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Archive for the ‘Civil’ Category
Civil 3D Users Unite
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Just wanted to let all those in the southeastern Wisconsin area that we have two Civil 3D User Groups meeting within the next week. Thursday, Nov. 8th, at the MasterGraphics Waukesha office is the Milwaukee-area user group. Thursday, Nov. 15th in the MasterGraphics Madison office is the Madison-area user group.
Even if you aren’t a Civil 3D user….yet….you may want to drop in and listen to the discussion. These are real users, working with real production issues. Both meetings are scheduled for the lunch-time so there will be food involved.
Hope to see you there!
Anatomy of a Profile
Friday, October 26th, 2007
One of the most challenging parts of implementing Civil 3D is getting your elements to look the way you want. Every line, every piece of text and every tickmark can be customised to look however you wish.
In a Profile View you have dozens of locations to change your settings. I’ve created a document you can use as a road map to these styles.
I plan to create more of these road maps for some of the more complex objects, such as Cross-Section views and pipes. Stay tuned!
Carlson Connect for Civil 3D 2008
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
More survey news! Carlson has just released their Carlson Connect add-on for Civil 3D 2008. Follow the link to their downloads page for the free download. The 2007 release of this was really good, so good things are expected.
Survey Link for Civil 3D
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Just a follow up to the post regarding SP2 being out. Autodesk has also released the Survey Link for C3D 2008. The reason these are related is you…
need service pack 2 installed before installing the survey link!
(I just didn’t want anyone missing that important twist!)
Now, there is another twist. You need to be a subscription customer to download it. It’s just a really good idea to be on subscription anyway (I won’t delve into the huge list here - but here’s another reason).
If you used the Survey product in Land Desktop you will recognize a very familiar interface. Very familiar! The Transfer and Conversion options are both there. File types that can be converted to FBK with this tool are as follows:
TDS Raw Data (.rw5 and .raw)
Sokkia SDR Numeric 4
Sokkia SDR Alpha 14
Topcon FC-4
Leica GRE3
SMI
Topcon GTS 210/220/310 Raw Data
Nikon AP800, 700, DTM500, 400, 300, DR48
Topcon DL-100 Digital Level
Leica GSI Raw Data
There are many other conversion options - that’s just the highlight list!
Adding Us as a Feed
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Do you like the tips and advice you get from the MasterGraphics Blog? Why not get updates sent to your inbox by signing up for our RSS feed?
To do so, click on the following link, then click “Subscribe to this feed”
http://www.masterg.com/wordpress/rss/
Civil 3D 2008 SP2 is Out!
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
We’re always very excited to get service packs around here. I’m eager to see if the service packs contain any mid-year, bonus functionality. Fortunately, the Civil 3D 2008 software was quite stable when it was released last spring. The service packs address a few performance issues and a few obscure glitches.
Here is a list of the most important fixes in the new service pack:
- Improved performance in the Object Viewer.
- Publishing with page setup overrides actually works now!
- It is easier to graphically edit cross-sections.
- Even more stability in grading features.
- Labels no longer reset back to default locations.
- You can now export to other versions of AutoCAD without errors.
You you’d like help installing the service pack or applying it to an administrative image you can call our tech support line at: 1(800)377-6364
What Happened to My Crown?
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
I’m very excited to be blogging for MasterGraphics. This is a great way to distribute information to users that “everybody” can benefit from. To that point, my first topic is inspired from several support calls I received within a two week period. If that many people had called about it, I’m betting there are that many more that are suffering in silence.
In this case, we have a road design, and either the COGO points from the road are needed, or the elevation offset labels in the section views are needed. Sounds easy, and the information is there. For some reason the crown of my road is oddly left out. Well, this is very easily overlooked, but also very easy to fix.
(Click the images to get a better view)
If you are having this problem chances are your road design is utilizing one of the super-elevating subassemblies. These subassemblies have a lot of power to them. Don’t be scared off by their names. Even if you never superelevate roads (or don’t know what that means) these subassemblies are worth investigating for the design work they make possible!
One of the parameters you have control over for these subassemblies is Crown Point on Inside, which is defaulted to ‘No’. Well, ‘No’ prevents the crown point from reporting as a point code.
Aha! Turn it to ‘Yes’ and where you use that assembly you will now have the labels.
Now, that’s great if you catch that setting before you start your design. What happens when you’re three days past building your corridor when you realize your crown points aren’t showing up? I haven’t done that several times…this week…no way! Like I said, it’s easy to miss, especially when you are rushing. The fix is to simply edit the subassembly to change the Crown Point on Inside to ‘Yes’. You can do this by right-clicking on the assembly name in the Prospector, or selecting the assembly, or the subassembly, and editing the properties in the Construction tab. In my screenshot I have chosen to edit the assembly’s construction. The subassembly to the right is the one that I am editing. 
As I was writing this, and making screenshots, my cross-section view didn’t change immediately as it should have. Then I realized the Code Set Style that I had assigned had the crown point label set to <none>. A quick detour to the toolspace, settings tab, general, multipurpose styles, code set styles…
…assign the appropriate Crown point label…
…and I was happily rewarded with my labels in the section view.
Depending on your standards/workflow/design output needs you may set the Code Set Style in your template file, and you’ll never worry about that not being set again!
Hope this helps clear up any confusion you might be experiencing!
What Layer is My Point on?
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
The answer to this question is, “It depends.”
The label text is on a layer. The marker (or symbol) is on a separate layer. Lastly, there is what I call the overall layer; the layer that is reported in the Cogo Point Properties.
Points inserted into Civil 3D behave differently depending on several factors.
Ultimately, points inserted into a drawing that match a description key will always take properties from that description key. In other words, description keys always “win.” (Unless you change the point group overrides)
If the point already exists in your drawing before a description key matching it is created, it will not pick up the description key’s properties.
I created a flowchart to help unmask the mystery of points. The flowchart was made with several assumptions:
- Description keys exist at the time the point is created.
- If a marker style is specified, the label style is also specified.
- None of the layers are set to “0.”
- Description Key overrides are not in use in the point groups.
I hope this helps deepen your understanding of Point behavior in Civil 3D.
Civil 3D Terminology for New Users
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
The following Document may help users make heads or tails of the new terminology they may encounter when working with Civil 3D for the first time.
Glossary of Civil 3D Terms - Adapted from Civil 3D 2008 Help Documents.
Support Q / A: Moving the Point Datum
Monday, October 8th, 2007
Q. Is there a way in C3D that I can do an elevation adjustment on all of my points? They are survey points, and I need to lower each point by
2.11 feet to get them onto the correct vertical datum.
A.
If they are survey points (a.k.a. brought in through an FBK file) you’ll need to do this first:
If you go to the Survey tab, drill down to your points and right-click Survey Points and choose Unlock in Drawing.
Once you have unlocked them you can move the points as described below.
If they are points brought in by a text file, the process is pretty
simple:
First, Right-click on the point group you would like to move and select Edit points. (If you are moving all of them, just use the _All Points group that Civil 3d automatically creates)
Next, select all the points. You can use the control-A keyboard trick to select the whole list.
Now, right click anywhere on a highlighted point, and choose Datum.
In the CAD command line you can type in the distance (in feet) you’d like them to move. In your case -2.11. (Don’t forget the negative sign or they’ll go up!)
Hit enter and that’s it!