1 Click the icon for Carlson and start-up AutoCAD/Carlson from Windows.
2 Once in Carlson, exit out of the Startup Wizard (if it appears) and click Open under the File pulldown menu. Look for the file Mantopo.dwg and click on it.
3 Select Triangulate & Contour from the Surface pulldown menu (within the Survey module). Click the Contour tab. Let’s target contours at a 1-unit interval, and contour the area of points. You will see this dialog:
Make all settings as shown (most of them are the default). We want to make sure that the Contour Interval (top right) is set to 1. Also, be sure to set the Index Interval to 5. Click OK.
Select the
points and breaklines to Triangulate.
Select objects: Do a bottom
right to upper left crossing selection by picking just to the left of
the
small, stockpile contour map, near the bottom of the screen, and then
picking
the upper left of the screen (capturing all points).
Select objects: Enter
(for no more)
A dialog box appears. Select Mantopo.crd as your
crd file. Click Open and the points will be
read from the crd file.
Range of Point Numbers to use
[<All>/Group]: Enter
(to accept All)
Wildcard match of point description
<*>: Enter
Contours are drawn, but notice the unacceptable wavy
look around
the perimeter an area which is meant to be a ditch.
Type in U for Undo and press Enter until the new contours (at left) disappear and you are back at the command prompt.
4 Field-to-Finish: From within the Survey module, under the Survey pulldown menu, select Draw Field-to-Finish.
You will be prompted for the CRD file to process. Choose the Existing
tab, then
select MANTOPO.CRD, which
resides in Carlson’s data folder, and click Open. The Draw Field
to Finish dialog appears.
At the lower left of the Draw Field to Finish dialog, click Edit
Codes/Points. The Field to Finish dialog appears.
On the left side of the Field to Finish dialog, under the heading Code Table, there is an option called Code Table Settings. Click on it. You will see this dialog:
Now, jump start the table by choosing the option Code Table by CRD (located in the lower left of the dialog). Choose Append.
In this lesson, we only care about code 17 and 18, so
highlight
all of the others (by holding the CTRL key down and picking them), then
choose
Cut. Now highlight both 17 and 18 as shown below.
Click the Entity button for yet another dialog, shown below. Make all settings as shown in this box. We will turn them both into 3D polylines (which will act as break lines or barrier lines for contouring). Accept the 3D Polyline choice by clicking OK, then hit Exit, which will take you back to the Field to Finish dialog.
The last steps are to first to save the Field-to-Finish (.FLD) file Mantopo by clicking the Save button. Then click Draw (lower right) to draw the 3D polylines. You will see the following dialog which allows you to control the details of what to draw. Make sure lines is the only entity to be drawn, not points or symbols. Take a quick look at Additional Draw Options by clicking that button. Make sure that the Point Label Settings are set so that you can see the points properly. Click OK to both dialog boxes.
The following drawing is created. All the ditch lines and top of bank lines, because they were coded 17 and 18, are drawn in one quick procedure.
5 Because the field crew did not use start and stop logic (e.g. appending 7 or some agreed upon code to a description could end a polyline and start another), some polylines connect that should not. In particular, the line pointed to near the NW corner is clearly crossing the ditch line. It must be removed. Choose the Edit pulldown, then Polyline Utilities, Remove Polyline, then Remove Polyline Segment.
Break polyline at
removal or keep continuous
[<Break>/Continuous]? Enter
Select polyline segment to remove:
Select the
polyline segment to the right of point 127. You will
recognize
this as a long segment
running from point 127 to point 50.
Select polyline segment to remove:
Enter
(for no more)
6 Return
back up to the Surface Menu, pick Triangulate
& Contour, and set the standard contour
interval
to 1 (as before), but specify Draw Index Contours. Set the index
interval to 5. Then do a right-to-left crossing selection as before
(avoiding the
stockpile at the lower right). Select the Mantopo.crd file again.
Now we get excellent contours, with a sharply defined ditch. Under View, do Freeze Layer and pick on a point. The points will freeze.
Here is the improved drawing, helped out by 3D polylines, which, if selected, act as break lines, which were produced by Draw Field-to-Finish.
7 Delete Layer. Let’s say that now you don’t want the break lines on there. You don’t want to even freeze them, you want to fully delete them. There is a command for that under Edit. Pick Erase, sliding over to Erase by Layer. This dialog appears.
If you know the layer names, you can just type them
in. If you know where they are but not their
names, then click on Select Layers from Screen. If you’d recognize the
layer
name if you saw it in a list, click Select Layers by Name. Click
on Select Layers by Name and pick 17 and 18, then OK twice. Notice the
change in the drawing.
8 Explode. Inserted Drawings need to be exploded. Do a View pulldown, option Window and window in on the stockpile at the lower right of the drawing. If you type E to Erase, and try to erase any aspect of the stockpile, the whole stockpile will erase all features. That is because the Stockpile was another drawing inserted into this drawing. Sometimes other drawings that are inserted are referred to as Blocks. In any case, this stockpile block, or inserted drawing, needs to be exploded. Explode just breaks it up into its unit objects which then start to behave normally. Select Explode under Edit and slide over to Standard Explode. Then pick the stockpile. It is now a set of normal objects.
It’s also worth noting that while the block has been exploded, it still exists in the drawing as a block definition. This means that now that it’s exploded it is taking up twice the amount of storage space in the drawing. As such, you should purge the drawing of the unused block, or turn on the explode toggle when inserting one drawing into another. As a basic rule, if it’s a symbol, don’t turn on the explode toggle; if it’s a complete dialog, turn it on.
9 Change Elevations. Let’s assume our stockpile drawing is too high and should be lowered in elevations by 540 units. To best see the effect of this command, bring back the points by selecting Thaw Layer, under View. Now select the Edit pulldown, then Change, then Elevations.
Ignore zero elevations
[<Yes>/No]? Enter
Type of elevation change
[Absolute/<Differential>]: D
Change Layer for changed entities
[Yes/<No>]: Enter
Positive number increases, negative
number decreases
elevation.
Scale/Elevation difference
<0.00>: -540
Hit Enter twice.
Select objects: Do a lower
right pick to upper left
pick
(automatic crossing) selection.
Select objects: Enter (for no more)
Notice in the drawing below how everything has change elevation, including the points, but with the exception of the contour text.
Do the command List Elevation under the Inquiry pulldown, pick on an index contour, and notice how the elevation has indeed changed. Repeat step 7 and delete the layer Ctext, so as to remove the 5 index contour elevations, which are no longer accurate.
10 Volumes by Layer. One of the signature commands of Carlson, Volumes by Layer will produce accurate volumes without making any files. The only prerequisite is that the existing and final surfaces exist on the drawing in separate, distinct layers. It is also very important to have a drawn inclusion perimeter to pick and define where the volumes are being calculated. In our example, the original ground will be the 3D polyline connecting points 1 through 15, and everything else above will be the final ground (including the 3D perimeter itself).
Select Volumes by
Layers. This command is found under the Grading menu, within Volumes by Grid Surface.
Pick Lower Left limit
of surface area: Pick below
and to the left of the stockpile, but as close as
possible to the stockpile without clipping it in the window. You
want to totally include it, but with
little wasted margin.
Pick Upper Right limit of surface area:
Pick
above and to the right of the stockpile.
A dialog appears:
We will stick with the defaults, as shown. Notice that we are using 50 grid cells within our window, and since our window was not a perfect square, the cell sizes are not whole numbers. (In this example it is 6.88 x 5.77. You my have slightly different sizes). Seeing this, if we wanted 5 x 5 cell size, we could click the Dimensions of a Cell option and set the size to 5 x 5. Hundreds or thousands of cells in both directions will increase calculation time. You can experiment with more cells, or if you prefer, smaller cells (which makes more cells), and see when you get diminishing returns in terms of accuracy changes. After a while, tighter, smaller cell sizes don’t add any value to the precision of the calculation. Click OK.
Then pick the layers that define the existing ground (Perimeter) and the layers that define the final ground (Perimeter, Barrier, Ctr, Ctrindex).
Then click OK. Notice how the Perimeter layer is common to both. If you want to be a master of volumes, remember this as a mantra: The perimeter should be a 3D polyline in a distinct layer, common to both surfaces. A stockpile is just a special case in that sometimes the 3D perimeter is all you know about the base surface.
When asked to Select objects, do a right-to-left (crossing) selection of the entire stockpile area. Lastly, you will be asked for the inclusion perimeter (pick the white perimeter polyline) and the exclusion perimeter (none). This leads to a flexible reporting and output dialog:
Elevation Zone Volumes, for example, would produce volumes in any desired increment from the base of the stockpile going up. If the stockpile consists of coal (80 lbs/c.f.), then Report Tons can be clicked on and a Density value entered.
Click OK, and the basic report is produced, as seen below. We did not include the points in the final layer. Since there is a high point, for example, the top of the stockpile, the points would lift the volumes up slightly.
Click the Exit icon to return to the command prompt.
11 Stockpile Volumes. Our Stockpile is naturally well-suited for applying the simplest volume command of all Stockpile Volumes. It requires that the 3D perimeter polyline for the stockpile be placed in a layer called Perimeter which ours is. So let's try it.
Select Calculate Stockpile Volume found under the Grading pulldown menu.
Material density lbs/ft^3
(Enter for none): 80
Ignore zero elevations [<Yes>/No]? Enter
Reading points ...
Select Stockpile perimeter polyline: Crossing
select (right-to-left picks) the
entire stockpile area.
The grid resolution dialog (note that it is still at 50x50) appears again. Click OK. Done. A report is generated.
This completes the Lesson 7 tutorial: Contouring, Break Lines and Stockpiles.