Troubleshooting Pasted Surface Errors for Civil 3D

Out of the box, AutoCAD Civil 3D provides its users with numerous tools to help make the process of modeling pipe networks, alignments, profiles, and surfaces, faster and more efficient. One such tool I use quite often for surfaces is known as the “Paste Surface” command. Pasting a surface allows you to seamlessly blend the contours of one surface (Say a stockpile, a finished grade surface, or even some topo from a surveyor) into, and on top of, the contours of another surface (Perhaps the existing topo you’re currently working with). The end result being a seamlessly blended surface that you can show off to your friends, family, managers, and clients. Ideally, the process of pasting surfaces can be completed in 7 quick clicks of the mouse. Unfortunate for us, things don’t always go so smooth. From time to time, you may receive the dreaded “Error Performing Edit” window. What does that mean exactly? Nobody can say for certain. Using perhaps the vaguest warning humanly possible, Autodesk leaves you with no direction on how to remedy the situation. Thanks to Brad Kanther, a Technical Consultant at A2K Technologies and the moderator of the Cee Three Dee blog, a possible solution may have been found. He believes that the cause of the “Error Performing Edit” window 99% of the time is a result of a boundary that needs to be cleaned up (i.e. Removing overlapping segments, deleting duplicate points, weeding, etc.). In his blog post from September 18, 2015 titled Diagnosing the Surface Pasting Problem – “Error Performing Edit”, he reveals his technique to clean up boundaries using the Overkill and Steppedoffset commands. Once the boundary of the surfaces has been cleaned, the paste command should work as intended! I hope this tip from Brad helps those of you scratching your head about this incredibly vague error! Diagnosing the Surface Pasting Problem – “Error Performing Edit” http://ceethreedee.com/modelling/diagnosing-the-surface-pasting-problem-error-performing-edit Cee Three Dee Blog – Civil 3D News, Tips, Tricks http://ceethreedee.com/ -Tyler L. Robinson, Engineer I