Editing and Elevating Feature Lines in Civil 3D: A Step-By-Step Guide

Now that we have this feature line created from our previous video, we're going to go ahead and start editing that feature line. We didn't assign any elevations, and we may need to put in some additional control points for this feature line.

So I'm going to go ahead and select the feature line that we're going to work with. Sybil 3D will open up the contextual ribbon bar for this, and then we have the options for how we're going to edit our feature line. So you may or may not have these additional options here for edit geometry or edit elevations.

Those options are available by selecting the two options here to show the tab for edit geometry or to show the tab for edit elevations. So you click it to show it, click it to show it. So from here, editing geometry, editing elevations, this is basically like alignments and profiles.

We have the horizontal control of our feature line where we can manipulate how it's being displayed in plan view. And then we have the edit elevations where we're going to manipulate how the, what the elevations or what the height of that feature line is going to be. We have options for inserting or deleting PIs or points of intersection.

So these vertices, we can insert additional ones or we can remove them. I don't need to insert or remove any of these options because we specifically built this polyline and then turned it into a feature line. Now, if I had had a bad snap or something like that, then maybe I would want to go ahead and use these, but I don't.

Learn Civil 3D

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

So from here, we have the options of breaking a feature line. We have the options of trimming a feature line. We have the options of joining two feature lines together.

We have the options of reversing. So this is like an alignment if the build direction. So our build direction was from this point all the way to this point.

If I wanted to have my build direction be from this point up to this point, I would use the reverse command. Then you have the options for editing curves. So you can edit the radiuses of your feature line curves.

We have the options of filleting between different feature lines. We have fitting curves, so we can fit a curve into a feature line based on different vertices. We can spline it or smooth it.

Then we have the options of weeding. So weeding is basically if you have too many points very close together, how often do you want to remove those points based on certain weeding factors? Then we have the option of creating a feature line from a stepped offset. So this option right here is identical to if we were to go to the home tab, drop down to feature line, select create feature line from offset, except we'll be using it based on the feature line that we already have selected.

So from here, now we have the elevation editor. We have the elevation editor. You have options for bringing up the panorama window where you can make modifications to your feature line.

Then you have the options of inserting elevation points. So just like API, an elevation point is not going to change the horizontal geometry of your feature line, but it will change the vertical geometry of your feature line. So I often find myself building feature lines based on a polyline, locking in my vertices and not needing to insert additional PIs.

But because I don't want to have those extra grip edits of being able to move a line and reorient it in plan view, but wanting to be able to put additional definitions vertically, I find myself very often using insert elevation points as an option inside Civil 3D. So what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to insert elevation points into this drawing by selecting the insert elevation point. And you'll notice that Civil 3D will now have a circle on the feature line where we're going to be placing these additional elevation points.

So I can go ahead and hover. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be placing additional elevation points at the corners of the pads along this feature line. So I'm going to go ahead and pick somewhere in here so I can go ahead and change my snaps.

You'll notice that when I try and go and click onto a snap, I can't quite snap here. So you just have to get close. So I'm going to go ahead and click.

Civil 3D is asking me to specify elevation. For now, I'm okay with zero. So I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER.

I do also have the option of hitting S to put that point on a specific surface. I don't want to do that for this feature line, so I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER for zero. I'm going to go ahead and place one here at this corner.

I'm going to hit ENTER for zero. I'm going to place one here. Hit ENTER for zero.

Place. Enter. Place.

Enter. Place. Enter.

Now I have to get close in here because it's switching between the two spots. It's basically trying to do perpendicular to the feature line and it's jumping between the two straight segments. So I'm going to click here.

Enter. I'm going to navigate to here. Click.

Enter. I'm going to hit ENTER because my drawing is starting to bog down and I can't move around as much. Now I'm going to go ahead and hit insert elevation point again.

I'm going to come over to this point here. Enter. Here.

Enter. And I'm not going to place one here because I have this corner point here. So I'm going to go ahead and leave those as is.

I'm going to hit escape. And now I have inserted elevation points. Now that we've inserted these elevation points, we could assign them.

But first, I'm going to go over some of the other options that we have. We have delete elevation points. So just as we placed elevation points, you can delete elevation points.

So I could let's let's go ahead and insert an elevation point and I'll go ahead and delete it. So I'm clicking insert elevation point. I'm going to place one down here near this corner of this pad.

And so from here now I'm going to hit ENTER to select zero, escape out. Now if I go to delete elevation points, Civil 3D is going to ask me to specify a point. I'm going to click somewhere near that elevation point and then that elevation point disappears.

So I'm going to hit ENTER and escape to get out of it. So I have this feature line. I've deleted out that elevation point.

Now we have the other options, which is quick elevation edit. You can identify elevations and grades that can be selected and edited. You can edit your elevations.

I prefer to do my editing of my elevations in the elevation editor, but you can do it here. You can set grades or slopes between points. You can insert higher low elevation points.

You can raise or lower an entire feature line by a reference. You can set an elevation by reference. You can adjust elevations by reference.

You can extend grades. You can set an entire feature line onto a surface and then you can raise and lower an entire feature line by a set increment. So for this, I'm going to go ahead and go into the elevation editor.

And so inside of here, I'm going to go ahead and bring this, makes this window a little larger so I can see all of the different points. And as I click on these points, I know that the build direction starts from here and goes to here. So I know this zero plus zero is at this end.

But as I click around, you're going to notice this highlight, this triangle gets highlighted on the point that I've selected. I have a triangle here. I have a triangle here.

So moving on from there, I can click on the next point and you'll see here I have a circle. I have a circle. And these markers scale based on where you are at the drawing.

If I'm zoomed out, the marker will be larger. If I'm zoomed in, the marker will be smaller. But I'm going to go through from here and I'm going to go ahead and edit these elevations.

So from here, I'm going to start at 190. I'm going to go ahead and choose 190 as my elevation. Now, moving on to the next one, I still want it to be part of this pad.

So I'm going to go ahead and go with the 190. Then I'm going to go ahead and choose this pad, which was 186. So I'm going to go ahead and type in 186.

Now, if I don't remember this elevation, which I don't know why I wouldn't, but if I didn't, I could choose to do it by grade. So grade ahead, I can, the grade ahead is to the next point and the grade back is to the previous point. If I'm going to grade ahead and I want to grade ahead at zero, I can hit ENTER and then it will insert an elevation of 186.

Then I can move on to the next one. I know that this is 642. So I'm going to go to 182.

I'm going to type in 182. I know the next one is going to be a grade ahead of zero. So I'm going to change this negative 171.76 to zero, hit ENTER that changes this to 182.

I know that this one was going to be 180. So I'm going to go ahead and type in 180. I'm going to type in 180 again for this.

And now I'm getting into these points here. So this was 180. This is 180.

So I got to add in one more 180. Now I'm moving on to the next point. The next point is probably going to fall somewhere between 180 and this next one, which I believe was 182.

So I'm going to go ahead and type in 182 on this point and skipping over this point here. I'm going hit ENTER here. And what we're going to see here is that we have this grade of negative 1020.17. And we have this next point here of grade back at negative 2000.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do an iterative design at this point here. I'm going to go ahead and grade ahead. Let's go ahead and see what these are.

We looked at 13, 14, six and a half. So I'm going to start with something like negative 10. I'm going to hit ENTER.

And so I can see I'm grading ahead by negative 10. And then I'm grading back by negative 50. So that's not correct.

So let's go ahead and go with negative 20. And so from here, this point is actually getting worse. So I'm going to go ahead and try negative five, we're going to go to negative two, we're going to go to negative one.

Now I can continue to do this iterative design and try and get a very good elevation point. Or I could just try and pick something in between, which is 181, hit ENTER here. And so now we're seeing a grade ahead of five and a grade back of negative 15.

So maybe we want to jump this up to six or seven. But you can play with these to get these as close or as far away as possible. I'm going to go ahead and leave this as eight and negative 8.92. Maybe I go to eight and a half.

Now I've got eight and a half and seven and a half. You know what, I actually preferred eight. So I'm going to go ahead and go with 80 and move on to the next point.

So moving on from here, I've placed 180, 141, 182. I'm going to click here. This is a triangle.

And I can see a triangle, triangle, circle, circle, triangle. So it's triangle, triangle, circle, circle, triangle. And I can see the highlight here.

So since this point is in the middle of my lot, I know it's 182. I'm going to type 182. Then I'm going to move on to the next point, which is 182.

And if I remember correctly, the rest of these are 182. So I'm going to go 182 for the rest of them. So I'm going to type in 182, 182, 182.

I'm going to go ahead and check this off. I'm going to escape out. I'm going to save this drawing.

And then I'll meet you in the next video.