Create a Surface from GIS Data
7/11/2017
You need a quick (and probably dirty) Civil 3D surface from an available GIS data source.
Create a Civil 3D Surface from external GIS Data
Jerry Bartels of Autodesk briefly demos the basics of the Civil 3D CreateSurfaceFromGISData command.
In case you miss it in the video the command is in Home Ribbon>>Create Ground Data panel>>Surfaces drop down>>Create a Surface from GIS Data
Jerry employs a file based data source (a SHP file) in this example.
From the Jerry's YouTube Channel.
and the Civil Imersion blog.
Comments
Much public ERSI GIS data is typically published in Lat Long projections and will indeed require coordinate system assignment and the tranformation to the local state plane projection in your drawing. You are assigning the coordinate system to the source!
Pay careful attention where you store the Data Mapping file. Should it be in a project location?
If you have data access to an actual GIS database source and not just a simple SHP file structure
the login page of the wizard will make sense and perhaps present the most difficulty.
See the Civil 3D Help for the CreateSurfaceFromGISData command if you require access to an ESRI ArcSDE data source.
There are additional unmentioned install requirements.