Embedding topos in Civil 3D

[Geoffc]

I've never used Civil or Civil 3D, but I've recently been asked to develop a 3d animation/fly over of a large development project. They have a civil engineer working through grading schemes of new lots and roads; friendly guy, but not much in the way of technical help so far. I need to create surfaces from his topos, either in Acad or Max.

 

Problem I'm having so far is not only understanding how Civil 3D works when grading, but figuring out a way to get the topos out of his file as polylines so I can build my surfaces. In the screen shots below you can see that he is using a master topo for the entire region, x-refed into a file where he has graded some areas for roads and lots (shown in yellow and green). I changed the xref into an insert, but when I attempt to explode it, it gains back all of it's original topos.

 

Is there a setting in Civil 3D (I have the demo) where I can make these graded areas permanently part of the master topo? Perhaps an export function?

 

Here it is with the xclip on:

 

After exploding or turning off the xclip:

 

Thanks!

[Matt.Anderson]

Geoffc -

 

I am a Civil 3d user. The images that you provided appear to be polylines with elevation. They do not appear to be either a Civil 3d surface or of Civil 3d Gradings.

 

The objects within and Created in Civil 3d (Surfaces and Gradings) have a 3d viewing component which should display. In most cases, to merge two surfaces together with Civil 3d, one needs to paste the proposed grading surface into a copy of the existing surface.

 

The surface style will control the display of the surface objects in Civil 3d. AutoCAD should be able to render the surface with the proper Civil 3d Object enabler.

 

Matthew Anderson, PE