Changing the Display of An Object

In this tutorial, you will learn how to change the appearance of a surface by changing its style.
For more information, see the AutoCAD Civil 3D Help topic Styles.
The land surface is the basic reference for design work in AutoCAD Civil 3D.
This tutorial continues from the Using the Panorama Window (page 10) tutorial.
To modify a surface’s display

1 Click File menu ➤ Open. Navigate to the tutorial drawings folder (page 201) and open the drawing
Intro-2.dwg. This drawing shows a small land surface, marked with circular areas A, B, C, and D.

NOTE At any time in this exercise, if circles A, B, C, and D disappear from view, select the surface, and then
right-click and select Display Order ➤ Send To Back.

2 In Toolspace, on the Prospector tab, expand the tree under the drawing name. Expand the Surfaces
collection to see the surface name EG (Existing Ground).

3 Right-click the surface, EG, and click Surface Properties.

4 On the Information tab, under Surface Style, select a different style, such as Border & Contours.

5 Click OK. The appearance of the surface now reflects the settings of the style you chose.

6 To show a different view of the surface, repeat Steps 3 through 5, selecting a different style.

7 After you have explored other styles, set the original style, Border & Elevations.

Further exploration: In Toolspace, on the Settings tab, open the Surface Styles collection. Double-click
a style name to see details about it in the Surface Style dialog box. In this dialog box, on the Display
tab, notice that the light bulbs on or off indicate which surface components are visible in each
style. If you change the View Direction from 2D to 3D, you may see that different components are
visible when the style is used on a 3D surface.