To import grading areas

Import polygons as grading areas in your model and proposals. Similar to coverage areas, grading areas are used to identify areas for development. Grading areas can also be used to add grading styles to a specified area. Grading styles allow you to specify cut slope, cut material, fill slope, and fill material values.

1. Follow the general import instructions.

   Grading area polygons can be brought into InfraWorks from Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D DWG, IMX, LandXML, SDF, SHP, or SQlite files. You can also bring in grading area polygons through an FDO database connection.

2. Double-click the new data source in the Data Sources panel.

3. Select Grading Area as the Type in the Data Source Configuration dialog box.

4. Specify a Rule Style and Rule Grading if desired. This allows you to apply material, color, and grading styles to imported grading areas using expressions, or by selecting styles from the Grading Areas and Grading style catalogs. See To specify a Rule Style for more information.

5. Select the Geo Location tab and specify desired settings. If your data does not have any coordinate system information associated with it, you will need specify Arbitrary XY as the coordinate system and place the data yourself. See To specify geolocation settings for more information.

6. Select the Source tab and choose Draping Options.

   • Drape will conform the grading area to the terrain, ignoring any of the polygon's Z values.
   • Don't Drape will create the grading area with Z values based on vertices of the polygon(s) you imported.
   • Set Elevation to a desired value or data source property and the grading area will flatten the terrain to whichever elevation you specify.

   See To specify draping options for more information.

   Add a source filter if you'd like. See To filter data during import for more information.

7. Select Close & Refresh.