Civil 3D – Some Basic Gradings Terms

Gradings are wonderful things.  Problematic as they may be, they have been quite useful, even back in LDD.  The new Gradings have a host of settings and features that carry with them new terminology that is sometimes confusing.

In light of studying preparing for the Grading Lab I will assist with, I thought it would be nice to explain some of the terms that are often hard for new users to get a grasp of.  It’s not that they are inappropriate, but they all start to sound the same to a new guy.

Gradings, Grading criteria, Grading Criteria Sets, Grading Groups…..  See what I mean?  Today we’ll take a brief tour of these terms.

Terms

 Grading – This is a 3D object that all the fuss is about. 

This It is built on a frame of feature lines (rough interpretation) and autonomously projects its own set of faces, based on instructions that it was assigned.  This instruction set known as a Grading Criteria, is stored within the Grading object, allowing the object to follow it’s instruction no matter what changes to its environment occur.  Objects created by Gradings can be as simple as a single Grading building pad, or complex grade scenarios, such as a littoral shelf detention pond, that might contain numerous Gradings.

 Grading Style – The style applied to the Grading that controls its appearance.

This can be found in the Grading section of the Toolspace Settings Tab.

Civil 3D – Quick Grades with Feature Lines

7/22/2009

I just added a post for using Feature Lines as a grade calculator in a pinch.  It’s on Civil3D.com.

You can read the article here.