Plugin of the Month, January 2012, Brought to you by the Autodesk Developer Network
Solid Cut Surface
This plug-in generate a Civil 3D Tin Surface below an AutoCAD solid element.
This plugin has been tested with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 and requires the .NET Framework 4.0
A pre-built version of the plugin has been provided which should work on 32- and 64-bit Windows systems.
The source code has been provided as a Visual Studio 2010 project containing C# code (not required to run the plugin).
#Installation
Copy the plugin module, "ADNPlugin-SolidCutSurface.dll", to a location on your local system (the best place is your AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 application's root program folder).
Inside your Civil 3D application, use the NETLOAD command to load the plugin. As it loads the application will register itself to load automatically in future sessions of the Autodesk product into which it has been loaded.
If you are using Vista or Windows 7, first check if the zip file needs to be unblocked. Right-click on the zip file and select "Properties". If you see an "Unblock" button, then click it.
Once loaded, run CUTSURFACE (command line or under Ribbon Add-ins). Follow the steps:
-
Select the AutoCAD solid that will be the reference for the surface
-
Select the Civil 3D TIN Surface to compare the points. If no surface is selected, the new generated surface will consider all points below the solid, if is selected, points below the solid but above the reference surface will not be
-
Specify the new surface name. If the name already exist, all points will be remove and replaced. Applied operations still exist, may require manual removal.
-
Specify the number of generated point per AutoCAD unit, which directly affects the density and precision of the generated surface. High values may take longer to process.
-
Apply one operation to simplify the surface, which will remove unnecessary points. This is recommended as the scan process of this command generate several points on the same plane.
The REMOVESOLIDCUTSURFACE command can be used to "uninstall" the plugin, Stopping it from being loaded automatically in future editing sessions.
AutoCAD Civil 3D do not deal well with point at the same elevation, or drastically changes of elevation (e.g. the plane of the surface changing), therefore the generate surface is less accurate on these areas. The user may manually add breaklines to adjust the behavior.
High values of density can cause the application to hang due the large amount of point generated. Consider start with small values to obtain initial surfaces.
This plugin was written by Augusto Goncalves of Autodesk Developer Technical Services team.
Autodesk Brazil Technical Specialist Daniel Queiroz who helped with industry expertise.
For more information on developing with Civil 3D, please visit the Civil 3D Developer Center at http://www.autodesk.com/developcivil
Email us at labs.plugins@autodesk.com with feedback or requests for enhancements.
1.0 Original release (January 1, 2012)
(C) Copyright 2012 by Autodesk, Inc.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software in object code form for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and the limited warranty and restricted rights notice below appear in all supporting documentation.
AUTODESK PROVIDES THIS PROGRAM "AS IS" AND WITH ALL FAULTS. AUTODESK SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE. AUTODESK, INC. DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE OPERATION OF THE PROGRAM WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE.