My firm does a lot of small projects that undergo a pretty high level of scrutiny. These small projects do not bring in enough money for an engineer to spend a lot of time with the project. I have heard a number of people tell me Civil 3D is overkill and too complicated for for the small projects. Projects so small that you may not even think about an FG surface unless you needed profiles, sections or soil movement numbers.
We have a number of project like these. Yes small enough not to warrant any FG surface. Heresy you say? Off with his head!? Well consider a proposed rectangular pool going into someone’s back yard at existing grade. Would you grade this out if the final plan sheet would show 1 or 2 proposed contour lines, you could do the volume calc in your head (pool area time 5′ avg depth) and you could label the FG elevations with one text string (Tip: Use a Civil 3D General Note Label instead) copied to the 4 corner locations of the pool patio? My firm needs to get as much profit from these small projects as we can and we try to stick with the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) principle. With this all said I am going to provide a multi-post article that outlines some of the grading practices we use on the smaller projects to minimize our time investment.
Post 1. Clearing
Many of our projects involve clearing trees for a small stretches of new sewers or pressure conduits, clearing of paved areas or demolishing buildings. These small projects are not highly detailed and are typically labeled, “Clear & restore to existing grade”. They also do not require resurfacing materials to be itemized. When these projects pop up, we often need a fast FG surface for profiles & sections. How do we get the FG surface & project complete without a great time investment, a corridor or gradings? Find out after the jump.
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