Dynamo ideas for road engineers

Civil 3D
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Hi guys! It’s a new year; there is new blood here. I was thinking about sharing my ideas/uses for the working scripts I use in every project.

I’m a civil engineer and road designer, so these scripts are mainly for roads, and I would appreciate it very much if you could share your ideas/descriptions for your finished scripts. I’m not looking for a hand-me-down script, just ideas.

Also, can you share the packages that are most useful for you?

I use the following packages:

Camber (for old Arkance nodes), The Civil Nodes (for old Toolkit nodes), Data-Shapes ( for drop-down lists) and Monocle (for easy workflow in Dynamo)

Thank you!

Here are my ideas/scripts that I’ve created/updated and that work:

For Civil 3D modelling and annotation

1. Alignment from polyline. It is intended for small exits from the main road. Creates an alignment, names it after the main road stationing and side of the main alignment. Creates existing surface profile, designed profile (connecting alignment start point on surface and end point on surface), and creates profile view.

2. Offset elevation. Creates texts with surface elevation along a polyline, at an interval from the alignment

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3. Volume surfaces. Just as it sounds. Creates volume surface, automatically creates a name for the volume surface, deriving from the datum surface name

Then there are scripts that I use for different reports:

4. Data extraction. (not my script, I just added to it). Gets the volumes of previously created corridor solids, filters and sums them by shape code, corridor name and regions (optional). Exports data to Excel.

5. Get the station and Offset from the block. Export to Excel.

6. Get start and end station and length from the polyline. Export to Excel.

7. Cogo Points with PSet. Export to Excel. I mainly use it to get the report of trees that need to be cut down (from PSet - their species, diameter, quantity of trunks, from Cogo Point – coordinates, stationing and offset)

I have also created many scripts to enrich my IFC model:

8. Road barriers from polyline, Road barrier anchors from polyline, pedestrian barriers from polyline. All creates a barrier fence and places posts with a defined interval.

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9. Places a block along the alignment from Excel. Block name, Alignment name, stationing and offset are in the Excel

10. Placing Soil Piles (with or without capping beam). Pile Stationing and Depth (length) are defined in Excel, multiple offsets, pile diameter – in Dynamo Player

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11. Replacing existing 2D blocks with 3D blocks. Rotating them along alignment, for example, placing marking poles, placing light poles, etc.

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12. Road Markings from polyline. Continuous, dashed or symbols.

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13. Placing road sings with or without sign poles

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14. Creates 3D station Labels (not my script, I just added to it).

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8 Likes
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I’ll add 10 I’ve seen used or have helped build out POCs for.

  1. Pedestrian crossing generation.
  2. Layer standardization review.
  3. Convert railway turnouts to 3D geometry (maybe more rail, but perhaps helpful since they can interface with roads at crossings and such).
  4. Select objects by alignment and offset.
  5. Optimizing schematic alignment placement for cut/fill.
  6. Bus stop optimization for pedestrian access and safety.
  7. Pedestrian network connectivity to validate crosswalk frequency with likely destinations.
  8. Direct exposure for adjacent parks and residences to identify ‘sound wall’ needs.
  9. Intersection generation.
  10. Sheet and view generation.
  11. (and a bonus) Utility reservation generation.
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You could invest in MultiView Blocks. They are 2D Blocks that turns automatically into 3D objects as soon as you change your view. No further need to replace original objects.

The Civil Nodes has nodes for MultiView Blocks (originally found in Camber but that package is no longer maintained), so you can use these blocks in Dynamo too.

Blog is in Dutch but there is a translation button on top.

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  1. Find objects that are in the way along the desired route,
  2. Fill areas with random trees for presentations,
  3. Add slope labels where you want them,
  4. Add QR images for POIs or designed parcels,
  5. Add automatically parking lots along the Alignment.
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I started to do that a while ago, but if I remember it correctly, I had problems with moving them to surface (I could be mistaken, it was a couple of years ago). But I guess I should go back to it :slight_smile:

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Civil 3D functionality to move MV Blocks to a Surface might not work, but with Dynamo you can do this :slight_smile:

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Thanks for sharing!

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Here are some other interesting topics.

  • GIS (e.g. QGIS)- Civil3d Interoperablility (Civil3dToolkit, Arkance , Python)
  • Sheets management (Sheet Set Manager)