CTC 312 – Microstation V8XM

Student Examples of Rendered Drawings (Spring 08)

Daniel Byrne (Civil Engr. Technology)

For my Microstation Final I chose to construct the bench and the lamppost located outside the rear entrance of Donovon Hall. Both the bench and the lamppost are single solid models. Once each was completed, I then copied them around into a configuration that appealed to me, added a simple plane to represent the ground and a slightly more complex planar surface to represent the stone path. I then applied materials to all surfaces and added lighting. I placed a point light source in each of the four lamps and I dimmed the global lighting. This entire project took around six hours to complete.

Eric Hitchcock (Civil Engr. Technology)

For my final project for microstation, I chose to draw an image of a corner of a log home. This specific picture is a portion of a butt and pass corner. This system is designed for a log to butt up against the log that is passing it. The type of log that is used in my rendering is a d-log. It is named the d-log for the resemblance of the cross section of the log to the capital letter D. The interior portion is straight while the outside portion has a slight curve to it. The double tongue and groove on the top and bottom give the logs stability and prevent airflow.

The butt and pass corner style log cabins are very interesting to me. This look is the same design as many old style log cabins of generations past. I am from a small town in the Adirondacks and I see more cabins than most people. I have always preferred log homes over any other style because our ancestors built cabins with their own two hands. That kind of know- how is not common among people these days. Original cabins that had this style are becoming rare in the U.S. I am thankful though that many construction companies still offer this style.

To draw this picture, I drew a cross section of the log on the front and right views. Then I put them in the correct place and extruded them to the correct distance. Once that was completed and everything looked right with the logs, I used the 3D primitive cylinder to put in the wooden dowel and lag screw. Then I wanted to put a wood grain finish on this picture. So I opened the define materials tool box and picked an oak wood grain and rendered it on my isometric view. Then I used two spotlights to bring out the wood grain finish.

The hardest part of this lab was trying to figure out how to extrude the 2D shape I drew the correct distance and making everything look right. Also, the rendering was difficult at first, but it was simple once I figured it out. The lighting was somewhat difficult at first. Positioning the lights was a little tricky. Overall the project took some time because I had to learn how to use some of the tools as I needed them..

Peter Knutson (Civil Engr. Technology)

The image I chose to reproduce was the bridge over the river in Sidney called the Harbour Bridge. I felt it was a good thing to choose because I wanted something that would be a challenge. In class I have done all the drawing with very little problems so I wanted to test my ability of producing a project. I have in the past tried to draw a multiple of things in three dimensions with AutoCAD but I always was unable to do it.

I composed the drawing by using the 3d box commands. I assumed since the drawing was of such scale it would take too long to construct the whole bridge of an I-Beam design, so instead I used the box. I started by using singular boxes for everything and then mainly used the fences and copy and mirrors to get everything rendered and mirrored over to match.

I feel that Microstation is an easier program to use for 3d rendering but from the class and experience I still feel more comfortable using AutoCAD as my primary design program. The only problem I had with the bridge was that I was using only one view and creating my bridge using that singular view. Because of the placement of the camera I was able to see the top and bottom of the bridge along with the piers and arch.

Devin Lemoine (Civil Engr. Technology)

I chose to draw a student designed bridge that was entered in the 2006 Student Steel Bridge Competition. I chose this drawing because it was a bridge that my teammates and I spent a lot of time designing. One thing we never got to do was to render it in a drafting program in three-dimensions. The first step that I did was take the fabricators plans and draw the pieces separately. Then I connected the pieces in the drawing by how they would fit on the bridge.

When I started to draw the pieces, I put them all on different layers. This helped in the long run, because when I rendered the pieces it was easier to do all of one section of the bridge one material. I decided to render the sections in different material colors so that when someone is looking at it, they would be able to tell what the different parts of the bridge were.

The plans that I had were of two-dimensional pieces, and a tricky part of drawing this was trying to visualize where the pieces had to go in three-dimensions.

Honar Mohammed (Civil Engr. Technology)

The structure I chose was the Chetchen Itza Grand Pyramid in Mexico. This structure was not as bad as it looks. Once you had the bottom constructed then you can just work your way up. Working in the 3D drawing during the class was very helpful for this structure. I used all the tools and commands that were used for the previous assignments. There were two hardest or time consuming parts to this pyramid. One was the stairs, but once I constructed one side of the stair, then I was able to extrude according to the width and then array to the four sides. Attaching textures, rendering and adding the light was also very time consuming, since every line had to be an object and couldn’t be a single line.

Trevor Noonan (Civil Engr. Technology)

For my final I chose to draw my detention basin that I designed for my Hydrology final (Text: Intro to Hydraulics and Hydrology with Applications for Stormwater Management, 3rd Edition, chapter 15 problem 7.) I chose this because it was something that I had designed myself and was already familiar with. The project was to design a detention basin to lower the runoff flow so the post development matches the predevelopment flow as close as possible.

The design is a square detention basin with 75ft sides on top and all slopes three horizontal to one vertical and it is 5 feet deep. The bottom and sides are lined with crushed stone. The outlet structure has an 18in orifice on the bottom and a 2 feet weir 3 feet from the bottom. It has a steel grate on the top to keep debris and other things from plugging the pipe.

I made the grass around the basin all slope, three slopes would put water into the basin and the one by the outlet structure would take the water and put it into the existing stream. I chose to make it shallow relative to the width because of safety reasons, it is close to roads and other developed areas and if a car went into the basin and it was 20 feet deep it would be a lot more dangerous.

I ran into many problems during this project. One problem was getting the slope for the grass next to the outlet structure to appear to be a natural hill instead of just a straight line, I ended up making several smaller rectangles at different angles instead of just making one. Another problem was getting the water to fill the basin but have it at a lowerlevel in the outlet, for this I made the water in the basin as 2 different pieces, then I added water in the structure and moved it down so it is lower.

Jesse Plumley (Civil Engr. Technology)

For my microstation final I chose to draw a 3D version of the design I chose for my hydraulics project 1. This was three 5’ diameter pipes that were 75’ long and went under a road including the riprap that was in the apron of the design. This drawing is very relevant to civil engineering because it is a topic that many civil engineers work with everyday. Many pipe systems like this a designed every day in two dimensional plan views. Creating one in 3D allows an engineer to better visualize the final product, and perhaps seeing the pipes in 3D it will allow them to make changes to their design to account for problems that were not seen in a two dimensional view. For example when I was working on the hydraulic project I designed the apron to be much larger than it needed to be, because I used a 15’ diameter in my apron calculations instead of 5’. By seeing it in 3D I realized that the apron was much too big. I only wish I had recognized that before handing in my Hydraulics project.

Some of the issues I had while working on this were rendering and finding proper rendering fills to give the project the right look. The fill I used for the riprap was river rock which is more of a smooth looking stone that the typical riprap stone.

Tom Sullivan (Civil Engr. Technology)

This is a primary clarifier at the Inland Empire Paper Company in Spokane, Washington. The picture I used to draw it contained no dimensions so I constructed it maintaining the proper proportions. I composed this drawing from the ground up. Once I drew the main elements such as the grass, tank, center island, and walkway, I began to work on the detailed portions like the guard rail and skimmer. These were mainly shape extrusions. Once these elements were constructed I applied the material surfaces to each one. I tested several different types of water and finally decided on this one because of its textured surface. Once the surfaces were selected I placed a single light above the tank in order to highlight the 3D features of the drawing. The main tool used in the construction of this tank was the Extrude into 3D tool. It proved to be very valuable in constructing the easier elements like the tank itself and the walkway.

The most difficult aspect of this project was the detailed work around the guard rails. This proved to be tedious and time consuming. I did run into problems trying to apply certain materials. They were not the right shade or color I wanted. I adjusted these accordingly using the materials editor.

Rebecca Tobiasz (Civil Engr. Technology)

After many trials and errors, I decided to do my project on a 70 foot long bridge with steel girders and concrete abutments. I choose this after a recent bridge reconstruction project I saw out in the field, Route 291 over the Erie Canal in Marcy. The day I saw the bridge, the contractor had taken the concrete deck off of the steel members and was beginning to pull the girders off of the abutments. As the girders were coming off of the old abutments, you could really see how each member plays a functional part of the structure without the bridge deck. I thought that this would be an interesting look in 3-D. I modeled the bridge I rendered after the Route 291 bridge, but the dimensions are not exact, nor did I include the concrete pier in the design.

Creating the steel members was easy. I drew a simple I-beam in 2-D, then I extruded it to a length of 70 feet. I then copied this I-beam five times at a spacing of 15 feet apart. This spacing is a bit large, but I wanted to be able to show the beams in 3-D and avoid crowding. To construct the concrete abutments, I placed slabs at the desired length, width and height on either side. I then created a smaller slab in each corner of the abutments and used the Construct Difference Tool to cut out the seats for the abutments. I didn’t make each of the cutouts symmetrical to one another because in actuality, concrete abutments for bridge structures vary. After doing this, the structure still didn’t look right to me so I moved the beams and created slabs (pedestals) for the girders to sit on. This was easy to do on the one side of the abutment, but tough to do on the other side. I also created a bridge seat for the members to sit on the one side, but I left the rest of the abutment off on the other so it wouldn’t inhibit the view of the girder beams.

Rendering the structure was the most frustrating. When I went to assign a material, it placed the material to everything on my drawing. I realized I needed to place each material on different levels, so I went back and changed my steel beams, concrete abutments and the grass area to different levels. This gave me the ability to assign each material where I wanted to.