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
PowerCivil does not use a single database - it stores the DTM, geometry, surfaces etc in separate files. This means that one user can be checking survey data, while another works on an alignment, for example. It is not the same as a relational database with concurrent users working on different records.
You can take the created surface and 'simplify' it to a gridded or profiled surface - you get less data, but also lose detail. I do not konw how C3D does its simplification, but I assume the same is true there.
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