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Michael Kinnear/2 min read

Creating a Stepped Offset Feature Line in Civil 3D

Civil 3D Best Practices

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This Civil 3D tutorial walks through creating a stepped offset feature line in civil 3d, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

In this video we're going to go ahead and create a new feature line based on a stepped offset. So to do that we're going to navigate up to the ribbon bar in our Home tab.

We're going to go ahead and drop down our Feature Line options and we're going to select Create Feature Line from Stepped Offset. From here Civil 3D is going to ask us to specify an offset distance. We're going to be offsetting this retaining wall based on the thickness of a block that we're going to be using to build it.

So I'm going to be choosing an offset distance of 0.66. So I'm going to go ahead and type in 0.66 and hit ENTER. From there we're going to be specifying the object that we want to offset. So I'm going to go ahead and select this feature line.

Then Civil 3D is going to ask me to specify the side to offset to. I don't want to build my retaining wall into the property. So I'm going to go ahead and specify my offset distance away from the Property line.

So I'm going to go ahead and click out here in the Canyon. And then Civil 3D is going to ask me to specify a grade, which we think is Percent Grade.

Slope, which is the Slope Ratio. And elevation, a difference or a variable. I'm going to go ahead and choose D for difference.

Because I don't want this retaining wall to change in elevation because my blocks are going to be level. So I'm going to specify an elevation difference of 0. I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER. And then what Civil 3D has done now is it has created a new feature line based off of this old feature line.

And if I go into the Elevation Editor, we'll notice that all of the elevations match my original feature line. They've just been offset to the right by my 0.66 offset. So from here, I'm going to go ahead and zoom out.

I'm going to save this drawing. And then I'll meet you in the next video.