Civil addon for Bricscad
First off, I like the Bricscad program and would like to get away from Civil 3d, but there needs to be a good alternative. I have evaluated a few addons 4d, etc but none appear to mimic a useful Civil site design package (point database, surface creation, profiles, cross sections, grading objects, etc).
Has anyone found an add on application that works wells?
Thanks.
Comments
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I came on this just now http://www.cogosoftware.com/
Can't comment on how/ what, but it looks like it may be good. Price is reasonable too.
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Take a look at Carson Software
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Do ypu mean Carlson Software? They don't support Bricscad for some silly reason, I sure wish they would, it would be the perfect combo.
Vince Popish
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We have had meetings with Carlson, we have developed all the needed BRX functions to enable a smooth porting from ACAD to Bricscad for all their applications - all technical issues should be solved. Carlson has never been very responsive to us. I heard that Carlson argues that they don't want to be dependent again from a 'paying-per-license' platform. It is what it is, although I could argue that Bricsys is uncomparable with other big companies when it comes to tranparency and support. I guess the only way to make Carlson move for Bricscad is the pressure coming from their users. I guess their users just don't know how easy it is for Carlson to move to Bricscad. All I can say is that Carlson is always welcome but we are not going to ask them again.
erik
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I echo Vincent's comment. It is sad to hear they are not moving in that direction.
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at list for terrain modeling...
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I am looking for an add-on that will perform a simple slope analysis. I need to be able to visualize and measure slopes in specific catagories, e.g. 0-15%, 15-20%, 20-25% and 25%+.
I really don't need a full civil suite, any recommendations?
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Hi John,
You may want to take a look at our GeoTools product. It offers over 275+ tools, most of which are written for Civil & mapping tasks.You can download an evaluation version at thisURL:
http://www.coordsys.com/geotools/download/geotools_bricscad.exe
And the brochure and commands list at this URL:
http://www.4d-technologies.com/geotools_docs.zip
Let me know if you have questions.
Regards
Rakesh Rao0 -
Thanks Rakesh, I will check them out.
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Rakesh,
You have several great tools that would be useful in our work, however, I didn't see one that would create a slope analysis. Am I missing something? What I am looking for is pretty much what Land Desktop would do. Create polygons of different slope catagories (which I can choose) and then a summary of the area in each catagory. What is frustrating is several GIS programs will do this (I can easily do it in Global Mapper), but the output is raster data. I really need it in dwg format to continue with our workflow.
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John,
At the moment, we have no function to determine the slope of a terrain model in GeoTools, but I guess I could write one with an algorithm that just came to my mind just now. It looks pretty simple but I am open to a debate on it.
GeoTools can create a TIN out of points. So, you end up with a bunch of 3dfaces. Each of these 3dfaces is an element of TIN i.e a triangle.
So, you have a plane with 3 points. The plane is not in one single horizontal sheet but can be one in which each of these three points have different elevations. Now, a plane has no single "slope", as it is a surface. The word slope in mathematics is usually a synonym for the derivative of a function, which is the rate of change of Z against a distance moved in horizontal direction.
Without getting into any complex math (which I am not very good at, anyway!!!), I propose a simple algorithm. The 3d line joining one point on the triangle with the midpoint of the two other points is the most representative slope of the 3dface. I will compute the slope of this line expressed as a percentage and use this value to color code the 3dfaces. So, you get a color-coded vector DWG of slopes. This looks good to me and I can implement this in GeoTools
pretty fast (this week?).Let me know.
- rakesh rao
www.coordsys.com0 -
Rakesh,
You're way over my head. This is where I depend on you programmers to make things work. As far as work flow it needs to be simple to use. Typically I start with contours that I generated with global mapper, I will generate a raster slope map in GM, then we trace by hand into CAD. The other thing we do is align the slope polygons with the contours (either along them or perpedicular). This is done primarily because "slope" is often defined this way in zoning codes. It also looks a bit cleaner. As is, this is a very time consuming process.
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Konstantin,
Is all of 'CadTools' for Bricscad or only the turning paths?
It looks an interetsing set of applciations.
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Hi Rakesh, when a GIS user talks slope of a plane they are refering to the angle between the normal and it's projection on the xy plane. That is, the path a bucket of water or a ball would take if it were placed on the plane. See the attached document for all the formulas required. I maybe misinterpreting your explanation but that doesn't seem to be what you are saying.
Regards,
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Sorry the web address is http://blog.civil3dreminders.com/2009/02/calculate-slope-of-tin-triangle.html. As noted page 31 and 35 of the PDF are the main ones of interest.
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Richard,
sorry...you are right...it seems that only vehicle turning is for Bricscad !0 -
Hi
John, you can give a look at my DTM app here : http://www.delicad.com/anglais/flashmnt.php
It has slope analysis and other tools you might like.
Regards,
Philippe
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It is frustrating finding a good civil package that seemlessly works with Bricscad. We are now too heavily invested in Bricscad to be making a switch to something else, but our civil department is clamoring for more efficient tools. We are currently at V9, and been reluctant to upgrade due to bad experience from v6 to v8(just a beta of v9), but v9 is so quirky and has too many bugs. We will be updgrading to v12 in the next few days in hopes it fixes a lot of v9's problems, but the powers that be do not want split versions in house, and CivilCAD will only work with v9 or v6, so they do not want to pursue CivilCAD. They really want Carlson, but, alas, no support for Bricscad.
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We use 12d - www.12d.com and Bricscad
This is excellent civil design software and we use it to design roads, stormwater, dams etc. It does not work within AutoCAD or Bricscad but is able to write out to CAD files which are then externally referenced into CAD for touch over, title block etc.
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Steven have you asked the CivilCad developers where their future lie?
Are they going to make a Ver 12 compatible one.
I know 12D is a solid program and for me was an obvious choice being they were local and at the time were amongst the few that worked in Aussie ways and nomencalture.
What put me off was the price of the modules and I went elsewhere.
I was looking at the surveying side but in a less capacity their roading.0 -
I am virtually a 1-man band and I purchased 12d and have paid it off many times over in work produced. 12d has opened doors for me to many projects large and small and contracts with companies large and small. Solid product well supported. As is Bricscad of course!
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Richard,
The last time I spoke with the folks at Sivian about CivilCAD, they told me that some of the changes that were made to the CAD engine for v12 made it too big a task to pursue making a version that would be compatible with v12, and that the Bricscad developers would hev to address some of the issue and fix them before they would undertake development.
I had a much more positive conversation with Carlson the other day about the possibility of a v12 or any Bricscad version for that matter. It seems that they may be contemplating such an endeavor. More people should enquire about this to help bump them in that direction.
Alan,
I will check out 12d today to see if it might fit our needs, thank you.
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John,
Some good news. The GT_SLOPEDISPLAY command in GeoTools (to color-code TIN faces based on solpes) is nearing completion and I hope to release it in the coming days.
- regards
http://rakeshrao.typepad.com0 -
I use Carlson Software. www.carlson-sw.com and though they do not operate in bricscad you can use their version of Intellicad. I find that their software is the most user friendly and intuitive of any of the packages on the market and they have added routines to their software that just makes civil work easier to get done.
s.
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This Message is for John Kennedy,
I John you are using Global Mapper. Here is a way to export the Info you are using in global mapper into a vector format that you can then use with BricsCAD without hand tracing:
If you just want contours from the slopes, you can do this automatically in Global Mapper. Just load your terrain, then use File->Export Elevation Data to export to a Float/Grid data file and check the option to save slope values rather than elevations. Then, load that new slope grid file back in and use File->Generate contours to generate contour lines from it, then use File->Export Vector to export those contours to a file for CAD (like DXF).
Try that and see if that doesn't shave tons of labor off of your routine!
s.
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I use both LandFX (with BricCAD) and Carlson Survey. The problem is using Carlson Survey over Intellicad 7. Using 2 seperate CAD engines is a pain. I would much prefer using them both under BricsCAD. Having my survey tools and my Landscape Design Tools all available in one CAD engine is a much better way to operate. And though I could accomplish this by using AutoCAD, I would then have to put up with the likes of Autodesk and that I will try to avoid at ALL costs!
s.
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Hello All,
Earlier in this thread, a little more than a month back, we discussed about the need to have a color-coded slope map in CAD. I promised to create one such command in our GeoTools addon for Bricscad. I am pleased to announce that this has been done today and the latest release 12.19 of GeoTools has a GT_SLOPEDISPLAY command under the Civil Tools section which will allow you to classify TIN 3dfaces of 3dpolyline triangles into different colors based on slopes expressed in percentages. Thank you, Daniel Eiszele for pointing me to the correct formulae. I have used that link you gave me and the slopes are based on the same formula.
http://www.4d-technologies.com/geotools/manual/civil_tools.htm#SLOPEDISPLAY
Regards
Rakesh Rao
http://rakeshrao.typepad.com0
