A post in the discussion group today got my attention. Calculating end area volumes based on your EG versus your Corridor Datum is easy and it’s explained in various publications including the Civil 3D tutorials, the Learning Civil 3D manual, among others. There are often far more complicated calculations that need to be done, however. Read on…
Apparently Matt’s on a hot streak, two in a row for our Canadian contributor! JW
I’m willing to bet if you’ve had a little more than zero experience with corridors you know what Bowties are. maybe not in name, but in practise. Bowties are what happens when your corridor has a bend in it that is too tight for the width of the section. Here’s an image. The circle shows overlapping links.
This is a perfectly understandable phenomena; each corridor section is its own standalone entity without thought to preceding or successive sections. Same thing happened in Land Desktop, it’s just that there was no Corridor in LDT so it wasn’t blatantly obvious. Additionally, this overlap condition is not problematic unless you’re creating a surface. This is Civil 3D after all and it’s all about making surfaces; far more than Land Desktop, at least in my experience. Make the jump to find an alternate solution.
One of the nifty tools in 2009 is the catchment area. It is the opposite of the rain drop feature. It saves time especially when trying to figure drainage areas. I use the 2D option, so I can get an area. I haven’t played with the 3D option, as I think it would give erroneous areas since it basically drapes itself over the surface and follows every hill and valley.
THEN – I can convert this into a parcel and get a nice area label for my Drainage Area mapping.
Nifty, eh?
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