Residential Subdivision Grading—Grading Beyond the Roads

BRIAN HALEY: All right, welcome everybody, the last session of Autodesk University 2017!

AUDIENCE: Woo!

BRIAN HALEY: Yeah!

[APPLAUSE]

I'm impressed. I was expecting three people to show up. So, how's AU been for everybody so far? Everybody learn something new?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

BRIAN HALEY: Good, good. Anybody make new connections? Anybody yell at-- anybody yell at Autodesk.

AUDIENCE: Yeah!

BRIAN HALEY: Yeah, all right. So yeah, welcome everybody. So this is a Residential Subdivision Grading-- Grading Beyond The Roads. I had to come up with some snazzy title.

Really what we're going to be talking about in this class is feature line grading. I'm going to use a residential subdivision as an example so you'll see some of the techniques that you can use for a residential subdivision. But if you're not doing residential grading, if you're doing any sort of grading at all, you will get something out of this class, at least I hope so.

So, who am I? My name is Brian. Again, I am a licensed professional engineer in the State of Colorado. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Woo!

BRIAN HALEY: Said that one time. And when I was teaching a class, and this guy in the front row looked up at me and said, well, that's a waste of a PE.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Yeah, sometimes I wish I could give grades. I did design for about eight years, primarily residential subdivisions, which is kind of odd. Been a technical specialist now for CAD-1-- we're a reseller-- for about 11 years. I love my job. I get out and meet people that actually want my services instead of being told that they have to have it by the city. So it's kind of refreshing.

I've taught at Autodesk University. This is my eighth time teaching at AU. I've been here 11 times. I'm an Autodesk expert elite.

I won the AUGI Top Daug competition back when they had them. I won the next year too. But they disqualified me because I won the year before. So I was not given the opportunity to defend my title.

In real life, I have three boys. I am an assistant scout master. And they eat a lot. Was it three weeks ago, I had one teenage boy, now I have three. So I have 13-year-old twins.

So learning objectives. So what are we going to learn in here? This was documented in the handout. I know you guys all read the handout-- twice. I'm not going to go through the learning objectives step by step in this class. We will cover all of these, but not in necessarily that order.

But before we get started, I got a trivia question for you. I'm from Colorado. I love Colorado, born and raised. Lived there almost my entire life, except for a couple of years I got stuck in Germany.

Eisenhower tunnel, how many people have driven through Eisenhower tunnels? It's I-70 going through the Rocky Mountains. It is the highest point on the US interstate system.

So we've got the Eisenhower tunnel here. Does anybody know the name of the other tunnel? What is it?

AUDIENCE: Johnson

BRIAN HALEY: It's the Johnson tunnel. Who's it named after?

AUDIENCE: Lyndon B Johnson

BRIAN HALEY: Not Lyndon B Johnson. It's Edwin C Johnson, governor of Colorado at the time. So that is the Johnson tunnel. So next time you're at a party, you're really going to be able to wow people. And they're just going to be like, oh, that is too cool.

So I don't have anything to give away. I just think that's kind of a cool fact. That's highest highway tunnel in the US as well.

So the agenda today, what are we going to cover? We're going to start off talking about how are we going to go about creating feature lines? I guess we'll see how to create feature lines.

We're going to prepare the project. You don't want to just create feature lines, and get right in, and start editing elevations. There's some things that we need to do to the project in order to make that whole process a lot easier. It takes a bit of time, but it's time well invested.

What we'll then actually get into doing the grading. And this is where I'm going to be spending most of the class. And then once we do that, a lot of times, you end up with lots of surfaces for this grading. So how do we create one final surface?

So, we're going to start off with creating feature lines. Now before we get into creating feature lines, we have to have the talk. Yeah, sites.

So as a group of civil engineering professionals here, what comes to mind when I say the word site, S-I-T-E, site? Yeah, you don't count. Not as of Civil 3D user, but as a civil engineering professional, what comes to the mind--

AUDIENCE: The property.

BRIAN HALEY: The property. OK, what else? Somebody over here.

AUDIENCE: Construction.

BRIAN HALEY: Construction

AUDIENCE: Project limits.

BRIAN HALEY: What's that?

AUDIENCE: Project limits

BRIAN HALEY: Project limits. Good, what else? Well, so almost every time I ask this question, the answer I get has something to do with location. You go out to do a site visit. You go to this location to do that. The surveyors go out and do a site survey.

This particular project is going to be creating a bunch of extra traffic. And we have to improve that intersection over there. What is that? Well, that's an off-site improvement because it's some place else. Does that make sense? Good.

Well, a site in Civil 3D-- so this is what we think of when we think of a site, where we're doing the project. Everything within the project limits, that's the site. Well, a site in Civil 3D has absolutely nothing to do with location.

What is a site in Civil 3D? Well, a site is a topology. Ooh, there's a good word for you-- topology. How many people have used a topology? A handful. I bet you all have, you just didn't know it.

Have you ever gotten on your phone and said, hey, give me directions to the Quickie Mart or wherever you're going? What have you done? You've run a path of least resistance analysis on a roadway topology.

So what's a topology? Well, topology is a spatial relationship between adjacent or neighboring features. Great, what's that? Well basically, it's line work or objects that have some sort of a relationship with each other. So in Civil 3D, we have sites. And all of the objects that go into a site have some sort of relationship with each other.

So, what I'm going to do here quick is I'm going to walk you through my learning process when it came to sites. And when Civil 3D first came out-- and I'm talking like the 2004 version, that preview version, I had no training. I was coming from Land Desktop. And I ran into some issues.

So I'm just-- ooh, wrong drawing. Yes, I am doing live demo. Yes. And I want to start doing some grading in here. So I'm going to create some feature lines.

So I'm going to start off, I'm just going to draw a couple of polylines in here. And I'm take these polylines, and I'm going to make them into feature lines. So I'll grab the polylines. I'll choose feature lines. Create feature lines from objects. My mouse is not-- there we go.

And I do want to throw out a quick caveat real quick. I am fighting a cough. So if I start hacking, just give me a moment, and I'll be fine. I took medicine just before class. I'm sure I'll be OK. But just to throw that out there.

So I'm creating this feature lines. And what site should I put them in? Oh, I don't know, I'm just going to use Site1. Why not? It's the default. I'm sure it's fine.

Never use Site1. Why? Because it's the default. You don't know if somebody else has used this site yet. So never, under any circumstance, ever, use Site1.

So here I am, I'm just going to use Site1. Why not? It's the default. I'm sure it's fine.

And I said, I'm going to go ahead and create these feature lines. I'm going to take this feature line here, and I'm going to raise it up in the air just a hair. I'll go ahead and split my view so we can see a 3D view-- oops. I didn't want to do that.

So over here on the left, I'm going to keep looking at this in a plan view. Over here on the right, I'm going to pull this off into a 3D view. So you can see these are definitely at different elevations here, right? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this feature line, and I'm going to grip edit it so it crosses over this other feature line here. And when I'm done doing this, this is what you would expect to see, just two lines crossing in the middle of space like that.

As soon as I'm done editing this, though, what happens? The bottom feature line jumps up to the elevation of the top feature line. Why is that? Well, it's because they're in the same site, in the same topology. So one of the rules of our sites is each point within a site only gets one elevation.

Now, the point over here could be at a different elevation. But this point here only gets one. It can't have two elevations.

So when these two feature lines cross each other at the intersection point, they're at two different elevations. So one of them had to adjust and match the elevation of the other one.

Now, why did the bottom one jump up to the top one? Why didn't the top one dive down to the bottom one? Well, a general rule of thumb here, last one edited-- and I'm just going to grip edit this right smack back dab on itself-- wins. So what do you guys think, is this a good thing, or is this a bad thing?

[AUDIENCE MUTTERS]

OK, let me rephrase the question slightly. If you don't know this is happening, is this a good thing, or is this a bad thing?

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

I think we can all agree that this is a bad thing. But if you know it's happening, this is an extremely powerful tool. I'm grading a subdivision here. I need to make sure that my lot lines, the elevations of them, tie into the same elevation as my right-of-way. If I change the elevation of the right-of-way, I need my lot lines to change as well. That's where this comes into play.

Now, I would never do this. Never cross feature lines. If you ever have feature lines that cross each other, always put a vertex on each one at that intersection point. It's going to make life so much easier. I don't want to have to worry about this whole last one edited wins. If there's a vertex there, if I want to change the elevation of the intersection, I have to go change the elevation of the intersection.

So engineer Ed has come through and done all this grading for these lots. And now surveyor Sally's going to come into the drawing and needs to put an easement along the back of the lots. So surveyor Sally's going to come in here and draw in her easement and going to create parcels from it, create parcels from objects.

Grab that polyline, what site should I put it in?

AUDIENCE: The blue one.

BRIAN HALEY: Oh, I don't know. I'm just going to use Site1. Why not? It's the default. See where this is going?

So as soon as I hit OK here, what happens? Parcel segments have elevation. If I put those parcel segments in the same site, in the same topology as my feature lines, when they cross, they have to have the same elevation. And again, same thing applies here, last one edited wins. How's this for a parcel?

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]

So when it comes to feature lines and site objects, the only time you should ever put two things in the same site is when you intentionally want them to interact with each other. I want my feature lines to interact with each other. I don't want them to interact with the parcels. So I put my feature lines in one site, and I put my parcels in another site. So I'm going to take these feature lines, and I'm going to move them to a different site.

Now, in the last couple of releases, feature lines no longer have to be in a site. In this case, I want them to be because I need them to have that interaction. So I'm going to come over here, I'm going to create a brand new site. And this is what engineer Ed should have done in the first place. Oh, by the way, who's at fault here? Is it engineer Ed or is it surveyor Sally?

AUDIENCE: Surveyor Sally.

BRIAN HALEY: Surveyor Sally? Oh come on, it's not always the surveyor's fault.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Yeah, they're both equally culpable because they both used Site1. So engineer Ed should have come in here and created a new site, called it something like Northwest Lots Grading. And now the feature lines no longer interact with the parcels. They still interact with each other, but they no longer interact with the parcels. Does that makes sense? So as you can see, when you're creating feature lines, it's really important to have good geometry.

Now, there are a couple of different ways of creating feature lines in Civil 3D. You can use the Create Feature Line command. Or you can create feature lines from objects. There's some others. But these are the ones you're going to be primarily using if you're doing grading.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Create Feature Line command. There's nothing wrong with it. I just personally don't like it.

And the reason is is because every time I pick a point from when I'm creating a feature line, it's going to ask me for the elevation. And well, I don't know what the elevation needs to be yet. So I just create. If I'm doing this, it's constantly asking me for stuff I don't know. And it just gets annoying.

So what I do is I create polylines instead. We all know how to create polylines, edit polylines. Polylines are easy. So I create the polylines. And then I use the Create Feature Lines From Objects command to make them into feature lines.

Now remember from a little bit earlier, if I don't want to deal with that whole "last one edit it wins" thing, you want to make sure that your geometry is really, really good. So here's an example of some lines that I'm going to make into feature lines. And as you can see, I've got some issues here.

That green line up there in the top, the vertex on it is not perfectly matched up with that red line. Down there in that lower box, I've got one line that ends a little bit short. I've got another line that extends a little bit beyond.

So what do we do here? Well, we need to make sure that we've got that good, clean geometry. So we're going to use a command called the Drawing Cleanup Tools.

Now, this command was introduced fairly recently. This command was released in '14-- release 14 as back in 1998. And how many people use this command? Well good, that's more than I expected, good.

So how many people have been using the Civil 3D, or Land Desktop or Maps since release 14? Man, good. I don't feel so old now. So let me show you-- let's get into creating some feature lines here. Yes, I've got drawings throughout this just in case-- not that Civil 3D would ever crash.

So the first thing I'm going to do is I need to make sure that I get my lot lines. And I've got my-- or my lines that I want to make in the feature lines. And I've saved a layer state here just to make my life a little bit easier. But let me talk a little bit about what's going on here.

So, I've got a block of lots. This is block 12 of the project. I've got a corridor running around through all the streets. And what I want to do now is I want to do the grading for this block of lots.

So I've got a right-of-way line in here. And that right-of-way line is going to be the attachment point. That's where my lot grading and my roadway grading need to match up.

Now, it doesn't have to be the right-of-way. But that's what I chose in this example. You just need to make sure that you have that tie endpoint.

The red lines that I've got in here, those are my lot lines. The water is going to be carried along those lot lines to the street. The magenta-- or purple-- lines represent the allowable building areas. That's where we can put a building.

And then the green lines are the backyard swales. So as the water's coming off the back of the lot and off the back of the house, it needs to go around the house. So that's the swale that's going to take the water out to the side lot lines.

One of the criteria I have for this project is anywhere I have water flowing over grass, I need a minimum 2% slope. Because we don't want ponding water because then that breeds mosquitoes, and we get that West Nile virus, and then-- we don't want that, right? So let me go ahead and restore some layers here.

So I've determined these are the lines that I want to create feature lines from. I stole this from the surveyor. He created the plat. I just borrowed these. And I want to create feature lines from this.

But remember what I said, anytime you have feature lines that cross each other, you always want to make sure there's a vertex at that intersection point. So if I grab this right-of-way line, what you'll notice is I don't have that. Everywhere is crossing those lot lines, I don't have vertices there necessarily.

If I grab this green swale here, again, where it crosses the lot lines, and same with a lot lines, I don't have vertices there. If I grab this green swale, you can see I do have a vertex there where it meets exactly on that last line. Or does it? Nobody's ever seen this before, right?

How long would it take you to find something like this? If I do a quick distance in here, and I'll snap endpoint-- oops, come on, try that again. Snap endpoint to the intersection there. As you can see, that's 1/1,000 of a foot. It's almost like somebody put that in there intentionally

How would you find that? No, you're not going to go through every single vertex on every single piece of line work that you got from the landscape architect. So we have a tool that will help us clean this up.

So it's called the Map Cleanup tool-- the Drawing Cleanup tool. It's part of Map 3D. You can switch to the Planning Analysis Workspace and find it up there somewhere.

I'm just going to type the command. It's called Map Clean. So, I'll type Map Clean-- oops. I love auto complete.

What objects do you want to clean up? So I'm going to go ahead and select those objects. And just because, I'm going to use a lasso. Why not?

So I've selected, what, 26 objects? Down below here, I've got an option to anchor some objects. So these are objects that I want to use in the cleanup process, but I don't want them to change. I don't have that in this case. I'll choose Next.

What cleanup actions do you want to do? Now, I'm not going to go through every single one of these cleanup actions. It is documented in the Help file. I've got some information in the handout as well.

Oh, and by the way, if you guys are reading my handout digitally, most of the images that show a command have a link to the Help file in them. So you can just click on that image and it'll take you to the Help file for that command. So I thought about that last minute, and I stayed up till midnight adding all those links in.

But first of all, Delete Duplicates, that's my first option. So if I have two lines that are exactly the same, it'll get rid of one of those. So that one's really important. Because remember what I said, every time you have a feature line that crosses, you want to make sure there's a vertex at that intersection point. If I have two duplicate lines, how often do those things cross each other?

AUDIENCE: Everywhere

BRIAN HALEY: Yeah, everywhere, theoretically an infinite number of times. So duplicate objects are really bad when we're dealing with sites. So I'm going to go ahead and choose Delete Duplicates and add that in.

Now over here to the right, I get options for some tolerances. Now, these don't all have tolerances. But a lot of them do. So how close to duplicate do the two objects need to be in order for them to be considered duplicate? So you could put some tolerances in here.

I'm going to come down here to the next one, Erase Short Objects. What do you guys think? Should I do this one? No, no. Well, what's short? What if I have a line that's 1/10,000 of a foot long? Well, yeah, I don't need that. What if it's 1/100th of a foot long? Maybe.

Now remember, we're building with bulldozers here. You don't have to be 100% spot on accurate when you're doing grading. The guy's going to be out there with a Bobcat in the backyard. How close can he really get? So just keep that in mind as you're doing this. You want to make sure it works, but.

So I'm going to choose Erase Short Objects. I'll choose Add. And you can see the tolerance over here is set to 1/100 of a foot. So anything that's shorter than 1/100 of a foot will be erased.

And then again, I just continue through this. So I've got Break Crossing Objects. So if I have two lines that cross each other, it's going to break those into four lines. If I have a T-typed intersection, it's going to take that through line and make it into two objects.

What this does is this is the piece that puts those vertices at those intersection points for me. This one is really important. You definitely want to do that one if you don't do any others.

So-- I don't know. I'm getting tired of hitting that stupid Add button. You can just double click on them. Oops, my mouse moved. Break Crossing Objects, yo just double-click on it.

And then you just continue through, Extend Underchutes, Apparent Intersection, and Snap Cluster Nodes, Dissolve Pseudonodes, Erase Dangling Objects, Simplify Objects-- ooh, Simplify Objects. What this one does, if I have a series of lines that kind of form an arc, it will try to replace it with an arc, which isn't bad. I've just seen some odd results with it in the past. So I usually don't do the Simplify Objects.

Zero Length Objects, yeah, because somebody snapped that polyline vertices back onto that other vertex to get rid of it. Weed Polylines, this command is good, but not in my situation. Because in my situation, I'm trying to actually add extra vertices onto this line work. I don't want it to pull any out. So I'm not going to do the Weed Vertices.

Now, when you guys do this, what I would recommend, the first few times you do this, turn in the Interactive mode on. This will walk you through each error that it finds. And then you get to choose, do you want to clean that one up or not? And it really helps you get an idea of how this tool works. Once you get sick and tired of just saying Fix All, Fix All, Fix All, Fix All, turn the Automatic mode on, and then it just fixes them off for us.

Choose Next. I got some cleanup options here-- or cleanup methods. Probably my favorite one here is Line to Polyline and Arc to Polyline because I hate lines. I actually worked with one company, and they redefined the Line command to draw Polylines. That's a company I could work for.

So I'm going to toggle both of those on. I'll choose Finish. And it goes through, and it cleans up all that line work for me. So if I grab my right-of-way now, you can see it's broken up into a bunch of little pieces.

Now, this is something I've discovered with the 2018.1. I don't remember it in regular '18, but if I grab this polyline-- so this right-of-way was one polyline before. If I grab this polyline segment now, right click, and do a Select Similar, I should grab all of my right-of-way lines, right? No. I don't know why it's doing this.

If I do the same thing for my swales, these green lines, grab one, right click, Select Similar, you notice I'm missing the ends of them, or the beginnings, or something like that. So it creates lightweight polylines and then the rest of them are polylines. So if I try to do the Join command right now, I get some weird effects. Like I said, this is something I've just recently discovered. I don't know why.

But I'm going to use the Convert Poly command. And this allows me to convert the polylines, whatever I select, to either lightweight or heavy polylines. So I'm going to choose light. I'll grab those. And now when I do my Select Similar, they're all good.

So I want my right-of-way to be one line. So I'll go ahead and J for Join. I love that new Join command. And that's all now one polyline. I repeat the process for my swales, Select Similar on those, J for Join, and I now have my three swales.

Now, my lot lines themselves, I'm going to spend a little bit of extra time on these because well, this is block 12. I've already graded 11 lots. And I already figured out what works well for me in this project.

And I've discovered that having that back lot line being all one feature line tends to work well for me. So I would go through, and I would spend the time to make sure that this joins in the correct way. Because if you just do a Select Similar on this and Join, you get some odd configurations there. So I've gone ahead and done that. So I made this back lot line-- this one polyline here.

So now I've got the polylines created. They're cleaned up. Now I want to go in and start creating feature lines. So I'm going to start with right-of-way line. So I'll grab the right-of-way, Home tab, Feature Line, Create Feature Line From Objects.

What site should I put this in? But don't say it.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

I've got two sites in this drawing already. I've got an intersection site and a temp site. The intersection site I use to model the intersections of my roadway design.

I didn't use the Intersection tool. I used feature lines. I don't want to put these in that site because if I make changes to my lot lines, I don't want it to affect the feature lines-- or the intersections.

What about the temp site? Gosh, I don't know. What's in the temp site? If you don't know what's in a site, don't use it.

So in this case, I'm going to create a new site. I'm not going to use none because I want to make sure I got that site interaction. So I'll come over here to the right, and I'll create a new site. And I'm going to call this one Block 12.

I can put in a name for the feature line. Feature like names are optional. I typically don't care what my feature lines are named. Some people do, some people spend lots of time naming their feature lines. I don't name my polylines either. So I don't spend any time naming feature lines.

Now, some things require that feature lines being named. If you're going to use a feature line as a base line in a corridor or a target for a corridor, it has to be a named feature line. So I typically just let it name it that way I don't have to worry about it later.

The style, the style is also optional. You don't have to use a style for feature lines. If you don't use a style for your feature line, the display of it behaves exactly the same as a polyline. Put it on a red layer, it's red. Put it on a green layer, it's green. [? In fact, ?] grab it, force the properties to blue, it's blue.

In this case, I am going to use a style. I've got a style in here that I've made for this project for my right-of-ways. If you have more than one right-of-way, how do you refer to them? Are they right-of-way or rights-of-way?

I know the answer. Both are technically correct. And I know this because I looked it up online.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

The layer, what layer do you want to put it onto? Because I'm using a style here, I know what the feature line is for based off of its style. So I can put it on a generic layer. And that's OK.

Conversion options. If you want to you the existing entity-- so that polyline, you need to keep it in the drawing for some reason, if you do, make sure that's unchecked. In this case, the only reason I created this polyline was to create the feature line, so I'm just going to get rid of it.

And then below that, I get the option to assign elevations. I need this feature line. This is my tie endpoint. I need it to tie into my corridor surface. So I do want to sign elevations to it.

And then finally down there at the bottom, Weed Points. Now, I don't want to weed points. Remember, I just went through that big exercise to put extra points on this feature line. I don't want to pull them back out.

So I select OK. It's going to ask me, hey, what elevations do you want to assign to this? So I'm going to grab the elevations from that corridor surface. So you can see that's the only surface I have in this drawing.

And then down below here, I get the option to insert intermediate grade breakpoints. So if I do this, every time this feature line crosses a triangle edge of the surface, it's going to put an elevation points in there. So this feature line's going to follow exactly along the surface.

If I leave this unchecked, it simply takes the vertices and moves them up to the surface, and then does a straight grate between them. So in this case, I'm trying to tie into another surface, so I want it to match up exactly. So I'm going to go ahead and toggle that on.

Relative Elevation To Surface, this is new in 2018. If the surface changes, do you want the feature line to change too? Well, in this case, absolutely.

Remember, my right-of-way line needs to tie into that corridor design. So if I change the corridor, I want that right-of-way line to change. So I'm going to go ahead and toggle that on.

And then I can put in a relative elevation. I don't want it above the surface or below the surface, so I'm going to leave it set to zero. Select OK. And I now have my feature line.

And I forgot to change my layers. . Let me go ahead and change my layers here quick. And there is my feature line.

And then I complete the process for my lot lines and my swells. I'm going to go ahead and do this for my lot lines here-- Feature Lines, Create Feature Lines From Objects. I'm going to put it in that block 12 surface because I want it to interact with that right-of-way feature line.

The name is fine. The style, I have a lot line style in here. The layer is fine. Erase Existing Entities, Assign Elevations? Yes, I am going to assign elevations to this one. And that might seem a little counterintuitive, but bear with me for a moment here.

So what elevation do I want assign to this feature line? Well, this project is in Colorado. We're at elevation 5,000 some odd feet. If I don't assign elevations to these, my feature line's going to be down at elevation zero, which is a huge discrepancy.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to assign the elevations to this feature line from that corridor surface even though it's wrong. And what that does is it gets it up in the vicinity of the project for me.

Now, what I don't want is I don't want these feature lines to follow along said surface. So I'm going to uncheck Insert Intermediate Grade Break Points. And if the surface changes, I don't necessarily want these to change, so I'm not going to make them relative to the surface.

Select OK. I'll repeat the process for my swales. This one will go pretty quick. The settings are going to be the exact same as what we had.

Oops, try it one more time. I've got a cable in here in front of my mouse. And it keeps hitting my mouse button. Feature Lines, Create Feature Lines From Objects.

The only change I'm going to make here is the style. I've got a swale style. And this is going to be done exactly the same as those lot lines. And the only reason I did them separately is because I want them to have different styles.

So I've got my feature lines created. Now, what do we do? Well, we go back to PowerPoint.

So I've got the feature lines created. Now it's time to come in and prepare the project. And technically that last section I just showed you could be lumped into this as well. Part of preparing the project is creating the feature lines.

But what are we going to do here? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create the surface. Now, this is just a surface. There's nothing special about it, so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it. But you create the surface, you take the feature lines, and you add them to the surface as break lines.

Once you've done that, you would think, OK, great, let's go do some grading now. No. Next thing we're going to do is we're actually going to label the design, even though it's wrong.

Now, there's a couple of different ways we can label the design. We can label it using surface labels, so I can label the surface itself. Or I can label the feature lines. And there are pros and cons to both of those. And I'll show them to. So let me go ahead and show you this.

So I've got my feature lines here. And what I want to do now is I want to create the surface. And I want to add these to the surface as break lines. And I'm going to show you a nice little tip that allows me to do both at the same time.

So, I'm going to grab all the feature lines that I want to be break lines. So I grab my right-of-way line, lot line, the swale line. I'll select Similar.

And up there on the ribbon, I can choose the command Add To Surfaces Break Line. So this skips the whole create surface and find it under their prospector bit. So I'll add to surfaces break lines.

Now, I don't want to add these to the corridor surface. I want the corridor surface to represent the corridor. If the corridor changes, I want the corridor surface to change accordingly.

So I'm going to come over here to the right, to this unlabeled white plus button-- don't you hate the little unlabeled buttons in Civil 3D, like the one in the label dialog box, that stupid silly little arrow? Yeah.

I hit the little unlabeled white plus, and this will create a new surface for me. So I'll give this a name. I'll call this Block 12, go through, say, your styles, your layers, and all that fun stuff. So I now have a new surface in the drawing.

So it's a quick easy way to create a surface as you're adding break lines. I'll select OK. It's taking those feature lines, adding them as break lines here.

A couple of settings, I do want to point out the mid-ordinate distance. So how many people do not understand what the mid-ordinate distance is? And don't be afraid to say yes. It's OK. So the mid-ordinate distance basically allows us to take curved data and add it to a triangulated surface. Because last time I checked, triangles can't have curves.

I have had people argue that with me. Well, it lives on an earth, and it's-- But that's not a triangle. That's a different shape. So when I have curved data, and I add it to a series of triangles, I have to approximate that with straight line segments.

What the mid-ordinate distance does is it says, how far away from the data, the curve, can the triangle be? By default, it's set to one foot, which in my opinion is way too big. In the metric drawing, its defaults to one meter, which is just huge. So the number that I like to use is a tenth of an inch. If you're in a metric drawing, use something similar. I think that's what-- I don't even know, a couple of centimeters?

AUDIENCE: 12 millimeters

BRIAN HALEY: 12 centimeters for a tenth of an inch? OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

BRIAN HALEY: No, millimeters. Did I say inches? I meant millimeters, whatever the metric is, right?

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

I'm American. So you would use something appropriate, right? Hey, we're the last holdouts of the Imperial system, except for that one tiny little country in Africa. So I'll hit OK there. And it takes those feature lines and adds them to my surface's break lines.

Now, I've got a little issue here. My surface extends out just a little bit here. So I can take this right-of-way line and add it to my surface as a boundary as well as a break line.

And I'm going to show you a trick for this as well. If I select the surface, again, up there on the ribbon, I can choose Add Data. And I can add boundaries. So I'll go ahead and-- in this case, it doesn't matter if I do this as destructive or non-destructive because it matches exactly along the edge.

So I'm just going to-- and the name, my thoughts on the name for boundaries, if you are only adding one boundary to a surface, who cares if it's named. If you're putting in several boundaries, then, yeah, name them appropriately. So that's my thoughts on that.

So I'm just going to hit OK here. I'll select that right-of-way feature line. And you can see it shrinks that up there for me.

So I've got the surface created. Oh, last thing I want to do to this surface is I do want to set it to rebuild automatic. So, I'll right-click on the surface name, Block 12, and set it to rebuild automatic so that way if the data changes the surface, [SNAPS FINGERS] immediately updates.

So now, let's label it. So I'm going to start off by putting some surface labels in here. I'm not going to label the entire thing.

But again, as a short cut, I can grab the surface, and up there on the ribbon, Add Labels. And I'm going to start off by putting some spot elevation labels in here. And I'm just going to start snapping to the ends of these feature lines. And it's going to put my labels in here.

Now, this is a little tedious because you have to click for each one of these labels. And like I said, I'm not going to do all of these. I'm just going to do these top couple of lots here. So you put the labels in where you know you've got design points, where the feature lines have vertices.

So I've got the spot elevations labels in here. But really what's important for this design is the grades. Remember, I need a minimum 2% slope anywhere there's water flowing over grass.

So now, I want to come in here and place in some slope labels. So I'll grab the surface, Add Labels, Slope. And I'm going to do these as two-point labels. I want to know what that slope is along the line. So I'm going to do a two-point label.

And again I'm going to snap from end to end. And it places my label in there. And I go end to end-- oops I messed up. I'll fix that later. Go end to end, and I can continue adding these labels in here. And I'll go endpoint to endpoint, and endpoint to endpoint, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, check out these labels. Why is one red and one's green? What?

AUDIENCE: Positive, negative

BRIAN HALEY: Not positive/negative, good call.

AUDIENCE: Under two millimeters.

BRIAN HALEY: 2%. Remember what I said. For this particular project, my minimum slope is 2% anywhere water's flowing over grass. So I created a label style that shows me that. And I can very quickly see, where am I in violation?

Now, I'm not going to get into how I created this style. If you want the drawings, contact me. I'll put out my email address at the end. And I'll be happy to send them to you.

I tried uploading them to the AU website. But for some reason, it failed. I will try that again later. But you're welcome to take this drawing and cannibalize it all you want.

AUDIENCE: [? Some ?] expressions?

BRIAN HALEY: It uses several expressions. So you can label feature lines-- or the surface. And the nice thing about labeling the surface is you got-- yeah, there it is. I can grab these labels, and I can pull them off into the drag state, and it looks really nice.

No, you set this up to look very nice. So that's the advantage of doing surface labels. So let me do a feature line labels now. I'll go ahead and grab those and erase them. And now I'm going to add feature line labels.

So I'm going to go to the Annotate tab, Add Labels, Line And Curve. I'm going to do multiple segments because I don't have to pick each segment here. Hey, and I've got a style in here setup for grading. Now, this isn't as fancy as my surface label. But you could set it up that way.