Create a corridor and a surface for a 3D road model

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A Civil 3D corridor combines horizontal alignments, vertical profiles,

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and cross-sectional assemblies to create a 3D representation of your project.

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This enables you to visualize the entire design

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and ensure that all components work together seamlessly.

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Advantages to corridors include integrated design and visualization,

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dynamic and parametric design capabilities,

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and accurate earthwork calculations.

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You can also use a corridor to easily create a surface for your model.

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To create a corridor for a 3D road model in Civil 3D,

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first, you must have a horizontal alignment, a vertical profile,

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and an assembly already designed, as in the drawing for this example.

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From the ribbon, Home tab, Create Design panel, expand Corridor, and select Corridor.

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In the Create Corridor dialog, specify a Name, add a Description,

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choose the Corridor style, and select the Code set style.

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By default, Alignment, Profile, and Assembly are all set to None.

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To select an alignment, in the Alignment column, click the Select icon.

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You are prompted to pick an alignment in the drawing.

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Since the selected alignment has an associated profile, in the Select Profile list,

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select the appropriate profile.

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Back in the table, click Select in the Assembly column.

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In the drawing, zoom in to locate the marker, then click it to select the assembly.

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Your alignment, profile, and assembly are now set.

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Click OK.

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The Baseline and Region Parameters dialog opens,

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where you can set the targets for your corridor.

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Note that in this example, the selected assembly has daylight lines that need to know what to target,

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so there is an exclamation point indicating that this region is out of date.

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To resolve this issue, select Set all Targets.

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The Target Mapping dialog appears, allowing you to set Offset, Elevation, and Surface targets.

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From the Surface tab, set the target to the existing ground, or EG,

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for both the right and left sides of the Daylight Basin subassembly.

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For each Target Surface Row, expand the Target drop-down and select EG.

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Click OK, then click OK again to rebuild the corridor.

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If prompted that the corridor is out of date, select Rebuild the corridor.

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In the drawing, notice that the corridor model now overlays the alignment.

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To view the model in 3D, select the corridor, then right-click and select Object Viewer.

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Review the 3D model and 2D line work, and then close the Object Viewer.

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You currently have a road model, but with no surface,

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so the next step is to create a surface from the corridor.

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In the drawing, select the corridor model.

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Then, on the contextual ribbon, in the Modify Corridor panel, click Corridor Surfaces.

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In the Corridor Surfaces dialog, expand the Specify code drop-down to choose an option for creating the surface.

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For example, if you want it to represent where you need to grade down to

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before building up the road with base and subbase materials,

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choose Datum elevation.

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Here, you just want the top surface, so select Top.

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Click Create a Corridor Surface,

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and then click Add surface item to add the chosen codes to the surface.

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Click OK.

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Back in the drawing, notice that since the road in this example is U-shaped,

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there is an issue with the contours crossing through the middle area.

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To avoid this, return to the Corridor Surface dialog.

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On the Boundaries tab, right-click the boundary and select Add corridor extents as boundary, then click OK.

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In the confirmation dialog, select Rebuild the corridor.

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As you can see, the contours are now corrected.

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Select the surface and open the Object Viewer

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again to see the surface and corridor model together.

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Now you can combine a horizontal alignment, a vertical profile,

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and a cross-sectional assembly to create a 3D corridor model in Civil 3D.