I had not personally done a lot of this automated elevating lines process for a while, and we don’t have a lot of videos on the MyRockpile Community on these subjects so I agreed to make this video for a user in a call yesterday to show how to use some of TBCs automation tools for elevating linework and spot grades from CAD Leaders and Elevation Labels.
The video shows all of the steps and some tips and tricks that may be helpful to you. The key in all of these automation processes is to eliminate ambiguity for the software so that you can guarantee a successful outcome. Key steps in this process include
- Make sure that all your data has undefined elevation not 0 or 3D unless you are happy that the 3D is already good and you don’t then need to select that data in the elevate process.
- While not 100% necessary - I tend to separate the data I am going to work with (Elevation Labels, Leader Lines and Linework to Elevate) from other data that I am not going to use (Slope Arrows, Slope Text, Offset Text etc.) so that I eliminate the chance of the tools selecting the wrong values as elevation values. I try to have the Elevations on one layer, the leader linework on another layer and the lines to be elevated on a third layer.
- I check all of the text and leaders to make sure that they are not going to get the wrong text with the wrong leader, or if the text is too far from the leader I may move it so it is closer to the leader.
- In some cases I will reduce the Text Height and move the text (if it is all offset in the same direction and distance from the leaders) to the leader location - thereby reducing the likelihood that the wrong text gets picked up by more than one leader or gets picked up by more than one leader.
By doing the initial prep work - maybe 15-20 mins of effort, I normally get a much better result than I would do if I did not do the prep work first - you can argue that the 15 - 20 mins is wasted time and you don’t need to do it - my experience is that if I go a little slower, I nearly always get the job done faster and I make way fewer mistakes and I get less errors caused by the automation steps. I am sure however that I take longer on some jobs than I need to take because I don’t even try to shortcut work - and I am sure that on some jobs I could pick up greater speed by not doing the prep work.
Video shows you how