I’ve been working on my first tile design, so I needed a way to draw in the proposed lines and display them with the existing ground in profile. The easiest way to draw these seems to be to create them as Feature Lines. This allows us to set a starting elevation and create the line at the desired grade, to edit the grade and individual point elevations in the Elevation Editor, to create a Quick Profile to evaluate our results, and more. Unfortunately, Feature Lines are not Alignments, and Quick Profiles don’t save or display like Surface Profiles.
Creating an Alignment from a Feature Line:
-Once you’re happy with your Feature Line, select it and create a Quick Profile.
-Click the Output tab in the Ribbon and select “Export to LandXML” from the Export panel.
-In the resulting Export to LandXML dialogue, select “Pick from drawing” in the lower left, and select the Feature Line Profile displayed in the Quick Profile.
-You can select multiple Feature Line Profiles at once, but doing so can produce unwanted results if changes to the resulting Alignments are necessary.*
-Right click or hit Enter, and click OK in the Export to LandXML dialogue, in which all check marks should now be cleared.
-Name the .xml file, and save it in your preferred location.
-Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon and select “Land XML” from the Import panel.
-Navigate to the .xml file you just created, and select it.
-Click OK in the Import LandXML dialogue.
-An Alignment is created from your Feature Line and the Quick Profile is erased.
-Rename your Alignments to keep things organized, particularly if your project requires several profiles.
-The Alignment cannot be adjusted, but the Feature Line will still be there if your elevations need additional tweaking. You’ll just have to delete the Alignment, use the Elevation Editor on the Feature Line again, and create a new LandXML Alignment.
–*If you created the .xml file using multiple Feature Lines, deleting the Alignment does not delete the correlating information from the .xml file. If you create one or more new LandXML Alignments out of a group, and later reimport the original .xml file, your previous Alignments will be recreated along your newer, revised LandXML Alignment(s).
-You can now create a Surface Profile from both the imported LandXML Alignment and an Existing Ground Alignment, and Superimpose the former (Source Profile) onto the latter (Destination Profile View).
If you are more experienced with these, and know of a better way to get the same result, then please share here. Likewise, if my explanation is unclear, or if you’re new to all this and aren’t sure of some of the above processes or terminology, then please ask here or via message or email.