Hello EveryoneOur Company is evaluating to change the civil works platform to bentley (Currently we are using Autodesk Civil 3D) and one important thing we must know is if Bentley PowerCivil works with multiple user platform (one DB and several users working on it, getting just one model)other question is if is there a surface simplifier command, procedure or something like that... we export our civil data base to PDMS but usually the surfaces have a lot of triangles and that makes the PDMS model get a little heavier (not little, really)... with Civil 3D we use the surface simplifier and works fine... does PowerCivil have something equivalent?i really would appreciate your help with some of lightthanks in advance
I use both Power Civil and Civil 3D so I may be able to answer some of your questions. Could you explain what you mean by a surface simplifier command?
Civil 3D has a surface smoothing tool which will create interpolated points and add them to a surface in areas where the triangulation needs to be denser. Power Civil does not have such a tool that I am aware of.
Perhaps you are looking for tools to reduce the number of points in a surface. Power Civil has LIDAR tools which can do that but it requires that the points files be structured in a specific way in order to read and process the files. Aside from the LIDAR tools the only other tools that can be used to simplify a surface are tools for manually edting the TIN and tools for weeding vertices along linear source features such as contours.
If you create surfaces from survey data you can filter the points and breaklines that are added to the surface.
The newer version of Power Civil (SS2) has the Data Acquisition tool which may provide better tools for manipulating surfaces. I am on the older SS1 so I don't have Data Acquisition.
Neil Wilson (aka Neilw)
Power Civil v8i 08.11.07.245
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2018
Thanks to both
@ Mark, if PowerCivil works with different files for different elements, does that mean you could have a file with a surface that keeps all the work (platforms, roads, slopes, etc..) So that if there are changes in some of these elements, the final surface is updated automatically? That is precisely what we look for
In this sense, is it possible to "parcel" the final surface (in one or several files), so that we can have different surfaces for different areas of the plant? that would be great.
@ Neilw In C3D, the command is "AeccSimplifySurface" (other than Smooth). I will check what you say about simplifying the surface (it is, basically, eliminate the amount of triangles), so that the clues that you gave may help.
Hi again,
I was not aware of the simplify tool in C3D. I see now it is much like the smooth tool but in reverse. To my knowledge there is no tool in Power Civil that does that, at least not in the version I have. The closest equivalent would be the LIDAR tools but they will edit the entire data set, not just specific regions.
In regards to your question about the ability to store your surfaces in separate files in Power Civil, it does not work the same way Civil 3D does with data shortcuts. In Civil 3D you can create data references to surfaces stored in separate files and everything that depends on those surfaces such as contours, profiles, cross sections, etc. update if the source files change. Power Civil does not currently offer that type of dynamic behavior, but Bentley is in the process of releasing new technology (SS3) that should provide that type of functionality to some extent.
hum... so, how do you work when you got different people for different tasks in a project and work "seeing" what the other is doing?
anyway, it's good to know about ss3 ... I hope that do not take much to implement that system, because, in my opinion, it is fundamental for a good program of design, especially when many people are usually working on a project.
thank you very much
The software tends to be discipline specific. The surface modeling is done in a site design module and the surface models are stored in a file.The sewer & water module and the drainage module reference the surface model file for their elevation source. They can be updated when the surface model file changes. Conversely the files created in the sewer, water and drainage modules can be referenced in the site tools to show those components in profiles and cross sections.
While this allows for multiple designers to work on a project, there can only be one source file referenced at a time in each module. Therefore you can't have 2 or more designers building surface models or water/sewer/drainage systems at the same time unless you duplicate data which is not a very good workflow. So essentially it's one user per module.
With the new technology introduced in SS3 I expect that to change. Microstation now has a Surface element which is stored in the DGN file rather than an external file. These surfaces can be referenced (XREF'd) into other files and used like data references in Civil 3D. Any time the surface changes it will be reflected in the XREF's and you will be able to control the display of the surface with styles like Civil 3D. The big difference here is these surfaces are native CAD elements in Microstation so they can be scaled, reprojected or moved to fit the coordinate system of any host drawing to be utilized as surface data. That cannot be done in C3D. They can also be used to check for interference, not with just pipes but ANY 3D cad element (3D solids, lines, etc.)
I should also mention that with the release of SS3 there will be new 3D rules based parametric modeling. It is a bit complicated to explain here but essentially you will be able to establish horizontal and vertical relationships between linear features that retain those relationships when the parent features change. Consider it like feature lines with built in profiles that you can edit in profile view and that retain distance, slope and elevation relationships to other feature lines. I understand we will be able to apply templates (assemblies in C3D) to these "featurelines" which will dynamically interact with the terrain and also provide subgrade layers to gradings. Again something that can't be done with C3D gradings. It should be very powerful if it works well. We should be getting our first hands on look in a couple of months or so.