations of the wall.

To begin modeling, we will start to build as assembly that conforms to the general orientation of the roadway.  To be more specific, 2 lanes each way, a median, a shoulder on each side and concrete barriers on each side.  The continuous magenta block line represents the concrete roadside barrier.  On closer inspection, you can also see a concrete median barrier between the eastbound and westbound lanes.

Create an assembly that has the two lanes and a shoulder.  Lanes are 3.6m and the paved shoulder is 3.1m with a 0.60m wide roadside barrier sitting on the outer edge.  This allows for 2.5m of pavement.  Notice from the image above the concrete median barrier is offset slightly to the south.  This is to allow for more sight distance around the curve.  It would be wise to make the concrete median barrier independent of the construction centerline, since they may not necessarily always coincide.

Since the profile and alignment have already been defined, the task now is to model the roadway surfaces using the retaining walls as targets.  Since the walls don’t extend through the entire longitudinal stretch of roadway we are modeling here, we will use conditional formatting to stop and start walls.  

The final assembly for the area will look as shown below....

You can see below that there is 4 pavement sections on the left side.  The two inside pavement sections are “Subassembly.LaneInsideSuperMultiLayer” pulled from the Civil3d Toolpallete package.  The two outside lanes are "Subassembly.LaneOutsideSuperMultiLayer".  This is also important in the definition, since superelevation will be applied around the curve.  All the pavement section materials are inputted based on geotechnnical evaluation.

We will just concentrate on the left side.

We’ll just use one conditional option (found v. not found) for simplicity, but in reality you can use an infinite amount of conditional formats.  We’ll just use a target condition, to target to the wall (defined as a feature line and targeted in the roadway corridor definition)  when it is located along the stretch of the roadway.

If a target is found, a -2:1 generic link (Subassembly.LinkWidthandSlope) will be used to target to the horizontal wall location.  Once the horizontal location of the wall is targeted to, another generic link (Subassembly.SlopeToSurface) is used to grade back down to existing.

If the target is not found, a 2:1 daylight sub-assembly is used for whichever situation occurs (cut or fill).

The retaining wall (shown as the green dashed line earlier), is now defined as a feature line.

Now that the feature line is defined, it's time to target the corridor.  

Notice that the LEFTtargetfound (highlighted below), is targeting the defined feature line ("RETAINING WALL BETWEEN L35 AND L2000)

When using a conditional format you have to target the feature line in both the "found" and "not found" condition.  Notice above the "LEFTTargetNotFound (2)" is also targeting the same feature line.  You'll also notice the feature line is also used a target for the "LinkWidthAndSlope (Left) - (177)".  This is used so that the -2:1 generic link extends to the horizontal location of the feature line.

Below is the produced cross-section for the entire roadway.  The left side shows the -2:1 slope graded to the feature wall, which also abuts the adjacent roadway.

When the feature line is no longer found along the longitudinal section, the corridor revert back to the "not found" condition" and a straight 2:1 daylight will be used.

I realize this is a very brief overview of conditional formatting.  There is a lot to soak up, but you'll find that if you can employ conditional formatting, it will help you avoid constantly creating more assemblies to cover minor changes along a roadway. 

FEATURE LINES TARGETS IN 2D and 3D.

The following is an example to illustrate how to grade an irregular roadway using feature lines.  The corridor shown below is to be extended further to the north (up on the screen).  The roadway is a little irregular here, since there is no room to continue a ditch through between an unknown landscaped area.  The green lines are edges of pavement lines (EOP), as well as the controlling grading objects.  A secondary curved road ties into the control roadway (road extending to both sides of the screenshot below, primary road for this example).  The primary road already has a profile set.  The secondary road profile is not set yet, but it will have to tie in close to the primary, where the roadways converge on the right side of the screen.  The process will be to set the corridor through on the primary road and extract the edge of pavement grades, subsequently extending them to the south EOP of the secondary road. 

The first trick is making the EOP (green line) into a feature line (this can also be done with using alignments).  You must create the feature line in 2D first, so you can target the north EOP of the primary road.

Action

Under the HOME ribbon tab (Civil 3D 2011).  Feature Line/Create Feature Line from Objects.

Select the north EOP of the primary road.

NOTE: Notice the SITE (L330 OFFSETS) that the feature line is created in.  This is important in this example, since we will create another feature line in the exact location, but we will have to generate 3D elevations from it.  The problem of a 2D line feature line over a 3D feature will be illustrated shortly.

The north EOP is now a feature line with no elevations.

Action

Return to the corridor model editor.

Attach the feature line to the lane/object to stretch.  In this case EOP9, created in the previous step.  Attached to the right side (north EOP, since the primary corridor runs from right to the left).

The tricky part happens now, after you have rebuilt the primary road’s corridor.  You have to extract the 3D elevations from the corridor. 

Action

HOME Ribbon Tab- Feature Line/Feature Line from Corridor. 

If you pick the Edge-of-travelled-way (ETW) from the Corridor and place in the same site you will have a 3D feature line always crossing a 2D feature line (one that has all zeros elevations).  If you’ve worked a lot with feature lines as target objects, you understand how this can be troublesome once feature lines cross.  When the feature lines cross, the elevations become conflicted.

Notice below what happens when the extracted feature line, from the corridor, is placed in the same SITE (L330 OFFSETS).

When the 3D feature line is in the same SITE as the previously created 2D feature line, the elevations will be pulled from the original 2D line.  Notice the 0.000m elevations above.  To avoid this, when you make the feature line, move it into its own site where no other feature lines will cross it. 

Notice below, the “Create Feature Lines from Corridor” dialogue box is being defined to be placed in a new SITE (L330 3D OFFSETS).

Now, the Elevation Editor shows the correct grades extracted from the corridor and you can continue grading from North EOP.

My next step was to approximate a swale location and create a feature line for it.  I set grades to grade toward the knuckle.

The green line in the landscaped knuckle (with triangles and arrows) is the proposed swale.  Below is the Elevation Editor showing proposed elevations of the swale.

Now return to the corridor editor and target to the swale (I just used a Generic Link Sub-Assembly).  Notice that “SWALE 1” is targeted both as an Offset Target and an Elevation Target.

Once the swale has been added to the corridor, you can use the grades set for the swale and set approximate elevations for the south side of the Secondary Corridor.  Create a feature line for the south side of the Secondary Corridor then, just as you did for the swale, you can add an additional Generic Link sub-assembly to the assembly and target the new EOP.   In this example, the Secondary Corridor should be reworked, but now we will know what approximate grades would work best in the area. 

The main consideration was to illustrate the overlapping feature lines in the same SITE.

Hope this helps!

G.