If you need to experiment with some options while editing Civil 3D Surfaces, the “Snapshot” function could help. Below is what Civil 3D Help File has to say:
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A snapshot is a surface operation that captures the current state of surface. In Toolspace, on the Prospector tab, expand the Surfaces collection, right-click the surface, and click Create Snapshot. The current surface points and triangles resultant from previous surface operations are contained in a surface snapshot operation. When a surface is built, previous surface operations are ignored and the surface build begins at the snapshot operation. Surface operations that are included in the snapshot are marked with [camera icon] in the Prospector tree. Snapshots can also be created automatically. A LandXML setting enables you to specify that a surface snapshot be created in the surface definition subsequent to the importing of a surface when using Import LandXML. |
It is a safeguard, allowing surfaces to hold their built state, regardless of what happens to the items in the history before that point. Perhaps best used when pasting surfaces, see example below
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Original Surfaces |
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Boundary Edit - No Snapshot |
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Boundary Edit- With Snapshot |
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Syncing up Surfaces |
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It is a great function but ran into a interesting quirk, more like a workflow challenge. Started by pasting a surface, resulting with an expected result (pad shown below)
When a pasted surface was moved up the Operations List above a Snapshot, the edit disappeared.
The solution here is to again, use the Rebuild Snapshot option. Alternatively, you could remove the Snapshot to have the FG surface reflect the needed view.
I hope you find this Surface option useful in your projects when building and editing surfaces.
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