Exporting HEC-RAS Information from Civil 3D Using EE Tools

So you are working on a river project in Civil 3D… but you can’t figure out a good way to get that information out to HEC-RAS. You could take it back to Land Desktop, but that’s a real pain.

And besides, Land Desktop will only do a cross section with one vertex. What about those times you have cross sections that are cut perpendicular to the contour and have many many vertices?

If you would like to learn more about how to go from this:

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To this:

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Go ahead and grab the EE RAS Tools, and keep reading after the jump.

(Download EE RAS Tools Here)

Close Civil 3D and install the EE RAS tools (of course read all of the supporting documentation firs). When you open Civil 3D again, bring in your Toolbox.

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The Toolbox a tab on the Prospector. There should be an entry for Engineered Efficiency and HEC-RAS Export/Import.

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Make sure you have an alignment for your stream centerline, and make sure it is going your desired direction. Draw polylines for your stream section lines, taking care to draw them in the proper direction.

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Right-click execute the Export tool.

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In the RAS Export dialog, choose the surface you’d like to section through. Then choose the Site that contains your centerline alignment, and the proper centerline alignment.

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Choose the Pick Sections button and go into the drawing and choose your polylines.

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You are prompted to name and save the .GEO file.

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Once the .GEO has been generated, you come back to the Export dialog. Note that for each section you chose, an alignment will be created tracing the original polylines. You can choose the styles for these alignments in the Export dialog, or change them later like any other alignment. Also, profiles will be generated (but not profile views… more on that later.).

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When you press exit, you will notice the alignments created over your original polylines, and you can see the alignments and profiles in Prospector.

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To make profile views for these sections, go under Create Profile View…

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Choose the RAS Section Alignment

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And pop it in your drawing.

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Now, jump over to HEC-RAS. Create a new project and dig in under Edit/Enter Geometric Data.

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Under File>Import Geometry Data> GIS Format, you can choose that .GEO file.

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And bang…

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Now do your analysis in HEC-RAS, and you can import the information back into Civil 3D. But I will save that for next time.

Download EE RAS Tools Here

One comment

  1. Thanks for walking through the process, Dana! If you have the EE Ras Tools, please check to see if you have a third module under the Toolbox titled Delete HEC Profiles. If not, please drop me a line, james.wedding@ this domain. We have a new version that has some minor updates, but has not been wrapped up into the main download package.

    Thanks.