Civil 3D – Draped Images Show Wrong Location in Object Viewer

By Geoff Woodhead 

I’ve done quite a lot with draped images recently and am loving the realism they’ve been adding to my model. If you’re not familiar with what Draped Images are or how they can add value to your workflow check out my recent video.

I’ve noticed a few strange occurrences when viewing my surface in a realistic style within the Object Viewer. The image seems to have been shifted, Fig. 1 shows the image in its true location with the surface boundary shown in red while Fig. 2 shows the image draped on the surface when viewed in object viewer.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The strange thing about this is that it doesn’t happen every time you go into the object viewer. I assume that it is simply a graphical display issue though this puzzles me further as I am using the Autodesk certified driver for my video card (which is an Nvidia Quadro K2000 and is both a recommended and certified video card).

Fortunately I do have a work around! In my experience this issue is localised to when initially displaying the texture in Object Viewer. If before opening the object viewer you set your viewport controls to the Realistic viewing style the texture should be mapped in the correct location as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

After switching to the Realistic viewing style in the model space viewport it is now possible to view the surface in the Object Viewer with the texture map applied in the correct location as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

If you had been experiencing this issue hopefully this blog has gotten you back onto track. Thanks for reading and see you next time!