Once you have set up all of the grading parameters for Level AI, you can validate the model and/or send it directly to the Allsite.ai servers to run. After the AI models run you can process the results and bring them back into Civil 3D.
Prior to your run, validate your Level AI model by running "Level AI Prepare". This extracts Civil 3D and Allsite.ai objects from your model and ensures they are compliant for Level AI and Service AI. "Level AI Run" runs an additional validation prior to sending to the server, as long as there are no fatal review items (priority 9 review comments) your model will be sent to Allsite.ai for processing.
Drawing health (recommended)
Before running Validation or Level AI Prepare, make sure your Civil 3D model is fully up to date:
Rebuild corridors (especially if any show “out of date” warnings).
Rebuild/Update surfaces used by your design/targets (if any are out of date).
If the drawing becomes out of date after heavy edits (delete/undo/move), you could carefully use AUDIT and -PURGE (RegApps) on a copy to clean the drawing from orphaned data and stale references.
Level AI Prepare
A pop-up shows the progress as well as a Civil 3D status pane that you can dock to one side.
Any validation failures will be displayed in the model. There are different review comments that come out of a Prepare run, they can be viewed in the AS-REVIEW-ITEMS layer. Use the Toggle Review Layer button and Toggle Layers button to quickly see review items. There is more detailed information on the validation errors and steps that can be taken to resolve here.
Click on a Validation point to see more information on the validation error.
All review points have a priority from 1 (lowest) to 9 (highest) and have different color depending on criticality (red highest -> yellow lowest). The higher the priority review items the more likely to issues with your Level AI model run. All level 9 review comments will block the run and need to be addressed as they will cause major issues with the Level AI run. Lower priority comments could affect the model run so should be reviewed and corrected if necessary.
The Allsite AI Assistant provides an overview of review errors, as well as a ability to navigate to each error and query the steps to take to resolve it.
Review comments are also logged in the Civil 3D Panorama Event viewer.
Additionally you can zoom to review points by using the Toolspace -> Points and 'zoom-to' review points.
Not all review points need to be addressed, review items less than priority 7 could affect model, but may not. It is advisable to check review items both before and after a model run.
Level AI Settings
When the run is triggered, a pane with Level AI settings pops out. Here you can configure various settings related to the tool run.
Setting | Description |
Run What-If scenarios if not viable | If the design is not viable, will run scenarios to try and get a viable design (add walls, change lot grades, increase wall heights). If disabled, non-viable designs return a viability overlay and there will not be an iteration fee. |
Include services | Include sanitary and storm services in the Level AI analysis. If disabled any existing storm / sanitary connections are ignored in the Level AI run. If enabled, then existing and proposed services will be factored in (using pipe minimum grade settings in the web and minimum cover settings) - propagating the minimum grade up road corridors to ensure every site can be serviced. A "Services grade contingency" is added to factor for pipes following non-optimal paths up road corridors. |
Existing services only | When Level AI runs, ignores proposed pipes/structures in the model that have invert levels set, and only factors in existing services. |
Pre-grade Analysis | Pre-grade surface is created. This is used for cut-fill analysis. The pre-grade surface is defined as the proposed surface less the pre-grade offset specified below / on parcel and road objects. |
Pre-grade parcel offset Road corridor parcel offset | Default offset from the proposed ground for pre-grade surface. This can be override on respective parcels/roads. (only applicable if pre-grade analysis is enabled) |
Add potential walls | This specifies where potential walls will be placed around lots. Potential walls are used in what-if scenarios and can be automatically added to a model to ensure future runs are viable. |
Draw building FFL feature line | This specifies whether to output a feature line for the top of building pad into the proposed surface. |
Level AI Run
Once you are happy with your model you can send it to Allsite.ai for AI model run, this can take 30min for smaller jobs and over 2 hours for large (100 acre+) projects.
Click the status button to check status or click the "Allsite.ai" button in the ribbon to navigate to the project page on allsite.ai to see the progress. Once complete, you can load and interpret your Level AI results.