The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show
Dan Philbrick and Dave Simeone add their colorful and insightful views, opinions, and expertise on Autodesk Civil 3D and the civil engineering marketplace.
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- posted 10/28/06 by Daniel Philbrick Service Pack 3 - Performance Improvements
- We are right around the corner from releasing Autodesk Civil 3D SP3. This service pack fixes over 100 defects and integrates in the AutoCAD and Autodesk Map 3D Service Packs. There are also several performance improvements which you will definitely notice. I want to provide some additional detail on these performance improvements.
Vault/Data Reference
If you are working with Vault, or with Data References, we were able to optimize the memory usage when creating surface references in projects which have multiple surfaces. I obtained a subdivision project from a customer and this improvement resulted in a reduction of 400 Meg when creating a surface reference! The results will of course vary, but it is safe to say you will see an improvement if you have more than one surface in the project. Secondly, the amount of time required to create the reference has been dramatically improved. For the same customer project, I found that it was taking 100 seconds to create a surface reference, and with SP3 it is down to a blazing 2 seconds.
Surface from Contours
We have also made an optimization when adding contour data to a surface. You will notice this if you are adding a large number of contours to the surface and rebuilding the surface. I have a good test surface that adds about 10K contour lines, resulting in a surface that contains about 800K TIN points. For this surface, there is a reduction of about 380 Meg on the build and rebuild. Results will vary, but you will see improvements when adding contour data to your surface.
Contour Labeling
Another user reported that the contour labeling performance was impacting the Plans Production phase of their project. We were able to optimize the algorithms for label placement and we have found about a 5X improvement in drawing regen speed. This will be very noticeable if you are creating viewports and xref’ing or Data referencing a surface with labels.
Corridor Rebuild
Lastly, the Corridor rebuild time has been improved by about 50%. We have conducted a short beta program for SP3 and here are a few comments regarding this improvement:
I'll just say that from my testing that is actually being conservative. I had a corridor that took about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to rebuild and after SP3 was installed it took less than 30 seconds.
Thanks for the Corridor build speed increase. It's very noticeable.Wow that is a huge improvement. But this completely ruins my coffee breaks while rebuilding corridors.
I immediately noticed a performance increase right off the bat in launching the application, opening drawings, and just using general features. Both Corridor and Surface performance is much better.
Dave and I will provide more detail about the Service Pack at the November 3rd webcast.
Dan
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Interesting project examples that you can share?
Posted 10/26/06 by Dave Simeone
Hi all,
I’m creating a presentation for Autodesk University and I want to roll in a series of interesting examples of projects that real folks like you are producing using Civil 3D. I can work with DWFs, PDFs, screen capture images, or even the drawing file – whatever’s easiest for you.
I’d also like a wee bit of information on the project – how many parcels, how many baselines used in the corridor model, etc.
My goal of this is to showcase some of the things that you folks are doing. I can also insert your company Logo/Name in the presentation if you want.
If you have anything that you can share, please send it directly to my EMAIL.
Thanks in advance!
Dave S
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Czech drafting styles… Why do I care?
Posted 10/13/06 by Dave Simeone
Did you know that a major requirement for Civil 3D was that it be a product we could sell anywhere in the world? If we want to sell it everywhere, it needs to be capable of meeting drafting standards everywhere. So how did this influence the development of Civil 3D and how does this benefit you? Welcome to the wonderful world of styles!
Civil 3D Styles
For those that are new to Civil 3D, a style controls the appearance of annotation and objects in the drawing. How will a profile (long section) be drafted? Are there vertical and horizontal grid lines, data bands at the sides and top/bottom, etc? How will the annotation appear and what data values will be included? Every object in the Civil 3D model has a style to control it’s appearance. This is what allows Civil 3D to automate the creation of drawings that meet submittal standards.
In the box…
The use of styles to control drafting was built so that we (Autodesk) could provide in-box drafting standards that meet country requirements. Customers in Germany, Japan, China, Russia and many other countries have styles that they can download that ensure that drawings they create in Civil 3D meet local submittal requirements. For those of you in the U.S., we added styles based on the National CAD Standards. If someone knows of more prevalent U.S. styles, please let me know.
Customized content…
Even with all this investment in style content, it was clear from the start that it’ll be impossible for us to deliver every style that every user will need. That’s why the style creation/editing capabilities in Civil 3D are accessible to all users. There are a number of resources that are available to help you become proficient with the style creation and modification process in Civil 3D. For starters, we’ve presented a number of webcasts on this subject.
The key point is that, even with all of this in-box content, successful Civil 3D pilots and corporate-wide implementations generally include some upfront investment in style modification. Make sure you’re management team understands that this investment is needed, but the efficiencies gained in future projects will easily outweigh the upfront costs.
How do you proceed?
- First, make sure you know what ships with Civil 3D. We provide a number of templates that may cover most of what you need either in the box or as downloads for specific countries. Civil 3D 2007 also included styles that match Land Desktop output. Many of you may find that the country content we provide covers exactly what you need and you’ll be ready to go. This will depend heavily on how well defined the standards are in your part of the world.
- Second, use what we provide as a starting point for labels whenever possible. Rather than starting from scratch, copy and then modify label and object styles that we provide. It’s a lot faster and there are “best practices” that went into making the in-box styles that you can leverage.
- Third, don’t try to boil the ocean. You don’t need to build every style you’ll ever need before you start using Civil 3D. Make what you need and get them into production.
- Finally, you have everything you need in the product to create styles. If you don’t have internal resources to actually build them, work with a reseller or consultant. They’ve been doing this for a while and have seen what works and doesn’t work.
Cheers
Dave S
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Back to School?
Posted 10/10/06 by Dave Simeone
So I’m relaxing over my black, Green Mountain Coffee (purchased from the local Mobil station) trying to think of a topic for my Blog, and I get an EMAIL with statistics on the Autodesk Student Engineering and Design Community portal. I scanned around to see the numbers of student downloads of Civil 3D 2007. Then I checked out some of the Civil Engineering job postings (no – I’m not looking for me… I’m doing “research”). Then it hit me… maybe I should talk about this cool resource in my Blog. My guess is that most of you aren’t aware that it exists, so…
Tale of the Tape
- http://students.autodesk.com/
- 17,100+ registered members (as of this morning!)
- many, many, software downloads (sorry, I can’t tell you how many!)
- 290 job postings in the Civil Engineering category
- Student resources including course discussions, industry links, learning materials, etc.
- More…
Friends tell me I talk too much, so I’ll get to the point. I hear repeatedly that it’s impossible to find staff and there’s a shortage of trained Civil 3D users in the market. This Student Community is a central part of a broader plan to address these serious business issues. Hear are the actions that I hope come from this.
1. Make sure that students you know are aware of this portal. (I told my 15 year old son about it… he kind of grunted… not sure what that means)
2. Make sure schools you’re connected with are aware of this community.
3. If you’re looking for quality people, start posting jobs up on the site.
Thanks
Dave S