You can extract AutoCAD primitive entities from an AutoCAD Civil 3D surface.
Extracting individual components from a surface enables you to manipulate these components without exploding the surface object. The surface data available to extract is based on the display properties of the selected surface.
The following table lists the extracted objects for each type of surface components.
| Surface component ... | Is extracted as ... |
|---|---|
| Points (2D and 3D) | Point objects |
| Triangles (2D and 3D) | 3D face objects |
| Border (2D) |
|
| Border (3D) |
|
| Major Contour (2D and 3D) | LWPOLYLINE object |
| Minor Contour (2D and 3D) | LWPOLYLINE object |
| User Contours (2D and 3D) | LWPOLYLINE object |
| Gridded (2D and 3D) |
|
| Directions (2D and 3D) | The type of object depends on the surface style settings. See Creating a Surface Style. |
| Elevations (2D and 3D) | |
| Slopes (2D and 3D) | |
| Slope Arrows (2D and 3D) | |
| Watersheds (2D and 3D) |
Tutorial Exercise: Extracting Objects from a Surface
To extract an object from a surface
- Select a surface. On the Surface tab, Surface Tools panel, click Extract Objects
.At the Command prompt, enter SurfaceExtractObjects. - If more than one surface is available in the drawing, in the Select a Surface dialog box, select the surface from which to extract components.
- In the Extract Objects from Surface dialog box, under Property, deselect the components that you do not want to extract (all visible surface components are selected by default).
- Under Value, do one of the following:
- Choose Select All to select all the surface components for extraction.
- Choose Select From Drawing, click
, and select the required surface components.
- Click OK.
Every selected surface component is extracted from the surface object.
