Works on Civil 3D 2013 & 2014

Civil 3D Cut Fill Plan Hatching

We are asked from time to time whether Civil3D can produce cut and fill plans using Hatch patterns.  Our normal response has been “it can produce colour shaded hatching”.

A procedure has been found that will produce the plans most have been asking for.

The procedure is as follows:

1)      Starting with an Existing and Design Surface, create a Cut Fill Volume Surface.  I recommend that Volume Dashboard be used found on the Analyze tab.

2)      This Volume surface should have its Surface Style set to “Levels Shaded” (from the CSS Template) or similar.  The Surface Style should be edited.  Go to the Analysis tab, expand Elevations and change Display Type to “Hatch Solid”.  Note this will affect the three (3) Create Ranges by options.

3)      Perform a Surface Analysis on the Volume surface, using Elevations.  Setting Create ranges by to “Range interval with Datum”.  The Datum would normally be set to “zero”, and the interval set to the required fill or cut depths required.

4)      Run the analysis and a coloured hatch pattern will result – typically reds and greens, if Civil3D is used out of the box.

5)      Select the Volume surface and use Extract Objects.  Depending on the style being used there may be different properties, however the only one required is Elevations, so ensure this is left ticked and, if required, untick the others.  Pick OK and this will produce Hatch Solids for each and every triangle.

6)      Change all surfaces style to No Display or turn them off for clarity.

7)      Type SelectSimilar at command prompt, as this will provide access to Settings for this command.  Change the settings and ensure colour is ticked on.  Pick OK to exit the settings and then select 1 coloured triangle, press Enter and all similar coloured hatches will be selected.  Using the Ribbon or the Properties box, change the hatch pattern from Solid to the desired pattern “Ansi31” and colour etc.

The problem is that the some hatching may appear not to change – this is due to the size of the hatch area (triangle size) and the pattern chosen and its angle.  The trick is to consolidate all the hatch areas into one – for this you will need a lisp routine.  We found this in the forums:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Visual-LISP-AutoLISP-and-General/Hatch-merge-split/td-p/3823971

Obtain the Lisp, unzip, use AppLoad in Civil 3D and the command is (from the forum) is MergeHatch.

8)      Use MergeHatch and follow the prompts.  Pick a hatch pattern, then objects, (just use previous - the same triangles from step 6), you will now have a large hatch area covering the area, without any ‘glitches’.

Repeat for all the different ‘levels’ of filling.

Alas it is a manual process, so it goes without saying, leave this to one of the last tasks.

This procedure works on Civil 3D 2014 and 2013.