Civil 3D 2010 Corridor Enhancements – Boundary from Corridor Extents

One of my least favorite things to do, right up there with washing dishes and watching paint dry, is to create a corridor surface boundary in Civil 3D.  Sure we’ve had the "Add Automatically" command for some time now, but most corridors are too complex for that command to apply.  Most of the time we’ve had to fall back on the "Add Interactively" command which will probably continue to give me nightmares until Civil 3D 2015. 

Although the nightmares will persist, in my waking hours I’ll be enjoying a new Civil 3D 2010 command which makes corridor surface boundaries a snap.  Read more after the jump.

In Civil 3D 2010, when you right-click on a surface from within the boundaries tab of Corridor Properties, you will see the "Corridor extents as outer boundary" option.  That’s it!  No more jig lines or zooming in to a microscopic level for an hour to draw out a surface boundary. 

image

Interestingly, when you see the boundary listed it comes up as Corridor Shrinkwrap under Definitions.

image

Of course the Add Interactively, Add from Polygon, and Add Automatically (sometimes) will be available, but I’m betting that most folks will use this new option most of the time.  This will literally save hours throughout the life of a typical corridor project.  Kudos Autodesk!

3 comments

  1. Nick Zeeben says:

    As well Eric if this doesnt work quite how you would like there is Create Boundary from Corridor which will extract the extents as an editable polyline. It can be found under the Create Design Panel on the the Home tab, below the fold.

  2. E. Chappell says:

    Great tip…thanks Nick! If I’m understanding your logic, that could be added to the corridor as a polygon boundary in cases where you want a bit more control over the actual location of the boundary, although it would not be dynamically linked to the corridor in any way. On the other hand, the “shrinkwrap” approach would create a dynamic boundary that changes with the corridor (say if you widen a lane) but would not be able to be edited manually. Two great solutions to a once difficult challenge!

  3. Nick Zeeben says:

    Correct Eric, there are going to be instances where shrinkwrap is not going to give you the desired results so this is a way to still get the aide of the shrinkwrap to get you 90% of the way there.