Grading residential lots

[sonnyamorales]

Ok so I am fairly new to Civil 3D and the design process of roads and such. I have a residential area that I need to grade and create surfaces for and all that fun stuff.. I was able to create the corridor and surface for the roadway (after hours on YouTube lol) but now I need to grade the pads and driveways and am having difficulty finding a way to do that.

 

For pads I have figured out that I can create feature lines and draw around pads giving them the elevation I need and than adding them to the overall surface. So was thinking of doing all pads first this way. Is there a better way I could do it or is this ok?

 

Now I am not sure how to do the driveways, there is no specific size or anything to them. Basically my road corridor goes to back of sidewalk than my driveway starts and goes to pad. Can someone point me in the right direction on tackling the driveways? Or even let me know if there is a better way to do the overall grading of pads and driveways..

 

Thanks

[CyberAngel]

Yes, use feature lines for the house pads. That's what they're for.

 

Since you're comfortable with feature lines, use them for the driveways as well. Simpler is usually better.

[BIGAL]

Make sure when grading driveways you take into account grade changes so a vehicle does not bottom out. Something around 13% will cause problems (G1+G2)

 

Have used curved driveways approximated by shorter grade changes.

 

www.civilsitedesign.com has vehicle checking built in.

 

I wrote my own vehicle check for bottoming out.

[sonnyamorales]

thanks guys, i think im kinda getting the hang of this little by little.  Did the house pads with a feature line and that looks like it worked, now I need to do the full lot at 6" lower than the pads so assuming i can use same process. driveways will be the same just using the elevations of the surface at the pints where the driveway hits them.

 

In my head this seems like it will do what i need it to do, so here is to hoping lol