If you want to describe elevations of a pavement on a site plan by elevation points (not by a contours plan) you can do it in Autodesk Civil 3D by adding some particular points which will be:
– located on the alignment and the edges of this pavement,
– located with a specific chosen frequency,
– located in groups with the same station and also perpendicular to the alignment,
– rotated to this alignment and parallel to the edges
In other words like on the illustration below:
You can use the method described below which is simple, fast, automatic, easy and dynamic:
1. Select Toolspace from Home,
2. Choose Settings and find the General node,
3. Choose Line from the Label Styles,
4. Now add a new Label Style and give it a meaningful name e.g. myFeatueEleavtion,
5. Delete all the elements of this new label except the Table Tag and create your own Label,
6. Add a new Block element and give it a meaningful name e.g. startBlock:
– Name = startBlock
– Anchor Component = Start
– Block Name = _Wipeout_Circle
– BlockHeight = 1.0mm
7. Next add a new Block element and give it a meaningful name e.g. endBlock:
– Name = endBlock
– Anchor Component = End
– Block Name = _Wipeout_Circle
– BlockHeight = 1.0mm
8. Now add a description text and give it a meaningful name e.g. ElevationText:
– Name = ElevationText
– Anchor Component = startBlock
– Anchor Point = Top Center
– Text Height =0.75mm
– Attachment = Bottom Center
And in the Text Component Editor – Contents:
– Choose from the Properties List – General Segment Start Z
9. Select Feature Line from Home,
10. Select Create Feature Line from Corridor from the Feature Line:
– Choose your favorite Style of the Feature Line,
– Uncheck the Smoothing option,
– Check Create dynamic link to the corridor from the Feature Line.
11. When you create all the Feature lines which you need, choose frequency of the described stations (now is the best moment),
12. Select Corridor Properties and choose Frequency. You can choose frequency along tangents, curves and spirals. The best option for this purpose is to set the same frequency for all types.
13. Add Labels with the elevation description and choose the Add labels from Annotate,
14. Next from the Add Labels choose:
– Feature = Line and Curve
– Label Type = Multiple Segment
– Line label style = myFeatureElevation
– Curve label style = None
(Note that you haven’t got any curves in your corridor feature line so you don’t need any labels for curves, in this case you can also create a similar style to myFeatureElevation).
15. Click Add and select the created feature lines one by one and add the labels,
You can describe it however you like, you can also hide the feature lines and leave only the labels.
Note that when you change any parameter of your corridor then the labels will automatically update the values because the feature lines are dynamically linked to the corridor.
When you change frequency in the corridor after adding the labels to a higher frequency than before e.g. 5.0m you have to delete all the labels and add some new labels once again for this frequency, but when you lower the frequency to e.g. 15.0m you don’t have to do anything.