Civil 3D profiles and profile views: from existing ground to finished grade, bands and sheets, with the most common errors

In Civil 3D, the profile and the profile view are separate objects:

• The profile is the data: elevations along the alignment. It can be existing ground, sampled from a surface, or design, the finished grade.
• The profile view is how it's displayed: the grid, the scale, the labels and the bands.

The same profile can appear in several views, with different scales or styles, and they all change when the profile changes.

Vertical exaggeration is set in the profile view style. Ten times the horizontal scale is common, so grades are easy to read.

1. Home › Profile › Create Surface Profile. Pick the alignment and the existing ground surface, and add the profile. If you need the edges, also add offset profiles left and right of the centerline.
2. Draw in Profile View opens the Create Profile View wizard. The main steps:
   • Station range: the whole alignment or a segment.
   • Profile view height: automatic or user specified.
   • Split profile view when the elevation range is too large.
   • Profile display options for each profile.
   • Data bands: the band set below the profile.
3. Click in the drawing to place the view.

The existing ground profile stays dynamic: if the surface changes, the profile updates.

You draw the finished grade with the Profile Creation Tools, selecting the profile view:

1. Set the curve settings before drawing: parabolic, with curve length or K value, based on your design criteria.
2. Draw tangents with curves, point by point, from the start to the end of the segment. Civil 3D places a vertical curve at each PVI.
3. Adjust: drag PVIs with grips, or edit stations, elevations, grades and curve lengths in the Profile Entities grid.

If the grade comes from elsewhere, such as a spreadsheet, you can create a profile from a text file of station and elevation pairs, then add the curves.

Bands are the data table below the profile view. The most used:

The step most people miss: in Profile View Properties, on the Bands tab, you choose which profile feeds each band, in the Profile 1 and Profile 2 columns. Usually existing ground is Profile 1 and finished grade is Profile 2. If they're assigned wrong, the band elevation labels come out blank, repeated or from another profile.

So you don't rebuild it every time, save the combination as a band set in your firm's template.

• Split profile view. If the ground climbs a lot, one view would be far too tall. The wizard can split it into stacked views, each with its own datum.
• Multiple profile views. For a long alignment, the Create Multiple Profile Views command generates one view per fixed length, side by side.
• Plan and profile sheets. The plan production tools create view frames along the alignment and generate sheets with the plan on top and the profile below. We explain it in automated plan production in Civil 3D and Revit.

• The finished grade doesn't show in the view. The profile isn't set to draw in that view, its style displays nothing, or its elevations fall outside the view height.
• Bands come out blank or repeated. Profile 1 and Profile 2 aren't assigned, or both point to the same profile.
• Profile labels not showing. The profile's label set is empty, or the label styles display nothing.
• The existing ground profile doesn't update. Its update mode is set to static, or it was created from a different surface.
• The view splits on its own. The view height is fixed and the ground doesn't fit; adjust the height or the split option.
• The profile doesn't match the plan. The alignment was edited and the design profile kept old stations: check the start and end of the grade.

Pipe networks can be shown in the profile view: structures, pipes and their inverts appear next to the ground and the finished grade. We cover it in Civil 3D pipe networks.

The finished grade drives the corridor: every profile change flows into the 3D model, the sections and the volumes. We explain it in the Civil 3D corridor tutorial.

What eats the most time in a firm, and can be automated:

• Creating ground profiles and views for every street in a subdivision, with the same style and bands.
• Checking the finished grade against the standard and reporting curves that don't comply.
• Exporting the station, elevation and grade table to Excel.
• Generating plan and profile sheets with the firm's title block.