Pwer Civil: Vertical Alignment Component tool

I am having a problem with the vertical alignment by components tool in Power Civil v8i. I have a profile cell defined and active chain control activated and set plan vew to view 1 and profile to view 2. The curvilinear coordinates are synchronized and tracking properly. I draw some profile tangents using the Compnent tool. The elements are symbolized properly according to the vertical component symbology preferences. If I try to create a vertical curve between the tangents, the tool only recognizes the first tangent. When I select the second tangent I receive and Element Not Found message. I have tried everthing I can think of to get it to work. Also, if I just try to save the tangents to COGO, only the first tangent drawn gets saved. The other tangents are not recognized, even though they meet at the vertices. I have this problem both on my home machine and at the office. Is there a known issue with the tool? Am I missing a step? What could be wrong here?
  • Michael,

    I followed your suggestion and created a new profile cell but I did not limit the station range. As an experiment I did not add any suface sampling to the cell and I was able to create and store the tangents properly. However, once I added the existing ground profile I could not store the tangents. So apparently the tool is recognizing the sampled surfaces and if the chain/profile cell extends beyond the EG surface the tool will fail, even if the tangents are drawn within the extents of the surface. Is this correct, and if so could you explain what is happening here?

    Neil Wilson (aka Neilw)

    Power Civil v8i 08.11.07.245

    AutoCAD Civil 3D 2018

  • Hi neil,

     you may have misunderstood what I was refering to whne I said "range". I was refering to the vertical extents of the profile cell.

    The DGN you sent had the majority of the existing surface profile above the top of the profile cell vertical axis.

    The Profile cell automatically knows the horizontal extents it needs based on the selected Chain but the User needs to set the vertical extents. The Elevation value and the Top and Bottom Delta values for the profile cell. These 3 settings must be set so that the vertical axis of the profile cell totally covers the vertical range of the existing and design surfaces.

    Try resetting these values accordingly.

    If you are still having problems - please contact me via email and I'll give you a call.

    Bye for now,

     

  • Ok, I understand now. It would really help when creating a profile cell if the elevation parameter would populate with a best guess value from a designated surface.

    Neil Wilson (aka Neilw)

    Power Civil v8i 08.11.07.245

    AutoCAD Civil 3D 2018

  • Hi again,

    The cell is created based on the Chain. The Chain has no vertical information. The surfaces are added after the cell is created - which is why we cannot auto populate the vertical details.

    We use the same tools within the Modeler environment - the Edit Profile tool. We can (and do) auto-populate the details when using Edit Profile. In this application of the profile cell, the User selects Site elements for editing before the cell is created so we do know the vertical details and can set the cell ranges accordingly.

  • Yes I understood that. I was suggesting that there be a selector for picking a surface to use when defining the profile cell which would then provide enough info to calculate the elevation parameter and set the vertical extents. Similar capabilities are included in most of the other civil design applications I have used. Currently we have to fire up the Elevation analysis tool and manually calculate the parameters.

     Thanks Michael.

    Neil Wilson (aka Neilw)

    Power Civil v8i 08.11.07.245

    AutoCAD Civil 3D 2018