IMAGINiT Civil Solutions Blog

If You Build It, They Will Come

By Malcom Fernandes

While working in the trenches with AutoCAD or Civil 3D, have you ever muttered “there has to be an easier way.”? Because AutoCAD and Civil 3D have a huge impact in how we design, draft and build real world projects, there are times that the tools availale may not always match our workflow. It is times like these when we wish there were an easier way.

My first productive tool was in the mid 80’s. We had recently purchased AutoCAD 2.1 and although the sales demo showed how we could draw an organizational hierarchy chart, we still purchased AutoCAD to help us draft legal plans (plats). The struggle was in annotating the plan. It involved listing the line or arc and then typing the length, bearing, delta and radius as text. The only LISP book I could find at that time was from the university library on Common LISP. But it had enough that I could create an application to annotate an entire drawing. The program still works AutoCAD 2015.

The need for “an easier way” created a whole new industry of third party tools for Autodesk products. In my opinion this in itself, gave rise to AutoCAD. You had industry expects developing tools that expanded AutoCAD from a simple digital drafting board to an industry specific design and drafting production tool. Realizing this, Autodesk introduced an alternative to LISP, Watcom C. I had to bypass this era as my firm at the time could not justify purchasing a C compiler. Soon after, Autodesk introduced Visual Basic for Application (VBA) and VB. Great advantage, especially over the LISP Dialog Control Language (DCL). Today the latest and greatest for rapid development seems to be Visual Studio, Basic or C#.

Over the years Autodesk has consumed and included some of the third party products either as core tools in standard AutoCAD or as vertical products. However, there still may be a need to have custom functionality to address specific requirements within your organization or project.

To this end, we at IMAGINiT have a core development group spanning a vast number of industries, that may be able to help your organization. However, if you are like me and get a high from building your very own app and running down the hall yelling “Eureka I got it!”, then here a white paper that may help you get your feet wet in writing your first AutoCAD or Civil 3D application. 

Hopefully your first application will be as rewarding as my first app, DIMENT (no, that is not an abbreviation for demented although at times I feel that way). DIMENT stands for dimension entity.

Cheers and good luck.

Visualizing a Point Cloud in Infraworks

C:\Users\jmeszar\Documents\video (3).avi As many of you know, Infraworks is the latest and greatest software offering from Autodesk with relation to the Civil Engineering industry.  You may also know that LiDAR technology and 3D laser scanning have come to be used more often in the civil engineering industry as well.  I recently was working with a firm in the New England area who wanted to be able to show their point clound along with aerial imagery and an extended existing surface (beyond their lidar scan).  Here is how I went about creating something like that using a combination of Infraworks, Civil 3D and Recap Pro.

I started with an export from the lidar equipment in LAS format.  Some of you may know that while I am able to use the LAS file format in Civil 3D, I can not use it in Infraworks.  Infraworks requires an RCP or RCS file.  Of course, using the Infrastructure Design Suite we have access to Recap so we can create the RCP file needed.  So, I opened recap and started the import process all the while being sure that the correct cooridnate system is set.  I saved my project and exited recap.  Now that I have the Recap file, I can move on to the Civil 3D part of my workflow.

Civil 3D provides us with two ways to view a point cloud.  First, we can attach the RCP that was created in the previous step.  Second, we can attach the original LAS files as a point cloud in Civil 3D.  I will be choosing the second step so I am able to create a surface from the point cloud.  I am not too worried about the point cloud being cleaned up or what the surface looks like in Civil 3D since I am merely going to use the surface boundary.  I created a surface from the point cloud and set the maximum triangle lenth in surface properties to something like 400' so that the boundary is fairly close to the point cloud. From here, I simply make a couple of grip edits to tighten up the area around the point cloud convert the 3D polyline to a 2D polyline.  Use MapExport to export the closed area to an SDF or SHP file.

Now it's time to open Infraworks and our model.   I created my model by using model builder and selectin a location.  I turned off the roads for this example.  Of course, the point cloud is the star of our show so we want to be able to see that as clearly as possible but sometiimes a surface from a DEM file or Model builder will be slightly above or below our cloud.  When this is the case, it is difficult to visualized the cloud.  So, I am going to use the closed shape sdf file I created from Civil 3D to hide the imagery and surface data in the area where the point cloud exists.  I will import that sdf and configure it as a coverage area.  The coverage area style should be set as Terrain Hole so we completely hide the data in that area.  Make sure to drape the coverage area to the surface and convert closed polylines to polygons.  The surface and imagery should now be hidden.

Connect to the point cloud RCP file.

 

As you can see from the very short video below, the point cloud is visable and I have removed the area on each side of the cloud so I can see the cloud better.

Drainage Structures Not Displaying Correctly in Infraworks?

Infraworks 2015 introduced a new drainage feature to the software that is quite remarkable.  If you have yet to use this feature I strongly encourage you to check it out.  When I first started reviewing what this feature had to offer, I was quickly discouraged that I could not get the structures in my model to show properly.  They were displaying as a sort of proxy graphic with the logo of my video card company on them.  So immediately, I thought my hardware was not up to Autodesk's standards and did some research on new drivers with a little help from Autodesk Support.  Finally, I got it to work.....so I thought.  The structures were now appearing as structures but they were not nearly deep enough to encompass the pipe.  In other words, the pipe inverts were showing correctly but my structure did not have the 2' sump that it was supposed to have (currently a standard in Infraworks that can't be changed). I know some of you are thinking I know the solution before you read beyond this point.   Well, good for you!!! However, I know there are still users out there who might not know the solution to this so I will continue on.  For those of you who haven't yet found a solution, Autodesk has a fix in place and it is very easy to implement.  First, follow the link below to download a folder worth of files that have to replace files that are installed with the software.  Next follow directions below to replace the folder in your directory structure.

 

1. Download Inventor.zip

2. Depending on the security settings on your computer, you may need to select the downloaded zip file and right click on the file and select Properties.  In the properties window click the Unblock button on the security section of the General Properties tab. 

3. Extract the file to the folder "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\InfraWorks 360\ParametricGenerator\Inventor Server"

4. Restart your computer and Infraworks 360.

 

The first image displays the structure before this fix is applied and the second is after.

       

 Link to Autodesk Knowledgebase solution:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/infraworks-360/downloads/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Infraworks-substitute-graphics-for-culverts-and-inlets-on-Windows-8-1.html