3D Assistant — 3D Exporter

What it does

The command opens the 3D Exporter. The Main tab holds the whole decision:

1. Which items to convert — lines, legends, restraint, vertical, blocks or stations.
2. What the input is — a selection on screen, or everything in model space.
3. Where the output goes — the same dwg, a new one, or another open dwg.
4. Where the Z comes from — a fixed elevation or a surface.

The Run button validates those four choices, hides the window, asks for the selection (when that applies), walks the input once and runs the ticked conversions. At the end it writes a summary per family to the command line — how many blocks were converted, how many had no 3D twin, how many restraint bodies, supports and retroreflectors, how many solids, devices and marking areas — and, with Report ticked, shows that same text in a window.

The other ten tabs are each family's parameters and utilities.

What the Run button converts

The Run button processes:

Outside the Run button, the buttons that are not available in this version say so when clicked. They are marked in each tab's table.

Likewise, several options on the parameter tabs are saved with the form but not used by this version. They are identified one by one.

Lines

The line conversion walks the input, keeps only the curves on a horizontal-marking layer of the layer catalogue, and produces:

• Swept solids for the markings that have a width, following the surface at the chosen step;
• Device blocks — stud, large stud, cone — inserted at terrain elevation, looked up first in the local library and then on the server;
• Regions or thin solids for the closed areas, relayered onto the 3D layer matching the source colour.

The layer test accepts a horizontal-marking layer in any of the three spellings the catalogue uses, whatever the active country profile is: the canonical SINA_HOR…, the English ROAD_MARK… and the Spanish SENA_HOR…, each tolerant of a prefix. So a drawing that came in with another profile's layer names is still converted.

With As blocks ticked on the Main tab, the result is grouped into capcad_3d_<id> definitions instead of sitting loose in model space.

Restraint

Every polyline on a guardrail or barrier layer becomes a conversion plan: the posts, the retroreflectors, the path of the body draped over the terrain, and the cross-section profile to sweep, chosen from the type detected in the layer name.

The posts are 0.05 × 0.025 m in section, rise 0.7 m above the terrain and go 1.15 m below it; the body goes onto the layer the plan suggests (CAPCAD_3D_DEFENSA or CAPCAD_3D_BARREIRA) or, with Keep the original layer colour ticked, onto the source polyline's layer. The posts and the retroreflectors use CAPCAD_3D_DEFENSA_SUPORTE and CAPCAD_3D_EPS_CATADIOPTRICO.

A polyline whose layer contains neither "DEFENSA" nor "BARREIRA" is ignored, even when it is in the selection — that is the filter that stops a mixed selection from sweeping the whole drawing. The two words are matched literally, in Portuguese, whatever the language of the session.

Blocks

Every block reference in the input is tested: an empty name, a name already ending in -3D/$3D, or a block outside the pavement catalogue makes the assistant skip it. For the rest, it normalises the name, looks in the library for the definition <name>-3D and, failing that, <name>$3D. Found, it inserts at the same XY position, at the same rotation and on the same layer, with the Z of the elevation reference — plus the visual compensation when the Z came from a surface. Not found, the block goes into the "no 3D twin" count.

Workflow

1. Run CAPCAD_3D_ASSISTANT.
2. Choose the elevation reference: 3D with default elevation (6) and the value in 7, or Surface (8) and a surface from the list (47). For a terrain in a file, use Load landXML… (9).
3. Tick the item to convert (11, 14, 17, 22, 27 or 30) and its sub-options.
4. Choose the input — On screen (4) or All (2) — and whether the input should be erased afterwards (5).
5. Choose the output (35 to 37).
6. Adjust the family's parameters on the matching tabs.
7. Click Run (1). With On screen, select the objects.
8. Check the summary. If something came out wrong, Delete last drawn (46) erases exactly what the run created.

The form

The numbers below apply across the whole page, all eleven tabs included.

About the captures. The screenshots are of a Portuguese session, because they are the numbered figures shared with the Portuguese edition. The layout and the control numbers are identical in English, and the tables below quote every control as the English build shows it. A handful of captions have no English text and stay Portuguese in every language; they are listed in the Notes and quoted here as they appear.

Tab 1: Main

The Main tab. The two elevation-reference options show unticked here because it is the command that fills the surface list when it opens: in the CAD, with neither a surface nor a LandXML, "3D with default elevation" is ticked and "Surface" disabled.

Choosing Surface reveals the surface list (47) and the "If the surface is not found" frame (48); choosing Another dwg reveals the list of open drawings (50). Ticking "As blocks" (13) swaps box 33 for box 49.

Run, input and output

Elevation reference

With Follow the triangulation ticked on Lines (55) or Restraint (98), the validation refuses the <all> surface: choose a single one.

If the chosen elevation is zero, the output is the same dwg and Delete input is unticked, the assistant asks before running — the 3D would sit stacked exactly on the 2D.

Items

The block pass also runs automatically when Restraint is ticked — restricted then to restraint accessory blocks, whose names contain DEFENSA, BARREIRA, TERMINAL, ABSORVEDOR or CATADIOPTRICO.

BIM Data

Tab 2: General

Tab 3: Lines

Tab 4: Lines 2

Tab 5: Vertical

The sign conversion is not available in this version; the fields are saved with the form.

The tab also carries the form's own note: signs are converted to 3D from the 2D automatically, on demand; this command is for converting them beforehand and checking the result.

Tab 6: Restraint

Controls 105 to 132 belong to the loose-entity conversion and to drawing the barrier profile by hand, neither of which is available in this version; they are saved with the form. The restraint conversion that Run performs uses the profile detected from the layer name.

Tab 7: Blocks and legends

The tab's note restates the rule for library 3D blocks: the point 0,0 must be centred and Z = 0 must coincide with the lowest point. (That note is one of the captions that stays in Portuguese.)

Tab 8: Util

Tab 9: Notes

Text only, plus two buttons.

Tab 10: Tutorial

Tab 11: LandXML

How the options combine

The restraint conversion is the part of the assistant whose planning is purely geometric and can be shown without the CAD. The figures below are the engine's own output.

A 110 m path with a curve in the middle, linear step 1: posts every 4 m (blue) and retroreflectors (orange) — every 4 posts along the tangent, thickening to every 1 or 2 posts through the curve, according to the horizontal-curve class at each point. The post spacing is fixed; the retroreflector spacing is not. (The figure's two legend labels are rendered in Portuguese: poste is post and catadióptrico is retroreflector.)

The cross-section of a guardrail (double wave), anchored at its lower centre point. The body is swept along the path, raised 0.5 m above the terrain.

The profile of a double New Jersey barrier. The barrier sits on the terrain, with no lift, and its plan carries neither posts nor retroreflectors.

Lines and blocks depend on the drawing — on the selection, the layers and the library's block definitions — and so have no figure generated here.

Remembered between sessions

The 3D Exporter writes the whole form state on close and reloads it on open — all eleven tabs, fields, boxes and radio buttons. Two exceptions: the surface name is cleared, and the input returns to On screen.

Besides that, the form is a single instance per CAD session: running the command again, or coming in through one of the other forms, brings back the same window with what you left in it. The folder of the last LandXML opened is remembered too.

The items a run created stay in the command's memory until the next run, and that is what Delete last drawn (46) uses.

Notes

• Undo all (45 and 138) is not the inverse of the conversion: it runs the CAD's UNDO Back, which rewinds to the last mark — possibly past other things you did. Prefer Delete last drawn (46).
• The three boxes Insert, Remove and Keep (40 to 42) are saved with the form; not used by this version.
• Ticking Vertical with Overhead supports makes the block pass run even without the Blocks item ticked — restricted to the supports. In the same way, Restraint always runs the block pass, restricted to the restraint accessories.
• The restraint layer filter is a text match on the layer name ("DEFENSA" or "BARREIRA"), in Portuguese, whatever the session language. A guardrail polyline on a layer named otherwise will not be converted.
• When the requested surface cannot be loaded, the assistant writes to the command line that it is using the fixed elevation and carries on — it does not stop.
• Several parameters on the Lines, Lines 2, Vertical, Restraint and LandXML tabs are saved and restored with the form but not used by this version. The tables above mark them one by one.
• A handful of captions have no English text and stay Portuguese in every language: the two Civil 3D buttons on Util (Linhas para surface: _AeccFeatureElevsFromSurf, Blocos para surface: MOVEBLOCKSTOSURFACE), the barrier profile links Baixa and Alta, the Restraint group heading Converter entidades avulsas, the Tutorial principal link, the 3D-blocks note on the Blocks and legends tab, and the three Presets entries (Surface Civil 3D para Infraworks, Configuração recomendada, Outro dwg). They are quoted above as the software shows them.