Introduction
This tutorial presents how to create a Section with Civil 3D using Plex Earth's terrain data. Easily converting your terrain data to Civil 3D surfaces is crucial if you are a Civil 3D user and you need to gain access to the advanced surface functionality Civil 3D offers. One of these features is the ability to generate Sections for your surface, which is very important for managing engineering projects.
Create a Section in Civil 3D using Plex Earth terrain data
Step 1: Convert Plex Earth's surface to a Civil 3D Surface
You can see how to create a Civil 3D Surface in this tutorial.
Step 2: Create a Section
To proceed with this feature, you will need to create a polyline vertical to your desired section.
After creating the Polyline, go to the Civil 3D Ribbon, select Alignment, and then Create Alignment from Objects. Select the Polyline you created and hit Enter. After that, choose the desired Alignment direction and hit Enter. On the Dialog Box that appears, make sure that you set the Alignment as a Centerline.
Then, you will need to generate a Sample Line from the Alignment you just created. Just select Sample Lines from the Civil 3D Ribbon on the Profile & Section Views Tab. On the Sample Line Tools that appear, you will have to set the stations you will use for your Sections.
You can create multiple stations for several sections you might need. If you want all of your terrain to appear in the section, make sure that you set the width of the sample line right and left, long enough to include the full of your terrain.
After finishing the Sample Lines, we can now create the desired Section. On the Profile & Section Views Tab of Civil 3D select Section Views and then Create Section View.
On the dialog box that pops up, you can select which station you will use for your section, from the ones you created previously. After that, you can adjust more options of your section, like the Offset Range, the Minimum and Maximum Height, etc. but for this tutorial, we will leave the automatic values for these options, and proceed to create our Section View.
The last step is to choose where to place our Section View in our drawing and Civil 3D will automatically create the Section View requested. After that, you can repeat the process to create another section, using a different station.
Conclusion
With Plex-Earth you get quick access to georeferenced high-quality elevation data to create terrain models. Using these terrain models in the Civil 3D environment you can be benefitted from all the AutoCAD tools offered for advanced surface analysis.
We hope that you have found this tutorial on how to create a section using Plex-Earth's surface, helpful. Feel free to contact us at support@plexscape.com for any questions you may still have.
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Compatibility includes:
AutoCAD Version: 2024 , 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , 2016
Civil 3D® Version: 2024 , 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , 2016
AutoCAD Architecture Version: 2024 , 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , 2016
BricsCAD Pro: V23 , V22 , V21