Extract Solids from a Corridor - Steps

Once you have created a corridor, you may want to create solids representing the geometry for analysis and visualization, or for use in other applications that may not be able to work directly with the Civil 3D corridor model.

This drawing contains a corridor with several baselines and an intersection. Graphically select the corridor and not the corridor surface. This opens the context-sensitive ribbon for Corridor 1. On the Corridor Tools panel, click Extract Corridor Solids.

Start by selecting the regions of the corridor to turn into solids. On the command line you're asked to select form different options, select All Regions.  Next the Extract Corridor Solids wizard appears.  The table in the Codes to Extract page becomes populated with not only the baselines, but also every region in the baselines. You may not want to see each and every region broken down into their subassemblies, so click the collapse tree button in the top right corner.

Now, with the tree collapsed, you can see the individual baselines. Expand one of the baselines and you can see the individual regions and their stations below the baseline.

The reason every region is expanded when you first add all the baseline regions is so that you can see every subassembly shape. You can assign different colors or layers to each solid that was created for each different shape in the subassembly. For this lesson, however, keep the default values. Click Next.

If there are any property data sets in the drawing on the Property Data page you can select which parts of the Property Set Defintions should be visible in the properties pallete when the solids are selected by selecting or deselecting the Visible column for each definition. Click Next.

On the Output Options page of the wizard, you can select the type of object you are going to create. You can create AutoCAD 3D Bodies, 3D Solids, or Swept 3D Solids. Keep the default option of AutoCAD 3D Solids, since it is the most common and is compatible with most other programs.

Finally, you can set the destination to insert the solids into the current drawing or a new drawing. Select the option to Add to a new drawing. Then save that new drawing in your dataset directory and name it "Corridor Solids." 

Now that all the settings are complete, click Create Solids.

Once the command finishes, you can open the new drawing that was created.

After zooming to extents, you can see that it contains solids extracted from the corridor. When you list one of the objects, you can see that it is a 3D Solid.

Select a portion of the corridor with a crossing window. Right-click and select the Object Viewer. Here, you can rotate and shade the objects to see the depth of the solids.

Civil 3D makes it very easy to create 3D solids from a corridor.