Skip to main content
Michael Kinnear/4 min read

Creating Alignments, Surface Profiles, and Profile Views in Civil 3D Workflow

Alignment Workflow

1

Create Alignment

Alignments > Alignment Creation Tools — draw or import.

2

Sample Surface Profile

Profiles > Create Surface Profile from existing surface.

3

Create Profile View

Profile View Wizard — set scales and label sets.

4

Design Profile

Draw design profile (tangents and curves) in profile view.

Master Civil 3D at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Civil 3D Certification Course teaches surfaces, alignments, profiles, and corridor modeling.

This lesson is a preview from our Civil 3D Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

This Civil 3D tutorial walks through creating alignments, surface profiles, and profile views in civil 3d workflow, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

In this video, we're going to rehash some of the topics that we covered earlier in the class, and we're going to run through it all in one single workflow. We're going to create an alignment, we're going to create a surface profile, and then we're going to create a profile view window.

So to do that, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be creating alignments from objects. So I'm going to go ahead and go to alignment, create alignment from object, and I'm going to be selecting the polylines that are at the end of our alignments here. So I'm going to start with my dev main alignment.

I'm going to select the polyline, I'm going to hit ENTER, then I'm going to choose the direction. I like this direction, so I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER. Then I'm going to change the name to dev main end.

I am going to set it as a curve return because it's the cul-de-sac for that end of that alignment. I'm going to not have it on a site. I'm going to have it as proposed.

I'm going to do major and minor only. And then I am not going to add curves, and I am going to erase the existing entity. So I'm going to go ahead and click OK.

So what Civil 3D is doing is it's giving me a violation. That's because these curves might not be quite right in their tangency, but that's okay. I'm going to go ahead and leave it as is.

So from here, I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing for this one. So alignment, alignment from object, select the object, enter. I'm going to be okay with that direction on it, so I'm going to hit ENTER.

Now I'm going to change this to dev branch end. So I'm going to highlight main and change it to branch. I'm going to leave it as curve return.

I'm going to leave this as none. I'm going to leave this as proposed. I'm going to go major and minor.

I am going to uncheck add curves, and leave erase existing entities. And I'm going to go ahead and click OK. Again, I'm getting the same error for tangency violated.

I'm okay with that. So I'm going to move on to creating a surface profile. So I'm going to go ahead and click create surface profile.

I'm going to drop down my alignment. I'm going to select my dev branch end. I'm going to select my sieve 202 surface, and I'm going to click add.

And then I'm going to click draw in profile view. Civil 3D is going to open my create profile view window option. I'm going to go ahead and just select create profile view because we know we can change any of these settings at a later date.

So I'm going to go ahead and click create profile view. I'm going to zoom out. I'm going to navigate over to the right.

I'm going to pick somewhere over here. So I've created my dev branch end profile. Now I need to do my dev main profile.

So I'm going to go ahead and click escape, go to profile, create surface profile. I'm going to drop down. I'm going to select dev main end, sieve 202 surface, add, draw in profile view.

I'm going to go ahead and click create profile view because if we want to make any changes here, we can do it in our settings windows. So I'm going to go ahead and click create profile view. I'm going to navigate over.

I'm going to be down below here. I'm going to pick somewhere in here. And now I have my dev main end profile and my dev branch end profile.

Now that I have these, I'm going to set all this inside my window. I'm going to save. I'll meet you in the next video.