in this video we'll create an existing ground profile and a design profile and display both of them in a profile view so we've already got an existing ground surface brought in through a data shortcut and a Center Line alignment to create the existing ground profile I'll select the alignment and on the contextual ribbon tab that appears I'll go to surface profile choose the appropriate alignment in surface and click add and you'll see a new entry in the profile list the only thing you might want to do here is look at the style and ensure it's what you're after so the profile style in use is existing ground profile which sounds good at this point you can hit okay which will take you out of the dialogue and the profile will be created but not displayed in a profile view typically you're going to want to draw it in a profile view so I'll click this button the main thing you do here is choose the profile view style which will control the vertical exaggeration what the grids look like how the numbers are displayed on the axes and so forth typically leave the St range alone unless we're creating multiple profile views possibly for plan and profile sheets and typically we'll leave the profile view height set to automatic as well this is our existing ground profile and then a band set can be used to add more data below the profile view and the most typical is this EG FG elevations and stations where it takes elevation values from two different profiles and displays them in a band below the profile view we'll go ahead and say create profile file view pick a location away from our existing ground surface and there's our profile and profile view once you've got a profile view you're ready to create a design profile if by chance you had a project that didn't have an existing ground surface you'd still want to create a profile view before creating a design or layout profile to do that you would just go on the Home tab profile and section views panel to the profile view drop down and create profile view you go through the same steps we just did but there'll be no profile when you first create the view to create the design profile I'm going to go to the Home tab create design panel profile dropdown and profile creation tools look to the command line and you'll see that I'm supposed to select a profile view now I can name it choose a profile Style and a label set the profile layout tools are going to look very similar to what we just used on the alignment the profile can be laid out with lines and curves or we can draw pvis or pvis with curves automatically added the key to a design profile is actually not going to lie so much in these tools as it is the transparent commands there are four on the transp Parent Command toolbar profile station elevation profile grade station profile grade elevation and profile grade length I'll show you how we're going to use those so I'll say I'm going to draw tangents and let's say I'm going to conform at the beginning so I'll just snap to the beginning of my existing ground profile now I could go click points but it's going to be a little hard if it doesn't fall on a grid line and I want to set an elevation or something and that's where these transparent commands come in to use these transparent commands what you'll do is you'll start creating your profile as I've done here and then in the middle of that command I'll click profile station elevation select a profile view and now I get to choose for my second point I get to choose a station either graphically or by typing it in and an elevation and it draws my first segment now I can keep going with profile station elevation by choosing another or the next station and elevation alternatively if I want to use a different transparent command or maybe just select points graphically I can hit Escape once to get out of the transparent command and you can see I'm still in the profile layout tools still drawing tangents and then I could try another one profile grade station say I want to go up at uh 2% to station 800 okay hit escape again and I'll show you the other one profile grade elevation makes sense or the final is profile grade length I'll run that one say the grade's 1% and I want to go for 200 ft so what really allows us to draw in a profile with more accuracy than be able to just clicking I want to add in curves so I'll go here and say more free vertical curves free vertical Parabola pvi based you just click near a pvi and input your parameter such as curve length a pass through point or a k value and the curves will be inserted just as with alignments you have a panorama window to look at all your lines and curves you can delete sub entities see I didn't want the curve I just put in and then of course you can add lines and curves and then one other common tool in the profile layout tools here is if you have a profile maybe in a hard set of plans and you know the pvi and curve information you can put that in right from the beginning by going to this insert pvi tab button and inserting pvis with stations and elevations and then where you want to curve you put a curve length if you close the profile layout tools and you want to get back into them you can select the profile go to Geometry editor and it'll bring them back and then as the final step what we'll do is we'll want to make these profiles or rather the FG profile available as a data shortcut so that we can use it to build a corridor so I'll save save my drawing come down to my data shortcuts section and if I'm not set to the correct project I'll have to set the working folder already set to the right project so I'll save one more time rightclick data shortcuts and say create data shortcuts in our next video we'll use these profiles and existing ground surface to create a really simple corridor