I am working on a script that, at one point, creates feature lines with intermediate grade break points to help generate a daylight boundary for a proposed surface. I run into issues with polylines branching, removing duplicate points, etc. on a consistent basis for this part of the script in my testing. I have previously done this step in our manual process outside of the Dynamo script using the Civil 3D command “_AECCFEATUREELEVSFROMSURF”. While this command is very similar to creating a feature line, it actually creates a 3D polyline from a surface that you define in a separate dialog box. Creating feature lines is not necessary for this step, and a 3D polyline actually makes the process run faster.
This leads to my question, is there a way to get this command thrown in my script? I have found nodes that will send an AutoCAD command, but this command in particular brings up a dialog box to select a surface to project the polyline to, so I don’t believe that node will work here. I am open to creating a custom node for this, but I am very naaive to that process, at least to this level.
In a nutshell, some commands have a pure command line version and a UI version, but not all of them. The particular command that you mention does not have a command line version.
I think you have a few options. The first is using one of these nodes to get a “draped” polycurve on a surface. From there, you could create a 3D polyline from the polycurve.
Thank you for the insight! I am already using the Featureline node at the moment, so I am trying to avoid that, if possible.
I tried using the Surface.QuickProfileByObject node and it didn’t give me points in output Polycurve for some of the corners. Screenshot below of the new polyline overlayed on top of the previous polyline:
I do have it set to extra large. My data/sites will routinely be in a coordinate system in the millions routinely, so i am trying to make it work with that type of data. If that is a problem, I have heard of people scaling objects down to be at a smaller scale and then rescaling it back at the end of the script? Is there another way to handle this?
It’s a bit confusing, but as a rule-of-thumb it’s actually best to always leave the scaling set to Medium when working in Dynamo for Civil 3D. There can be issues with geometry integrity otherwise (like what you see here). It’s something that we haven’t been able to address yet, unfortunately
That should process fine at medium scaling - the geometry display in Dynamo is what suffers typically when you see the information (no longer a warning) message. Geometry accuracy is what suffers if you alter scaling as values below 1 unit are discarded (so instead of 1.5 meters you get 2 meters).
Sounds good! It is confusing for sure, but just to be sure, if I get this warning after running a script, should I be alarmed by this? This warning is what prompted me to switch to the Extra Large setting. I can confirm after switching it back to medium, the 3D polyline generated as expected, so thank you!
That message was changed to an informational message instead of a warning in more-recent versions. So in the version you’re using, yes, you can ignore/dismiss the warning. Definitely not ideal, we know
