Profile Editing Enhancements in Civil 3D 2015

We at Ideate are looking through the new features in the latest release of Autodesk software. In this post, I am going to discuss the new profile editing enhancements in Civil 3D 2015.

Profile Extending and Adding Entities Before Previously Drawn Entities

Civil 3D has a made a few enhancements to its profile editing options. The first is the extend entity tool which shows up on the profile layout tools toolbar. 

The Extend Entity tool on the profile layout toolbar

This tool extends an entity to the end or beginning of a profile. This does not mean the end or beginning of the horizontal alignment. The profile will be extended to the nearest major station, as can be seen in the following image. 

The Extend Entity tool on the profile layout toobar

Another important addition is the ability to add entities before previously-drawn entities. This is particularly useful if additional entities have been added at the beginning of your horizontal alignment.

Free Curve Editing

Multiple additions have been made to the free curve editing, with the most notable being the ability to add a free circular curve by selecting entities that the curve will be connected to. Refer to the following image to see where this is on the toolbar. This option allows you to create the curve by selecting the two entities the curve will be between, and then determining the curve geometry by selecting a pass-through point, or indicating a radius or length.

Free circular vertical curve tool location on toolbar

The parabolic curves can also be created using a pass-through point. This is new to this release. To ensure these pass-through point curves are compatible with previous versions of the software, you can convert the curve to be pvi based. This option is shown in the following image.  

Tool to convert the curve created by the free curve through point option to a pvi based curve.

In short, the new profile editing features include the ability:

• To create entities before previously drawn entities.
• To extend entities to the extents of the profile (nearest major station).
• To create circular free curves by selecting entities before and after the curve.
• To create curves by a pass-through point.
• To convert the pass-through point curves to pvi based curves for backward compatibility.

Check out the video Civil 3D 2015: Profile Editing Enhancements

Also, for information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

Don’t forget to look through other great features our Ideate Technical Team has found in the new 2015 releases for Civil 3D, Navisworks, Revit Architecture, AutoCAD and more: ideateinc.com/2015

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Kate Ming, P.E.
Ideate AEC Application Specialist

Kate is an Application Specialist at Ideate, Inc. and is a Professional Engineer with 6 years of industry experience. At Ideate, Kate provides training, consulting and technical support services for our customers.

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