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Michael Kinnear/4 min read

Understanding Point Group Overrides in Civil 3D

Point Group Overrides

Override Style

Apply different point style than the default.

Override Layer

Place points on specific layer regardless of source.

Override Description Format

Reformat point descriptions for the group.

Override Elevation

Project points to a flat elevation if needed.

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This Civil 3D tutorial walks through understanding point group overrides in civil 3d, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

In this video, we're going to discuss point groups further. We're going to talk about overrides.

Now, in the previous video, we modified our description keysets to allow the control settings for our Ground Shots point group to come through into our drawing. You may not want to do this because the description keysets are created for a specific reason and you don't want to be modifying those description keysets to make your point groups display through. So what we're going to do is we're going to go back into our Settings tab, we're going to select it, we're going to go to our Description Keysets, we're going to go to Survey, we're going to right click, we're going to select Edit Keys.

We're going to change our GS back to its original settings. So I'm going to go ahead and choose spot for the point style and I'm going to select description only for my point label style. I'm going to select the check mark and then I'm going to select a point, right click, select similar, right click, apply description keys.

Now our points are back to how they were displayed from the original description keyset, but our Ground Shots point group is not displaying through as it was before. In order to make this display through, we're going to go ahead and use overrides. We're going to right click on our Ground Shots, we're going to select properties, and then we're going to navigate over to the Overrides tab inside of our point group.

So what Overrides does is it overrides the settings in the point group onto the points in the drawing. So you can override what the raw description is, you can override a point elevation, you can also override a style and override a point label style. So in our instance, the style that I have selected for this group and the style I have as part of the description keyset are the same, but my point label style is different.

So I'm going to check my point label style and I'm going to have it Point Elevation Description. I'm going to go ahead and click apply and click okay. And what you'll notice is the label style comes through over the top of our description keyset.

Now, there is a common error that sometimes comes up inside of Civil 3D, and that is based on the stacking or the display order of your point groups. So what Civil 3D does is it looks at the individual point groups from a top down orientation. If I was to have another point group, so I'm going to right click, select new, I'm going to put a new one called Ground Shots Top.

And then I'm going to select point label style. I'm going to select northing-easting. And then I'm going to go over to my Overrides.

I'm going to select point label style of northing-easting. I'm also going to raw description matching, and I'm going to select GS*. I'm going to click apply and click okay.

So what happens here is that perhaps I have Ground Shots that are in here, and I want one to display over the top of the other. What you have to do is you have to understand that the uppermost one will be read first and applied, and then it's going to read the next one

And apply to any more that are left. And then lastly, it'll do the All Points and apply that to anything that isn't included in groups above it.

If I, for some reason, wanted Ground Shots to show up above Ground Shots Top, I have to go to Point Groups, right click, go to properties, and this gives me a list of the point groups that I have. So I can go ahead and select Ground Shots, and I can use these arrow keys here to promote it above Ground Shots Top. If I promote Ground Shots above Ground Shots Top, and I click apply and click okay, what you'll see happening now is that the Ground Shots group is displayed with priority over Ground Shots Top point group.

Now I don't need this Ground Shots Top group. I was using this as an example, so I'm going to go ahead and right click and select delete. Civil 3D asks me if I'm sure I want to delete this object.

I say yes, and it deletes my point group for Ground Shots Top. In the next video, we're going to get into actually doing a survey import and talking about Survey Databases.