Civil Immersion

Tool for Tuesday: MSLIDE & VSLIDE

Who doesn’t love a good slideshow?!

Today’s installment is about some oldies but goodies.  MSLIDE & VSLIDE have been around for more than 20 years and still provide a ton of value.

In short, MSLIDE (Make Slide) lets you capture an extremely light weight image of your model.  This image is stored in an .SLD file that can be viewed in any AutoCAD based application using the VSLIDE (View Slide) command.  Not only is the image light weight, it is not persistent.  In other words, it will display regardless of what model is currently loaded.  After displaying, as much as a small Pan or Zoom will cause it to disappear.

Knowing this, Slides can be used to instantaneously retrieve a view of a model without having access to the actual model file or waiting for it to load.  It can be shared with folks outside of your organization and viewed using their AutoCAD without the need of any object enabler.  They can even be strung together to create a form of time-lapse visualization using a simple script file.

Check out the video below to see how it works.

If you would like to download the simple script and slides I created during the demo… Click Here

-Jerry

Tool for Tuesday: “AECCCREATEXSLTREPORT”

Because the Site Data Table tells the whole story.

Have you ever been required to make a “Site Data Table” for one of your projects?  If you have, you know how important they are when conveying metrics about your project.  If you haven’t, the table makes it very easy to see if your project geometrics comply with the required standards.

In other words, what is the size of the smallest parcel?  What percentage of your site is Open Space?  What is the Gross Site Density?  How much of your site is dedicated to Detention?  Is the Detention areas included or excluded from your Open Space calcuations?.....

Even on a small project, computing this information can be time consuming.  At the same time, if the process is manual, the chances of making a math error or leaving something out of the calculation goes up drastically.

We have tools in Civil 3D to quickly generate a parcel area table but we have nothing that automates computing things like “Gross Site Density”.  Or do we?

In today’s installment, we will look at a strategy where we will export Civil 3D parcel information using the AECCCREATEXSLTREPORT command.  In doing so, we can then quickly leverage Excel to help us create an intelligent Site Data Table we can link directly back to our Civil 3D model.

Check out the video below to see how it works.  

Note:  If you would like to download the .XLS template shown in the video, you can get it here.  Site Data Table Template

-Jerry

Tool for Tuesday: "ADEDOCVIEW"

Have you ever wished you could click on an object in Civil 3D and have it automatically pull up a photo?  How nice would it be if you clicked on a parcel and could immediately access the legal description?  The great news is that we can do these things today using the ADEDOCVIEW tool! 

OK, technically, it is a collection of tools which concludes with ADEDOCVIEW.  The entire process actually involves four commands which officially makes today’s post “Tools” for Tuesday.  :)

Check out the video below to see how it works.

 

 If you would like to try what is shown in the demo, you can download a "Civil Kit" containing the DWG file shown (Start & Finish) as well as the attached content folder by clicking on the following link. ADEDOCVIEW Civil Kit

-Jerry

Tool for Tuesday: "Point XDREFs"

Have you ever wished a Civil 3D Cogo Point object could support multiple elevations and/or descriptions? 

For example, you have monitoring wells on your project that report chemical contamination levels.  You collect this information and need to display changes over time.  You try and present the information in Civil 3D and are limited to a single elevation and single description for each Cogo Point.  As a result, you must create and maintain multiple Cogo Points to accomplish your task.

Perhaps you have numerous attributes (descriptions) you would like to view or label on a Point Object.  Once again, by default a Cogo Point would only allow you a single description.

Taking it step further…  Wouldn’t it be great if (in addition to supporting multiple elevations and descriptions) Civil 3D Cogo Points could access the additional elevation and description information from an external Microsoft Access Database?  That would be an incredibly powerful tool on a number of levels.

The great news is that all of this is possible TODAY through Point XDREFs!!

In short, by using a Point XDREF, Civil 3D will match a point number in your Civil 3D model to a corresponding point number in the key column within a Microsoft Access database.  From there, you can leverage Point Groups to display, label and use this external information in many ways including building surfaces to analyze the data.

Watch the brief video below to see how it works.

 

 If you would like to try what is shown in the demo, you can download a "Civil Kit" containing the ASCII point file and Microsoft Access Database used in the presentation by clicking on the following link. PointXDREFs Civil Kit

-Jerry