As a follow-up to the post Feature Line Styles Control What?:

‘Featureline Priority’ is most likely a feature – no pun intended – in Civil 3D that you have overlooked or didn’t even know about.  As you do know, if Featurelines are in the same ‘Site’ they interact with each other and the last one edited wins.

For example:

If you have two Featurelines that cross each other and are in the same ‘Site’, Civil 3D will force them to be at the same elevation where they cross.  This is a good thing since they need to be to build an accurate surface (review image below).

Again, when NOT using Featureline Priority the last one that is created or edited generally WINS and will adjust the other.  But with Featureline Priorities you can prioritize the Featurelines by style and use that to control which one will win/adjust.

In the past year I didn’t see a big benefit to using Featureline Priorities until a situation came up a couple of months ago that opened my eyes.  Lets review this common scenario and see how Featureline Priorities saved the day.

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First, lets review how Featureline Priority works.  It is simple really, it is based on the Featureline Styles.  Generally, I recommend to NOT assign styles to Featurelines, BUT in this case we will make an exception.

To see the priority list, right-click on "Feature Lines" under the ‘site’ that contains your Featurelines and click "Properties…".

Next, proceed to the "Options" tab.  There you will see all the Featureline styles that are in the drawing and their order of priority.  Adjust them accordingly…

So basically, if I now assign the "HRG_Building" style to what was the BROWN line and the "HRG_Curb" style to what was the MAGENTA line, no matter how much I edit the curb featureline it will NOT adjust my building featureline. Make sense?

So where does this come in handy; handy enough to out weigh the added complexity?  It comes in handy for residential projects; between the road and the house pads.  Typically, you would build the road with a Corridor Model and the house pads with Featurelines.  In between you have Featurelines that represent the driveway edges and adjust if the road or house is moved up or down.

Lets look at how this scenario works without using Featureline Priority and then also with using Featureline Priority:

2010.02.01-Featureline Priority-FINAL

BIG DIFFERENCE … !!

Thanks and I hope this helps prioritize your grading tasks!  😉