Civil Complex geometry
Hundreds of custom risers native in Civil 3D
Generated from the project data and returned to Civil 3D as editable 3D solids.
- Client context
- Civil engineering team
- Built with
- Civil 3D, Rhino, Grasshopper, Dynamo
What changed
The team delivered hundreds of the required stormwater objects inside its existing Civil 3D model. When the network changes, the objects can be regenerated from the project data instead of rebuilt one by one.
The problem
A civil team's digital engineering requirements called for LOD 300 models of things Civil 3D does not natively support: custom risers and flushing points, an L-pipe with a concrete surround and a cap, across an entire stormwater network. Hundreds of them. Modelling those objects in a separate package would have changed the team's working environment. Approximating or omitting them would not meet the modelling requirement. Building hundreds by hand in Civil 3D was not practical.
What I built
I brought the stormwater network into Rhino and used Grasshopper to build the risers from the project’s own data, including the pipe, concrete surround and cap. A Dynamo step then places the finished geometry back into Civil 3D. The team points the workflow at the project folder, runs it and receives the populated objects.
Civil 3D remains the team’s working model. Rhino and Grasshopper handle the repeatable geometry generation, then return editable solids to the software the team already uses.