Session ID: CES500127

Session Title: Grading Optimization in Civil 3D 2022 –

A Residential Development Success!
Shawn Herring
Professional Software Solutions

Bryson Anderson (Co-Speaker)

Professional Software Solutions

Learning Objectives
 Learn about the capabilities of the Grading Optimization extension
 Learn how to apply criteria-based design on your project
 Learn how to analyze Civil 3D grading data like never before
 Learn how to create compelling visual analysis reports and exhibits

Description
In this session we’ll take a look at the new Grading Optimization extension in Civil 3D 2022
software, and its success in dealing with residential land development projects. Throughout the
course of development, engineers and contractors typically face questions and concerns
regarding earthwork quantities. How much cut? How much fill? How do we grade each
individual lot? Those answers and many more are crucial to a successful land development
project. With the Grading Optimization extension, we can quickly apply certain design criteria
that will help us further evaluate the best solution for our project. Join us for this session as we
take a project and run it through the ringer with the Civil 3D Grading Optimization tools.

Page 1
Speaker(s)
Shawn Herring

As an accomplished consultant for over 15+ years, Shawn Herring is a well-known figure in the civil
infrastructure design community. Shawn has many titles, Consulting & Services Manager for ProSoft,
Owner of Region Engineering & Surveying and Co-Founder of RealityOne which specializes in LiDar and
drone reality capture.

Over the past decade Shawn has been involved in hundreds of projects across the country. During his
vast career, Shawn has trained thousands of CADD users, helped hundreds of civil infrastructure
companies and major Department of Transportations implement new technologies, standardize workflows
and enhance productivity. Shawn has been a part of 100's of Drone and LiDar scanning projects, ranging
from simple roadway scans to complex contaminated land restoration
projects consisting of 1000’s of acres.

Shawn is a contributor/author for several local, national and international

publications. His forward thinking and professional insights have been
published in UC&D magazine, Informed Infrastructure and AUGI
magazine to name a few. Shawn has traveled the US and Canada as
guest presenter/key note speaker for many user groups and industry-
specific conferences. He has also been a sought-after presenter at
Autodesk University over the past several years.

In addition to being a highly sought-after industry consultant, outside of

the office, Shawn enjoys spending his personal time with his family and
being in the outdoors. He also believes in giving back to his community.
Shawn sits on many local advisory boards and volunteers his time with
incredible organizations like the Boys & Girls club of America, Make-A-
Wish Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America and the Special Olympics.

Bryson Anderson

At ProSoft, Bryson admins all aspects of the internal IT

infrastructure, and oversees ProSoft’s IT Consulting and
custom workstation and server division. With his knowledge
and experience in IT, he consults with companies worldwide
on the planning, implementation, and training of Autodesk
data management and collaboration software. As well as
assisting customers with the licensing, installation, and
deployment of Autodesk products.

Page 2
Contents
Session ID: CES500127 ............................................................................................................ 1
Review / Understand Gading Optimization (No Tutorial) ............................................................ 4
What is Grading Optimization for Civil 3D? ........................................................................ 4
User Interface Layout ....................................................................................................... 4
How is it used?.................................................................................................................. 5
Tutorial #1: Prepare the Civil 3D Model ...................................................................................... 7
Preparing the Civil 3D Model .................................................................................................. 7
Tutorial #2: Assigning Grading Objects .....................................................................................11
Assigning Grading Objects ....................................................................................................11
Tutorial #3: Open Grading Optimization & Define System Settings ...........................................18
Optimization Settings .............................................................................................................18
User Interface Reference ..........................................................................................................19
Tutorial #4: Begin Optimization & Visualize ...............................................................................21
Visualization Display Interface ..................................................................................................21
Convergence Plot Analysis ..................................................................................................22
Tutorial #5: Return the Optimization Data .................................................................................24

Page 3
Review / Understand Gading Optimization (No Tutorial)

What is Grading Optimization for Civil 3D?

Autodesk Grading Optimization (GO) is an interactive tool that facilitates grading
various land areas such as sites, road interchanges, and around structures. It consists of
optimization algorithms that work toward surface smoothness while accommodating user
imposed constraints. These design constraints include grading and drainage elements.
The constraints are entered as global parameters and as individual grading element
parameters.

Once optimization begins, the real-time problem solving can be observed. Using
several visualization themes for the surface, or by watching the trends of the
convergence plots, you can stop and change designs or let it run until a desired grading
solution is found. If a solution is not possible, a best approximation is provided within
your constraint requirements.

** The Grading Optimization tools are included within the AEC Collection
only. IF you have access to the AEC Collection, the download for GO can be
found in your Autodesk Account. Once downloaded, it is then found on the
Analysis tab of the Civil 3D Ribbon **

User Interface Layout

The interface will consist of 4 main parts:

1. Grading Object Tool Palette. This tool palette allows you to tag drawing elements as
grading objects for optimization. Each object listed contains default constraint data. You can
right-click any object tool to edit the default values applied when used, or create additional
customized objects.
2. Grading Objects Browser. This tree directory categorically displays each object tagged
from the drawing. Selecting a grading object will display the currently specified constraints
assigned to it.
3. Visualization Display. This is the viewing area for the optimized grading data. Several
display themes are available to view the surface during and after optimization. The slide to
the left of the display exaggerates the contours of the surface to help view subtle changes in
elevation.
4. Optimization Toolbar. This bottom band of tools allows you to specify global constraints,
mesh and triangle quality, visualization options, and convergence plotting views. Once
everything is specified, click Optimize to begin the process.

Page 4
How is it used?

This workflow describes a typical workflow for using Grading Optimization.

These are hyperlinked to Autodesk help menu for more information and we will explore these
steps further in the upcoming tutorials.

1. Prepare your drawing.

2. Assign grading objects to your drawing geometry.
3. Open Grading Optimization.
4. Define the system settings for your project.
5. Verify your grading object constraints.
6. Begin optimization
7. Visualize the optimization
8. Return the optimized surface, feature lines, and points to the drawing.

Page 5
NOTES:

Page 6
Tutorial #1: Prepare the Civil 3D Model
All surface objects are completed with your typical Civil 3D commands for surface creation. Once a
site plan or 2D concept plan has been established, Grading Optimization grading objects are then
applied to the geometry.

Some of these objects likely already exist in your project at even a conceptual stage, such as
building pads, roadway materials (curb, sidewalk, etc), parking lots, and ponds. The existing
geometry can be used to apply grading objects. However, some of the more conceptual objects will
need to be planned and sketched such as drain lines, low points, zones, and elevation offsets. The
objects influence the Grading Optimization and can simplify problematic areas.

Once applied, the grading object data is added as a property set to your drawing geometry.

At minimum, you typically need 2 items, an Existing Ground surface and 2D AutoCAD lineowork.
The following tutorials build upon a simple draing containing those 2 items.

Preparing the Civil 3D Model

In Autodesk Civil 3D, open the drawing 1_Begin.dwg.

I’m not going to go into detail on a step by step here, because the majority of this is just standard
AutoCAD commands such as lines, polylines and the occasional Civil 3D COGO Point or Feature
Line. The image below shows which items from AutoCAD can be used as GO items.

Page 7
For this 40 lot subdivision, after the concept had been completed, it took me roughly an hour to prep
this for GO use. The GO results weren’t my final surface by any means, but it helped set the stage
for when I cut my profiles and created my corridor/gradings during final design.

Below are the items I used:

LOW POINT

Place a COGO Point in the Northwest corner of the site, in the location of the proposed detention
pond.

POND

Draw a polyline representing the area of our proposed detention pond. It doesn’t have to be exact,
just something representing the possible top of pond.

Page 8
BUILDING PAD
I then drew my buildable areas for each individual
lots. There are plenty of ways to do this. You can
either use a polyline or a feature line and for this I
chose to do a polyline.

TIP: If you already have your plat/parcels completed,

simply use your parcels to draw your setbacks. You
can use the offset command and select the area
label for quick and easy offsets. I do this twice, once
for side setbacks (i.e 10’) and the second for front
and rear setbacks (i.e. 30’). I then isolate that object
and use the BO command to quickly add boundaries
to each lot! Give it a shot.

DRAIN LINE
I used a polyline to draw in the flowline of my
roadway curb and gutter. FYI…in this case the
flowline also needed to line up with my pavement
ZONES I created.

Page 9
ZONE(s)

This is where the majority of

the work came in. Zones can
be used for many different
items. In this case, an
EXCLUSION ZONE was
create for areas where I
didn’t want any grading to
occur. I also used ZONES
for the overall boundary,
pavement areas and
sidewalk areas. Each zone
had to be a closed polyline.

I treated my pavement
ZONES like a typical
drainage catchement area,
and my sidewalks (along with
drain lines) ended up being
roughly the same breakout
areas as shown below.

The overall boundary was

also added as a zone in
order to keep the grading
within a certain area. In the
next tutorial, we will apply the
GO objects to our linework.

ONCE YOU’VE DRAWN IN

YOU LINEWORK, YOU’RE
THEN READY TO ASSIGN
GRADING OPTIMIZATION
OBJECTS TO THEM.

Page 10
Tutorial #2: Assigning Grading Objects
The section below is a quick tutorial on assigning Grading Ojects to your linework.

Assigning Grading Objects

In Autodesk Civil 3D, open the drawing 2_Prepped.dwg.

1. Click Analyze tab > Grading Optimization panel > Grading Object Tools to open the
Grading Object Tools Palette.
This tool palette is similar to others in Civil 3D. You can right-click a tool to cut/copy, paste, and
rename to create your own preconfigured tools. I would highly suggest setting up your own
palette with preconfigured settings if you choose to use GO often.

2. Turn on the Grading Object Browser (1) and the Grading Object Tools (2) if not already
turned on.

3. Now, we are ready to begin assigning the proper tools to our object. Once assigned, the
object count will show up in the Grading Object Browser, where you can edit or remove
objects if needed.
a. To remove objects, select from the browser, right click in model space and
choose REMOVE “SPECIFIC OBJECT” (i.e. Low Point, Zone, etc)
4. LOW POINT - Let’s start with the LOW POINT. Simply select LOW POINT from the palette
and select the COGO Point. Nothing else to do here!
5. EXCLUSION ZONES – Select EXCLUSION ZONE from the tool palette and then choose the
two inner polylines for the 2 “islands” of lots in the center of the development.
6. DRAIN LINES - Select one of the flowline polylines that are on the _Flowlines layer. Right
click and choose SELECT SIMILAR, then Right Click and isolate all selected objects.
a. Select Drain Lines from the tool palette and window all your isolated objects.
b. Right click, and end object isolation.
7. ZONE (Overall Boundary) – Choose ZONE from the tool palette, and select the overall
boundary on the outside fo the proposed development. Once you select the polyline, the

Page 11
Grading Properties for that specified zone will appear. Match the parameters as shown in
the following image:

a.

Page 12
8. ZONE (Pavement Areas) – Select one of the polylines that are on the _Pavement Areas
layer. Right click and choose SELECT SIMILAR, then Right Click and isolate all selected
objects.
a. BEFORE you select all the pavement areas, right click on ZONE in the tool
palette and adjust the settings as shown below. This is where copying/creating
your own palette would save time in future projects.

b.
c. Choose ZONE from the tool palette, and window all the pavement area polylines.

9. ZONE (Sidewalk Areas) – Select one of the polylines that are on the _Sidewalk Areas
layer. Right click and choose SELECT SIMILAR, then Right Click and isolate all selected
objects. There is also a sidewalk option on the tool palette, I use this for site plans such
as parking lots or open space, but it could also be used here.

Page 13
a. BEFORE you select all the sidewalk areas, right click on ZONE in the tool palette
and adjust the settings as shown below. This is where copying/creating your
own palette would save time in future projects.
b.

c.
d. Choose ZONE from the tool palette, and window all the sidewalk area polylines.

Page 14
10. ZONE (Building Pads) – Select one of the polylines that are on the C-PROP-BNDRY
layer. Right click and choose SELECT SIMILAR, then Right Click and isolate all selected
objects.
a. BEFORE you select all the pavement areas, right click on ZONE in the tool
palette and adjust the settings as shown below. This is where copying/creating
your own palette would save time in future projects.
b.

c.
11. POND –
a. Select POND from the tool palette.
b. Choose the polyline representing the pond from the Northwest corner fo the
project.
c. Hit ENTER or right click.
d. Enter the pond properties as shown below.

Page 15
e.

Page 16
 12. I also added in some misc. areas for back lot grading. This isn’t 100% necessary, but for
this project I chose to apply these properties as well.
a.

b.

THAT’S IT! WE’VE ASSIGNED ALL OF OUR GEOMETRY A GRADING OBJECT, AND WE ARE
READY TO BEING THE PROCESS OF GRADING OPTIMIZATION.

Page 17
Tutorial #3: Open Grading Optimization & Define
System Settings
The section below is a quick tutorial on working with System Settings and Interface of Grading
Optimization.

In Autodesk Civil 3D, open the drawing 3_Assigned.dwg.

1. Click Analyze tab > Grading Optimization panel > Optimize.

i.
2. You must select a surface, in this case select the EG surface from the screen.
3. The Grading Optimization interface will then open.
4. Review your project Optimization settings.

Optimization Settings

There are three types of optimization settings that you can use to adjust to best optimize your
grading project: model rendering settings, global constraint and objective defaults, and
visualization settings. Review each of these before moving forward on new projects.

Modifying Model Settings

Modifying Global Optimization Settings

Modifying Visualization Settings

I won’t go over each of these setting, simply select and review the settings that you are
presented.

Before running the optimization, let’s take a quick look at the Optimizzation Options.

1. Select the Optimization Options icon as shown below to launch the dialog box.

Page 18
 2.
In the Optimization Options we can tell it how many iterations to go through before finalizing the
results! You can set this number low (+/-200) for quick results, or really high (+/-100000) and then
go to lunch or go home, cause it could take a while!

Before moving on to the Optimization of the project, explore the user interface and all the settings.
The GO dialog box is a floating window, independent of Civil 3D and can be put on a second monitor
if needed.

User Interface Reference

1. Grading Object Tool Palette. This tool palette allows you to tag drawing elements as
grading objects for optimization. Each object listed contains default constraint data. You can
right-click any object tool to edit the default values applied when used, or create additional
customized objects.
2. Grading Objects Browser. This tree directory categorically displays each object tagged
from the drawing. Selecting a grading object will display the currently specified constraints
assigned to it.

Page 19
3. Visualization Display. This is the viewing area for the optimized grading data. Several
display themes are available to view the surface during and after optimization. The slide to
the left of the display exaggerates the contours of the surface to help view subtle changes in
elevation.
4. Optimization Toolbar. This bottom band of tools allows you to specify global constraints,
mesh and triangle quality, visualization options, and convergence plotting views. Once
everything is specified, click Optimize to begin the process.

Page 20
Tutorial #4: Begin Optimization & Visualize

Continue with your drawing, or open the drawing 3_Assigned.dwg.

1. Start the optimization process by clicking Optimize on the Optimization Toolbar.

Visualization Display Interface

1. Visualization Toolbar. Several display themes are available to view the surface
during and after optimization. See Visualization Toolbar.
2. Vertical Exaggeration Slide. The slide to the left exaggerates the elevations of the
surface to help view subtle changes in elevation. See Contour Slide.
3. Legend Bar. The bar to the right displays the color depictions of the different ranges
of information in each visualization. These can be modified in the Visualization
Settings dialog.
4. Optimization Status. This status window displays the current surface data during
the optimization process.
5. Cursor Position. The XYZ surface coordinates of the position of the cursor.

Page 21
YOU CAN MOVE AROUND, ADJUST VIEWS AND EXAGGERATION AND VIEW
REALTIME THE RESULTS AS IT GOES THROUGH THE GRADING ITERATIONS!

YOU CAN ALSO TURN ON THE CONVERGENCE PLOT GRAPHS AND SEE EVEN
MORE VALUABLE INFORMATION! YOU CAN HIT STOP AT ANYTIME TO ACCEPT
THE RESULTS, OR LET IT FINISH THE OPIMIZATION.

Convergence Plot Analysis

The Convergence Plot dialog gives other perspectives during optimization.

Feasibility - Be sure the feasibility line is tracking downward. if it levels off before reaching zero,
the desired constraints and objectives cannot be met 100%. Review problem areas in the Violation
View, and reassess your plans.

Volumes - This chart helps you identify any fill that needs to be brought in, or cut that needs to be
removed from the site. This chart identifies both and tracks a net volume.

Page 22
Terrain Smoothness - This chart tracks the optimization attempts to minimize the grade change
between adjacent triangles on the surface.

Observing the optimization in the Convergence Plot allows to you to see when fewer changes to the
surface elevations are occurring. In these cases it may make sense to stop the optimization instead
of waiting for only a slightly better result.

Progress Bar
The progress bar displays progress in relation to the maximum number of iterations. If Grading
Optimization converges to a solution within the constraints before the maximum iterations, then it
stops.

Page 23
Tutorial #5: Return the Optimization Data
Once you feel comfortable with the results of your analysis, you can return the data back to Civil 3D!

1. Click Send Optimized Result in the Optimization Toolbar. The Save Optimization dialog
opens.

2. Select Surface if you want to send the optimized surface back to your drawing and then do
one of the following:
 Select Create New Surface, name it, and select its surface style.
 Select Update an Existing Surface and specify the surface to be overwritten.
3. Select Feature Lines if you want to send any feature lines created in the optimization
process back to the drawing. If so, select Select Save Feature Lines to Site and do one of
the following:
 Select Create a New Site, name it, and select a feature line style.
 Select Update an Existing Site and specify the site to be overwritten.

Page 24
 4. Select Points if you want to send any points created in the optimization process back to the
drawing as a point group. If so, select Save Optimized Points to Point Group and do one of
the following:
 Select Create New Point Group, name it, and select a point style.
 Select Update an Existing Point Group and specify the point group to be overwritten.
5. Click Finish.

Important: If you close Grading Optimization or Civil 3D before sending the results to the drawing,
optimization updates to the surface are not saved.
If Grading Optimization is run again, you can choose to either start with the original EG surface or
with this new optimized surface. If you start with the optimized surface, the earthwork cut and fill
values will be relative to this optimized surface and not the original existing ground surface.

NOTES:

Page 25