This week I had the rare pleasure of presenting at a Civil 3D user group meeting. My session focused on time saving best practices when working with alignments and profiles. In approximately 30 minutes, we managed to explore more than 15 topics ranging from creation, to analysis, to stylization.
In keeping with our 30 min. Workout philosophy, I attempted to choose topics that both provide value and fall outside traditional Civil 3D training courses. My hope was to demonstrate some workflows the users may not have seen before. If you are interested, I’ve uploaded a recording of the session below…
Thank you so much to Michelle Hood for inviting me to present at JMT’s Civil 3D User Group Meeting!
In this 30 Minute Workout session, we will walk through a variety of methods for entering property descriptions and other recorded data into Civil 3D. This includes precise cogo entry, AutoCAD linework using the Transparent Tools, and the Traverse Editor tool.
The example project used for most of the presentation is a highway right of way acquisition scenario. At the end, I show a bonus example of a boundary survey that is re-located into a published planar coordinate system using the Traverse Editor.
Tool palettes are one of the most powerful and versatile features in the Civil 3D / AutoCAD user interface. Having said this, most folks only use tool palettes for simpler things like quick access to blocks, or inserting content preset to adhere to the company CAD standards.
Tool palettes can be used for much much more. This includes organizing commands into workflows, creating a training tool, launching lisp routines, hosting quick access to custom macros, providing an easy gateway to almost anything available in Civil 3D.
To make things even better, they can be created through simple drag and drop operations. No extensive coding or CUI writing required!
Once defined, there are several ways to share tool palettes amongst users so no one has to "reinvent the wheel".
Civil 3D alignments and profiles maintain a dynamic relationship between both geometry and labels. This relationship allows alignment labels to display geometric information from associated profiles. Likewise, profile labels may include geometric information from the parent alignment.
Simply making a quick adjustment to the label set, you can display the additional design data related to any alignment or profile. In this session we’ll look at how this technique can be used to label an alignment such that it displays the high and low points of an associated profile. If you are interested, I've created a quick video below that walks through everything...
When placed along an alignment, Civil 3D sample lines slice through corridor models and identify the end areas used to calculate earthwork and structural material volumes. In places where alignments intersect, their respective sample lines may also intersect resulting in duplicate volume calculations. Fortunately, Civil 3D makes it easy to calculate average end area volumes at intersections using “match line” alignments.
In today’s installment we’ll explore a way to build custom alignments that serve as match lines for the sample lines used in volume calculation. Ensuring sample lines terminate along common linear segments eliminates the possibility of crossings and avoids overlap in volume calculations.
If you’re interested, I’ve created a video below that walks through everything…
When attending software training, there is never enough time to learn everything an application has to offer. In many cases, training sessions focus on the “need to know” functionality to accomplish typical workflows.
In our upcoming bi-weekly sessions we plan to explore many Civil 3D/InfraWorks/BIM Collaborate Pro tools, tips, and shortcuts not typically shown in traditional training sessions. Our goal being that adding more tools to your toolbox can help you gain efficiency and get the most value out of your Autodesk investment.
Sessions are at 01:30 pm Eastern Time (US and Canada):
Sep 2, 2021 – Avoiding Overlap when Extracting Volumes from Intersecting Civil 3D Corridors- Jeff Bartels
Sep 16, 2021 – Getting the Most Out of Civil 3D’s Tool Palettes- Jerry Bartels
Sep 30, 2021 – Entering Property Descriptions and Other Record Data into Civil 3D- Alan Gilbert
Oct 14, 2021 – Sharing is Caring: How to Share Your Infrastructure Data- Angel Espinoza
The sessions are only 30 min. and will be 100% live demonstration - no PowerPoint is allowed. We are also more than happy to answer any questions arising from the material.
We hope you can join us for the next session in our “30 Min Workout” series of webcasts!
In this 30 Minute Workout session, we will walk through some of the ways that surveyors and other field representatives can use the cloud document management tools available from Autodesk.
We start by showing how the Issues system can be used to assign work while in the office. Then we show how to use the same Issues to record evidence found in the field during a boundary survey. After showing how this data is immediately available to others in the office and field, we discuss another "outside the box" use for the Issues system.
Our next 30 min workout session is coming up tomorrow. Register here
In this installment, we will walk through some of the ways that surveyors and other field representatives can use the cloud document management tools available from Autodesk.
August 5th, 2021 - Surveying the Cloud: Autodesk Document Management for Land Surveyors
In this 30 min workout session, we explore numerous ways you can navigate a Civil 3D model.
(Because there are WAY more tools than just the wheel mouse :) )
These include Walk, Fly, Drive and more. We also review several strategies where tools like Views and Model Space Viewports can be used to increase your productivity. Ever type Zoom or Pan at the command line? There are benefits to doing that as well!!
During our session, we will also look at a technique to locate a point in your project via. a property address.
Finally, because I still love what can be done with LISP, I walk through a quick technique to create a single line LISP routine to automate repetitive tasks.
