topic ArchiCAD and Civil 3D in Collaboration with other software

ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Anonymous — Mon, 25 May 2015 01:02:12 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm a draftsman at a surveying company working with Autodesk Civil 3D, and we have a handful of clients using ArchiCAD. I'm working with one at the moment to get our 3D surface from Civil into ArchiCAD.

We've tried exporting the points to an .xyz file, but the only problem is that when that gets bought into ArchiCAD there are no breaklines like there would be in Civil 3D. Is there anyway to bring in the 3D faces from Civil, or to bring in the breaklines from Civil 3D?

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Barry Kelly — Mon, 25 May 2015 01:20:28 GMT

What do you mean by "break lines"?
Are you referring to contour levels?

Can you show a screen shot from Civil 3D of what you want to see?

Barry.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Anonymous — Tue, 26 May 2015 01:05:20 GMT

Barry wrote:
What do you mean by "break lines"?
Are you referring to contour levels?

Can you show a screen shot from Civil 3D of what you want to see?

Barry.

Thanks Barry.

In Civil 3D, breaklines are parts of the surface that helps dictate which points on the surface to join.

For example, if you had a brick wall with spot heights taken on either side of it, the each side of the wall would act as a breakline stopping the spot heights on either side from joining.

The 3D Faces I've got would reflect the breaklines, so if there is someway to bring those in, it would be the easiest way.

I've attached a screenshot illustrating what I mean.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Barry Kelly — Tue, 26 May 2015 02:14:57 GMT

commanderjarak wrote:
I've attached a screenshot illustrating what I mean.

No image attached.

If your 3D form is correct in Civil 3D then it should appear the same in Archicad.
Possibly you might need to add (magic wand) your own ridges (contours) onto the mesh in Archicad.
Then you will have the option to display the 'User Defined Ridges' so you don't see all the triangulation lines.

Barry.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Paul King — Wed, 02 May 2018 10:55:24 GMT

Hi Barry - that is not quite correct - breaklines ensure mesh triangles do not span across defined vertical steps in the terrain, but merely abutt one another at differents heights on either side of the break, so as to reflect a vertical step (for example along a retaining wall) . This is something that xyz point data import in ArchiCAD simply cannot handle with the current implementation. A long standing ArchiCAD problem, forcing painful time consuming workarounds and manual kluging.

See my post here for an example: https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=280995#p280994

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 20:21:49 GMT

I have this same issue and it is a major want. If this was solved, we could kick smart BIM information back and forth between us and civil, landscape and surveying and greatly streamline our process. This is the key to true BIM intelligence on the site level.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 22:49:53 GMT

I think that break line information gets lost when the Terrain is saved as XYZ files, since an XYZ files is just a huge collection of points that define a surface, but with no added intelligence about the exact composition of that surface.

You could try to save the Terrain as IFC file and bring that into ARCHICAD. Try to save it from Civil 3D with the BREP (boundary representation) option (should be available among IFC Export settings), which guarantees correct reproduction of 3D surfaces and bodies. Then import or merge the IFC file into your ARCHICAD Project File.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Barry Kelly — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 01:04:27 GMT

The Civil cad model may be correct and the XYZ file may be technically correct.
The problem may be that in Archicad, a mesh can not have a vertical face (except for the sides of the mesh).

Bringing it in as an IFC BREP form should work although I can't say for sure as I have never tried it.
BREP should keep the exact form and create an object (NURB) of it in Archicad (unless I have that all wrong).

Barry.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Nader Belal — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:39:58 GMT

Sorry that I came late, but I think I have some ideas that may work.

Continuing to what was said by @Barry Kelly, you have these options:
1. Take points before and after the break lines, but near to it.
2. Import the XYZ file into ArchiCAD (don't make any changes just yet even if it means that the model is not correct).
3. Create a new layer with the same name where the mesh is located, but with an extension of .hid (for hidden)
4. Create a morph (or any other geometrical body) that by SEO (solid element operations) would give you the correct operation.

The other way is, in case that you don't need the mesh volume, create a hole in the mesh.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Paul King — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:53:52 GMT

I guess with SEO you can eventually, with a lot of backwards and forwards, emulate the appearance of what other platforms can do without effort - but this runs counter to efficient workflows, and makes auto contour line generation to follow dynamic mesh sculpting, and two way iterative information flows with civil engineer difficult.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Nader Belal — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 16:22:05 GMT

@Paul King

In that case, there is a little cheat I used to do,

Take 2 points with a distance difference of 0.1 mm from one another, but one with the lower altitude, and the other higher altitude . . . it may be not 100% accurate, but it works nicely

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Paul King — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 23:36:26 GMT

Moonlight wrote:
@Paul King

In that case, there is a little cheat I used to do,

Take 2 points with a distance difference of 0.1 mm from one another, but one with the lower altitude, and the other higher altitude . . . it may be not 100% accurate, but it works nicely

Hi Moonlight

Yes this is one of the workarounds, but it involves doing this on either side of the breakline for hundreds of polygon edges that pass across the break line - and for each instance you need to know the ground level above and below (this is far from easy on an undulating sloping stepped site, when nearest hard data points might be a meter away above and below breakline location you are trying to manually recreate.

You end up having to eyeball it, and so loose any claim to accuracy, as well as wasting many hours in the process.

That a workaround is needed at all is the unacceptable aspect for a 21st Century terrain modelling tool.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Nader Belal — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 12:35:47 GMT

@Paul King

Can you send me the file as a 3D AutoCAD file, and mark me one break line as an example ?

I may be able to make it work, in less than 5 minutes*.

*I understand that you will need to make it work for unlimited number of break points, and the 5 minutes was an estimation for worst case scenario

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Paul King — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 12:29:33 GMT

Thank you very much - that is a kind offer. The original project concerned however I dealt with a while ago, in a slow and painful way (this thread is fairly old now).
But I do think the need strongly remains for ArchiCAD to recognize break lines.
However if you have a fast workaround, that would be valuable to share.
I can dig up the original file as an example if you maybe feel like making a video or similar?

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Nader Belal — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 17:53:30 GMT

That's why I was asking for the file

It does't have to be that file, may be any terrain with a break line.

Re: ArchiCAD and Civil 3D

Paul King — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 08:21:02 GMT

Cheers - I just sent you example via PM