Monday, March 18, 2013

Geotechnical Module for Civil 3D

Roughly a month ago, Autodesk released the Geotechnical module for subscription customers.  It can be found under the Productivity Tools for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013.


It is important to note that installation of SQL server as well.  After installing the module, you will see the following addition to the ribbon.


To begin the process of importing soil boring data, we will select import.  Before we can import any boring data, a drawing will need to exist, which means it must be saved.


The import data box allows us to select the appropriate files to be imported.  I'm bringing in data via csv.  There are also options to import data via AGS 4 and AGS 3.1.  Here is a link to AGS that discuses in further detail the formatting and group headings.  Since I have chosen a csv file type, I will be importing to files HOLE.csv and GEOL.csv.  It is important to note that in this version of the module, the csv files must be named exactly as I stated, including case sensitivity.  Samples of these files can be found at Keynetix, along with sample tutorials for using this module.


After selecting import, your boring data will be brought into your drawing.  As you can see from the screen capture, the borings are brought in with an x,y, and z location.  Note in the view on the right, the borings are broken down into various stratum.


From the Borehole Manager tab, when can select which borings we will like to include, along with assigning an appropriate style for the type of boring as seen below.


From the Strata Manager, we can select which surfaces we would like the module to create within Civil 3D.


The Hatch Manager allows the user to assign various colors and hatch patterns to an array of soil boring materials.  


Finally, the Create options allows the user to add the soil borings to profile view for a given alignment.


The borehole selection screen allows the user to choose which borings will be added to the profile view.


Now simply select create, and the soil boring data is added to the profile view.