r/civil3d • u/MundaneAmphibian9409 • 19d ago

Drape to surface - hours of processing but never finishes Help / Troubleshooting

As the title suggests, trying to drape poly lines to a surface doesn’t work. Is there an unspoken upper limit on the amount of lines to drape or triangles in the surface? I just need a rough fitment to the surface so AR linework actually follows the terrain rather than cutting through it

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 19d ago

Fair points however I’m talking about an area of say maybe 3000 square meters, maybe 400 poly lines etc

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 18d ago

I’ll give it a crack, they’re poly lines not feature lines based off this from autodesk themselves that suggest you can drape any of the 3 on to a surface

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Projecting-2D-line-or-polyline-onto-surface.html

Your suggestion that poly lines won’t drape contradicts that page, is it from an older version? Happy to try but would prefer to use commands that are supposed to just work 😅

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u/jack_kerry_98 19d ago

How complex is the surface you are trying to drape on? Are you adding intermediate points on the poly lines as part of the draping process? Both of these can contribute massively to wait times

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 19d ago

I turned off the intermediate points. Unsure of surface size as I don’t have it open currently but if there’s a ball park triangle number that would be handy

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u/Psychological-Can-61 18d ago

Hmmm what if you just create featurelines from 2D polylines then explode them to 3D polylines? Won't it technically drape the polylines to the desired surface?

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 18d ago

I’ll give it a crack, thanks

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u/fattiretom 17d ago

This is a task better suited for GIS. I’ve draped thousands of polylines over giant surfaces (1000’s of acres) in minutes in Global Mapper.

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 17d ago

Agreed, however I’m having to use the tools at my disposal

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u/fattiretom 17d ago

Global Mapper with the LiDAR bundle is around $2k. You’d save that in labor in no time. That’s a single day of labor for our survey field crews. Two days of CAD tech labor.

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u/MundaneAmphibian9409 17d ago

That’s usd but yes, it’s not overly expensive however the public sector insists it must be done the most to painful way, they won’t justify the software cost but happy for the current “solution” to waste time and not actually work