From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2025 Essential Training

What is survey data - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2025 Essential Training

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What is survey data

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- [Host] In this chapter, we'll be talking about survey data. So a good place to start is by asking what is it and how does Civil 3D handle it? Survey data in this context is point data that came from a professional surveyor taking measurements in the field. In Civil 3D, we handle this data a bit differently because it's very important that its accuracy and integrity remain intact. A surveyor's reputation and career can depend on these considerations. To accomplish this survey data is stored in a survey database outside of the Civil 3D drawing file. If we click on the survey tab of the tool space, we can see the survey databases listed under the survey databases node. So in this case I've got one called Essentials and then a series of them called Essentials 1, 2, 3, all the way up to six. Each one of these is an individual survey database. At this time, your Civil 3D instance is probably not showing any databases beneath this node, but in the next video, you'll learn how to set that up and create your first survey database. Now, survey databases are external to the drawing, but of course the drawing can communicate with them and pull from them as long as the user is given access to that survey database. So, for example, a survey database could be stored in a folder where only the survey department has full ReadWrite access to that folder, and that's how they're able to keep their data separate and protected from maybe the rest of the company where folks can come across it and have the ability to make edits on it. If those people don't have access to the survey database, they won't be able to change that data. Now, special commands are required to edit survey data in the drawing. If I zoom in to one of these many X's on the screen, each one of these X's represents a survey point in the drawing. If I click this point and try to modify it, just click and drag and move it. I can't do that because it's a special survey point object. Certain commands are required to modify it up in the survey ribbon that you see displayed here. And again, if I'm a user that doesn't have access to that survey database, I'm not going to be able to run those commands and make that modification. If we look over in prospector under points, and what I need to do is drag the divider between these two windows up a bit so I can see the contents below. You'll see that survey points while they are listed along with other points in the drawing, they have a different icon next to them indicating that they are in fact survey points. If I scroll down a bit further, you'll see some points listed at the bottom that have a different symbol. These are standard Civil 3D points, and I can edit them using standard Civil 3D tools. Now that we've learned a little bit about survey data, let's create your first survey database in the next video.

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