by Geoff Woodhead
One of the most recent additions to the Survey toolset of Civil 3D is the Survey Query. In many of the survey packages I have used filtering data was cumbersome, often requiring you to create temporary lists to select specific groups of observations. If I wished to keep my filtered observations for display later I was usually required to create a copy of it in a separate drawing model. In previous posts I’ve spoken about how good Civil 3D is at keeping one set of central data that is always up to date. The Survey Query offers further efficiencies in the management of this data for display in models that require different elements of the survey. It also helps us keep the size of our models down as only figures and points matching the specified tags will be inserted when we choose to insert into the drawing via the survey query ribbon. Queries are stored within Survey Database though can be exported to the .qml format for import into other Survey Databases.
Survey Queries are created and managed from a contextual ribbon menu that can be opened by clicking on the Survey Query icon on the Survey tab of the ribbon as shown in fig. 1 below. The Survey Query contextual ribbon menu is shown in fig. 2.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Queries can be created and managed using the drop down box and the New Query button on the left of the ribbon. Upon creating a New Query we are presented with the Query Builder, fig. 3 below depicts a query I have created that filters only the objects in my database that I know to be surface defining. With the query created I can use the icons in the Query Results panel shown in fig. 2 to insert, remove, select or create a surface from the observations identified by the query.
Fig. 3
Survey Queries can make a significant positive impact on your workflow and so are definitely worth taking a look at. We have a number of upcoming webinars in the months ahead and Survey Queries will be included in one of these, be sure to check out the full list at the Cadline Community Events Page.