Problems exporting Surface solids? Use Naviate’s Simplified Surface Breaklines!

Do you have problems extracting Surface solids due to the ground surface having too many triangles? Naviate’s new command “Simplified Surface Breaklines” can help fix this problem.

Let's have a look

The command is available in version 2019.22 and 2021.2.3 as a hidden command that can be started by typing NVSimplifiedSurface. From 2021.3/2019.23 it is available in the Naviate Surface/Terrain ribbon.

“Simplified Surface Breaklines” creates Surface Breaklines that are sampled from an existing ground surface to produce perpendicular 3dPolys at selected intervals along an Alignment. This is used to create a new Simplified Surface that has less triangles than e.g. a Point Cloud Surface, and works more smoothly when creating Surface Solids or using Naviate Volume calculation etc.

First make sure to have an Existing Ground Surface and an empty Simplified Ground Surface.

Start command NVSimplifiedSurface (type the command or find it in the Naviate Surface/Terrain ribbon) and select an Alignment or press Enter to select it in the dialog:

• Alignment: Alignment to create 3DPolys along
• Start Station: Enter Start Station
• End Station: Enter End Station
• Station interval: Interval/Frequency for 3DPolys
• Left Swath Width: Width on left side of Alignment
• Right Swath Width: Width on right side
• Polyline Layer: Select layer for 3DPolys
• Elevations from: Select Surface to sample elevations from.
• Weed Points: If selected, a dialog to weed points on the 3DPolys will open.
• Creates a Boundary: Creates a Boundary to add to the Simplified Surface.
  Note that the Boundary Pline might intersect with itself if the Alignment has a radius that is smaller than Left or Right Swath Width and will then not be accepted as a Surface Boundary!
• Click OK.

The 3DPolys are created along the Alignment and elevated to the Existing Ground Surface:

If “Weed points was selected” the dialog below is displayed and points on the 3DPolys can be weeded. The points about to be weeded are displayed in red on the 3DPolys.

When the command finishes, the 3DPolys are selected in order to make it possible to immediately use “Add Breaklines” to add them to the Simplified Surface:

If a boundary was created, add it as a Surface Boundary. Note that the Boundary Pline might intersect with itself, if the Alignment has a radius that is smaller than Left or Right Swath Width and will then not be accepted as a Surface Boundary! However, using the Polyline Grips it is possible to use “Remove Vertex” to fix the boundary “bowties”

Rerun the command NVSimplifiedSurface again to create multiple Breakline Sets with different Intervals. It is then later possible to use Surface Properties, Definition-tab to select which frequency to use for best result when e.g. creating Surface Solids, as Civil 3D has a limitation of the number of triangles it can handle. Also, make sure that the Boundary is moved to the bottom of the Operation list!

Finally, use the new Simplified Surface to “Extract Solid from Surface” or create a new Volume Surface and use the Naviate Volume calculation commands.

Want to know more?

• You can download a trial of Naviate for Civil 3D here