Visualizing in AutoCAD Civil 3D
Using AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 for
visualization is something that not a lot of people think
about. Usually we go somewhere else for that, for us that
option would be 3DS Max. 3ds Max can no doubt create stunning
images and amazing drive by scenarios that look wonderful,
but what if you want something a little simpler, something
that just needs to get a point across to someone who is not
familiar with looking at plans, or is preparing a
presentation?
AutoCAD
Civil and AutoCAD Civil 3D can do all of this pretty well. The
ability to apply render materials to anything very easily
and the Corridor Code Sets make it a breeze to take
something from plan to presentation quickly.
Here we have a roadway model and we need to quickly create a
pretty picture of this thing. All we need to do is access
the corridor link codes and change a few things. These are
held in the corridor options or in the settings tab as well
as seen below.
Or
Both places are fine to edit from.
Now we need to know what we are looking at.
These link codes contain rendering
materials as an option for each link. Assigning these codes
will change the Display of the corridor when rendered.
Notice in the picture below the options available when
picking a material.
We then need to go through and carefully pick out which part
of the corridor matches which material and when all is said
and done choose Apply and OK. Now when we access our
corridor properties > codes tab, we should be able to choose
the code set we made (which can be saved in a template) and
start to render the corridor.
At this point you can just set up your 3D View and use the
regular AutoCAD rendering tools to create some pretty
impressive imagery.
Keep in mind that there will be different methods for
different situations. For example, if you are modeling a
whole proposed site, I would suggest creating your rendering
from corridor surfaces that are pasted into an Existing
Ground surface to create a Finished Ground. Have fun!
CAD/CAM/CAE
Solutions
