Tool for Tuesday: SurfaceExtractObjects

Civil 3D Surface Objects can be represented an infinite number of ways by using Civil 3D styles.  In other words, by switching or tweaking Civil 3D styles, our surfaces can be represented as 3D triangles, Elevations Bands, Slope Arrows, Contours of any interval or even nothing at all.

This is awesome in that necessary Surface display representations can be created on the fly and do not have to be maintained as separate geometry. 

Having said this, sometimes we need to share our files with folks that might not have Civil 3D and therefore do not have access to all of the Surface display representations we do.  Other times we need to collaborate with folks who may require the data in a different format entirely. (GIS for example)

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could extract from our Surfaces various display representations and save that information as standard AutoCAD objects or to GIS files.  In short, we can!

For example, using the SurfaceExtractObjects tool, we can reach into a Civil 3D surface and extract contour lines as standard Polylines.  Coupling that with the MapExport command, we can write those polylines out as a GIS file.  The same is true for Triangles, Elevation data, Slope arrows, Surface boundary and more.  

Check out the video below to see how it works.

-Jerry

Comments

[Robert Kaack]

i have two questions. first, in the area above the video the dialogue box shows more parameters that can be selected. in the example you only had major and minor contours. how do you get to the other parameters?

and secondly, in this example, when the shape file is brought in, are the lines polylines?

[Jerry Bartels]

Hi Robert,
The additional parameters only show up when those items are currently displayed in the Surface style. As for the SHP file, when the contours are brought in via. FDO (the way I did it in the video) they are "Map Features".

[Geospatial &Space Technology]

Thank you for sharing,this is helpful to us and our student.