Autodesk CIVIL3D - CIVILDESIGNCOMP 2007 SLM CD, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 User Manual

A Practical Guide to

Rick Ellis

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013

A Cadapult Software Solutions Publication

Copyright

Copyright © Cadapult Software Solutions, Inc. 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means electronic,
mechanical, recording, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for
brief quotations used in reviews, or for marketing purposes specific to the promotion of this work.

ISBN: 978-1-934865-10-1

Although Cadapult Software Solutions has made every attempt to ensure the accuracy of the contents of this
book, the publisher and author make no representations or warranty with respect to accuracy or
completeness of the contents in this book, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular
purpose. The datasets included in this book are for training purposes only.

AutoCAD Civil 3D and AutoCAD® are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners.

Published in the United States of America by:
Cadapult Software Solutions
[phone]
[e-mail]

Printed and manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Rick Ellis has worked with and taught AutoCAD Civil 3D, along with Map 3D and other Autodesk products

since the mid-90s. He is the Author of several critically acclaimed books on AutoCAD Civil 3D, Map 3D and
Land Desktop.

Rick continues to use AutoCAD Civil 3D on projects in a production environment, in addition to teaching
classes to organizations both large and small.

This practical background and approach has made him a highly rated speaker at Autodesk University, a
member of the national speaker team for the AUGI CAD Camps and a sought after instructor by organizations
around the world.

Rick can be reached at: [e-mail]

About the Technical Editor

Russell Martin is an independent consultant who has worked with AutoCAD since 1985. He pioneered the

position of Staff Geographer, and later served as CAD/GIS Manager at a multi-disciplinary engineering
consulting firm. Russell has served as technical editor for many of Cadapult Software Solutions training
books, and has co-authored and contributed to several other books on CAD, GIS and technical graphics
software.

Russell can be reached at: [e-mail]

Exercise Data

I would like to thank the City of Springfield, Oregon for providing the data for this book. The dataset provided
is for illustration purposes only. While it is based on real world information to add relevance to the exercises,
it has been altered and modified to more effectively demonstrate certain features as well as to protect all
parties involved. The data should not be used for any project work and may not represent actual places or
things. It is prohibited to redistribute this data beyond your personal use as a component of training.

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A Practical Guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013

Introduction

Congratulations on choosing this course to help you learn how to use AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013. The term
“practical” is used in the title because this course focuses on what you need to effectively use AutoCAD Civil
3D 2013, and does not complicate your learning experience with unnecessary details of every feature in the
product. Should you want to pursue aspects of features and functionality in greater detail than provided in this
course, you are directed and guided to that information.

Each lesson contains the concepts and principles of each feature to provide you with the background and
foundation of knowledge that you need to complete the lesson. You then work through real world exercises to
reinforce your understanding and provide you with practice on common tasks that other professionals are
performing with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 in the workplace every day.

You can take the lessons in this course in whatever order is appropriate for your personal needs. If you want
to concentrate on specific features, the lesson for those features does not require that you complete prior
lessons. With this course organization, you can customize your own individual approach to learning AutoCAD
Civil 3D.

When you complete this course, you will be armed with the background and knowledge to apply AutoCAD
Civil 3D to your job tasks, and become more effective and productive in your job.

Course Objectives

The objectives of this course are performance based. In other words, once you have completed the course,
you will be able to perform each objective listed. If you are already familiar with AutoCAD Civil 3D, you will be
able to analyze your existing workflows, and make changes to improve your performance based on the tools
and features that you learn and practice in this course.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Understand and work with Object Styles.

• Create, manage and apply Label Styles.

• Import and manage Points, and work with Point Groups.

• Create and edit Alignments.

• Define Parcels.

• Create and edit Profiles and Profile Views.

• Create Corridors and extract information from them.

• Sample Sections and plot Section Views.

• Import and leverage GIS Data in your Civil 3D projects.

• Use Queries to manage and share data.

• Layout Pipe Networks and edit them in plan and profile.

• Work with the Grading tools.

• Create reports for Civil 3D objects.

• Calculate Volumes.

• Share project data with Data Shortcuts.

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The compass indicates that this text provides guidance that is based on the

Prerequisites

Before starting this course, you should have a basic working knowledge of AutoCAD®. A deep understanding
of AutoCAD is not required, but you should be able to:

• Pan and Zoom in the AutoCAD drawing screen.

• Describe what layers are in AutoCAD, and change the current layer.

• Create basic CAD geometry, such as lines, polylines and circles.

• Use Object Snaps.

• Describe what blocks are, and how to insert them.

• Perform basic CAD editing functions such as Erase, Copy, and Move.

If you are not familiar with these functions, you can refer to the AutoCAD Help system throughout the course
to gain the fundamental skills needed to complete the exercises.

Conventions

The course uses the following icons and formatting to draw your attention to guidelines that increase your
effectiveness in AutoCAD Civil 3D, or provide deeper insight into a subject.

The magnifying glass indicates that this text provides deeper insights into the
subject.

experience of other users of AutoCAD Civil 3D. This guidance is often in the form of
how to perform a task more efficiently.

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Exercises

The exercises in this course have been designed to represent common tasks that are performed by civil
engineers, surveyors, designers and drafters. The data included in the exercises are typical drawings, point
files and other data used by professionals like you. You work with drawings, point files, aerial photos, GIS
data, and much more; as you work through a road design project that also includes a sewer extension and
detention pond.

Exercises provide higher level process information throughout the exercise tasks. You are given information
about not only what to do, but why you are doing it. In most cases, an image is included to help guide you.

Installing the Datasets

The CD included with this book contains all of the datasets required for the exercises.

There are two ways to install the dataset:

• Use the Setup.exe.

• Unzip the files.

Use Setup.exe

Double click setup.exe and follow the instructions for installation.

Unzip the Files

Unzip AutoCAD Civil 3D Training.zip directly to the C drive. The zip file will create the following folder
structure:

C:\A Practical Guide\Civil 3D 2013\

Several folders are created below the Civil 3D 2013 folder, that contain the source data you will use for the
exercises in this book.

A folder called Chapter Drawings is also created that contains a drawing that can be used to begin each
exercise. This will allow you to jump in at the beginning of any exercise in the book, and do just the specific
exercises that you want, if you do not have time to work through the book from cover to cover. The drawings
in the Chapter Drawings folder are not necessary and only need to be used if you want to start in the middle
of the book, or if you want to overwrite any mistakes that you may have made in previous chapters.

Two drawing templates called _Practical Guide Training by Style.dwt and _Practical Guide Section.dwt are
also available in the template folder.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

1.1 Lesson: Navigating the AutoCAD Civil 3D User Interface .....................................................................2

1.2 Lesson: Project Overview ................................................................................................................... 13

Chapter 2 Data Collection and Base Map Preparation ....................................................................... 17

2.1 Lesson: Importing GIS Data ................................................................................................................ 18

2.2 Lesson: Using Queries to Manage and Share Data ........................................................................... 32

AutoCAD Civil 3D User Interface ............................................................................................1

1.1.1 Navigating the AutoCAD Civil 3D Interface ...................................................................... 10

2.1.1 Importing ESRI Shapefiles ............................................................................................... 21

2.1.2 Controlling the Display of Polygons .................................................................................. 27

2.1.3 Viewing GIS Attributes in AutoCAD .................................................................................. 27

2.1.4 Inserting a Registered Image (Rectified Aerial Photography) .......................................... 28

2.1.5 Adding the Project Area .................................................................................................... 30

2.2.1 Attaching Source Drawings .............................................................................................. 39

2.2.2 Defining a Query ............................................................................................................... 42

2.2.3 Saving Changes Back To the Source Drawings .............................................................. 44

2.2.4 Defining a Compound Query ............................................................................................ 46

Chapter 3 Preliminary Layout ................................................................................................................ 53

3.1 Lesson: Creating a Preliminary Existing Ground Surface................................................................... 54

3.1.1 Creating a Surface ............................................................................................................ 57

3.1.2 Adding Surface Data ........................................................................................................ 59

3.1.3 Changing the Surface Style to Control Display ................................................................ 62

3.1.4 Managing Drawing Settings.............................................................................................. 64

3.1.5 Using the Object Viewer ................................................................................................... 65

3.2 Lesson: Creating a Preliminary Alignment .......................................................................................... 66

3.2.1 Drafting the Preliminary Alignment Using Transparent Commands ................................ 68

3.3 Lesson: Creating Points from an Alignment........................................................................................ 71

3.3.1 Establishing the Point Settings ......................................................................................... 75

3.3.2 Setting Points on an Alignment ........................................................................................ 76

3.3.3 Creating a Point Group ..................................................................................................... 78

3.3.4 Creating a Point Import/Export Format ............................................................................. 79

3.3.5 Exporting Points to an ASCII File ..................................................................................... 81

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Chapter 4

Creating a Survey Plan ......................................................................................................... 83

4.1 Lesson: Importing Survey Points ......................................................................................................... 84

4.1.1 Creating a Description Key Set ......................................................................................... 87

4.1.2 Importing Points from an ASCII File.................................................................................. 89

4.1.3 Confirming the Description Keys Worked Properly ........................................................... 91

4.2 Lesson: Working with Point Groups .................................................................................................... 92

4.2.1 Locking Points and Group Properties ............................................................................... 95

4.2.2 Creating a Point Group for Property Corners ................................................................... 96

4.2.3 Creating a Point Group for Center Line Points ................................................................. 98

4.2.4 Creating a Point Group for Breakline Points ..................................................................... 98

4.2.5 Creating a Point Group for Tree Points............................................................................. 99

4.3 Lesson: Controlling Point Display ...................................................................................................... 100

4.3.1 Creating Point Styles....................................................................................................... 105

4.3.2 Creating Point Label Styles ............................................................................................. 107

4.3.3 Controlling Point Display with Point Groups ................................................................... 116

4.3.4 Controlling the Dragged State ......................................................................................... 117

4.3.5 Controlling Point Label Size in Model Space .................................................................. 118

4.3.6 Controlling Point Group Display Order............................................................................ 119

4.4 Lesson: Drawing Linework Using Transparent Commands .............................................................. 120

4.4.1 Drawing Lines by Point Number ..................................................................................... 123

4.4.2 Drawing Lines by a Range of Point Numbers ................................................................. 124

4.4.3 Drawing Lines by Point Object ........................................................................................ 125

4.5 Lesson: Working with Parcels ........................................................................................................... 127

4.5.1 Defining a Parcel from Existing Geometry ...................................................................... 129

4.5.2 Creating a Parcel Area Report ........................................................................................ 131

4.5.3 Creating a Parcel Legal Description Report ................................................................... 132

4.6 Lesson: Labeling Linework ................................................................................................................ 134

4.6.1 Labeling Parcel Lines ...................................................................................................... 137

4.6.2 Working with Parcel Segment Labels ............................................................................. 138

4.6.3 Creating a Line Tag Style ............................................................................................... 139

4.6.4 Tagging Parcel Lines ...................................................................................................... 141

4.6.5 Creating a Line Table ...................................................................................................... 142

4.6.6 Creating a Parcel Area Table .......................................................................................... 144

4.6.7 Labeling AutoCAD Objects ............................................................................................. 151

Chapter 5 Building a Survey Quality Surface ..................................................................................... 155

5.1 Lesson: Building Surfaces from Survey Data .................................................................................... 156

5.1.1 Creating a Point Group to Be Used As Surface Data ..................................................... 161

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