convert carlson points to civil 3d with elevation

[Hammer.John.J]

we have carlson points from our survey dept. If I wanted to take their blocks with attributes and assign and elevation to the block based on it's elev attribute property, could I use a query (map tool) to do execute this globally?

thanks.

[brian.hailey933139]

If they are blocks with attributes, you can move them to one of the attributes elevations. Select a surface in your drawing, doesn't matter which (or go to the Modify tab and click on Surface under the Ground Data panel), expand out the Surface Tools panel and select Move Blocks to Attribute Elevations (or type MOVEBLOCKSTOATTRIBELEV).

http://content.screencast.com/users/jugglerbri/folders/Jing/media/4e06f9b5-e2af-45fc-9ee0-a8c9040dd9bc/2010-09-10_1541.png

[Hammer.John.J]

i determined they were already at elevation.... my fault. However, I did want to convert them to Civil 3d points, so i decided to export via data extraction to create a csv file containing pnezd space delineated... essentially reversing what survey does. this gave me a text file (minus the top of line of that csv file which had to be deleted in note pad) to import.

worked great, now I just need to figure out how to automate the process of using descriptions to create groups.

carlson points are not useful in civil 3d.

[sinc]

Have you tried using LandXML to export the points out of Carlson and then import them into C3D?

Not sure if it will give you any better results or not, but it might be worth a try.

[sinc]

And actually, I seem to remember converting Carlson points to C3D Cogo Points directly...

It was a while ago, but if I recall correctly, the Carlson Points are simply Point Blocks, much like the Softdesk Cogo Points. However, they didn't have quite the same attribute names. So I seem to remember using BATTMAN to change the names of the attributes in the block definition to match Softdesk's PTNO, DESC, and ELEV, then used the "Convert Softdesk Point Blocks" option in C3D to turn them into C3D Cogo Points.

[Hammer.John.J]

it will convert them, but the new points do not automatically obtain the attributes. there is a carlson point associated with the cad block. the cad block has all the information..... so converting the point doesn't work, really.

maybe i'm missing something there though?

we've found that xml tends to be off in the xy for some reason consistently. we use it to export import surfaces and found that the same surface made from the same breaklines and points is off as a c3d surface compared to the equivalent landxml tin.

[sinc]

If you're getting a coordinate conversion during LandXML import/export, it's due to a problem setting somewhere. Most likely, it's an International vs. US Survey Foot issue.

[Hammer.John.J]

thanks,

I'm really liking this data extraction method though, once i get the point group thing figured out. there must be a way to automate that process.

I have all of the descriptions from our survey dept.