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 09/29/06 by Daniel Philbrick Vault or Shortcuts - you pick...
If you’ve been reading our previous posts, you can see that there are challenges with implementing a full Vault-based Project Management environment in Civil 3D. For some of you, Vault is working beautifully. For others… well, you’ve seen the posts. Based on this reality, we’ve been working on a solution that will allow users who are not able to implement Vault to benefit from the reference capabilities in Civil 2007.

So, what’s the plan?
We are actively working on an update to Civil 3D 2007 that will effectively restore the ability to work with non-Vault references. You’ll be able to manually create data shortcuts and then reference those objects so that the model can be distributed to all project team members. The behavior partially exists in Civil 3D 2007 through the Edit Shortcuts command in the General pulldown menu. However, the XML shortcut file must be reloaded every time you open a drawing containing references. The update will eliminate this issue so that references remain live whenever the drawing is opened. The net result is you have all the benefits of reference objects in a very easy to use, easy to implement system.

What’s this mean for Vault?
Vault and Vault-based project capabilities continues to be the primary project/data management direction for Civil 3D. Those of you who have implemented Vault can be sure that Vault is a secure path for the future. Those of you who are preparing for a Civil 3D implementation should take a close look at Vault to see if can work for you. However, for those of you who just can’t get Vault to fit into your workflow, we’ll continue to focus on providing a solution that works for you.

If you’re interested in testing a beta version of the shortcut functionality, please let me know and I’ll make sure you’re invited into the beta program. We’ll provide more details on how this behavior works and how it’ll be released in our upcoming webcast (Oct 6 – A Civil 3D update with Dan and Dave).

Dan

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Previous Posts

  • Civil 3D Project - Why Vault?

    Posted 09/20/06 by Dave Simeone

    In my last post, I talked about why the “Project” functionality in Civil 3D is a way of improving your overall project and project team efficiency. So how does Vault fit in?

    Quick history
    Prior to release 2007, Civil 3D used a very basic project environment that was built on a concept of shortcuts (aka, references) that were connected to a project via XML. This approach worked reasonably well for smaller projects, but it lacked the scalability needed for more complex projects. That said, the concept of the reference objects proved to be extremely beneficial (as noted in my previous posting). One of the core requirements that we defined for the 2007 release was to bring the reference capability to the point that it could work with complex projects.

    While all of this was going on, another initiative was underway within Autodesk. For a number of years, the Autodesk Mechanical products have included data management capabilities to help support the mechanical workflow. This functionality – Autodesk Vault – has been proven as a core data management solution globally. Its success resulted in a move to introduce Vault beyond the mechanical products with the R2007 launch. As you probably know, Vault is now available as a downloadable extension to subscribers of AutoCAD and a number of other Autodesk applications.

    The choice became clear
    As with any enhancement or new feature that we add to our products, we reviewed the options available to us. It quickly became clear that Vault was the foundation that we should leverage. It was proven in the market. It is being more seamlessly integrated with core AutoCAD. It provides the scalability to work with very complex projects. It provides a solution to companies who are working between multiple offices.

    Is Vault something that will work for every Civil 3D user? Probably not – or at least not in the short term. Should your company just plug Vault in and get started? Definitely not. The reality is that everyone of you will need to closely examine how Vault can fit into your current infrastructure and workflow. We’ve seen customers who’ve been very successful very quickly and others who have had major challenges.

    This is probably already too long – I’m still figuring out this blog-thing - so I’ll wrap up. The key points I wanted to get across are…

    - Vault is the foundation of our project functionality and it’s something that you need to look closely and objectively at
    - Some of you are doing great in this new environment and aren’t looking back
    - Some of you will have infrastructure or procedures that result in very real challenges with implementing Vault. We understand this and we’re moving to address your needs. More on this soon!
    - Don’t attempt to roll out Vault on your own. There are a number of resellers and consultants who have been helping customers through Vault/Project configuration and deployment cases who are able to help you. Leverage their expertise.

    Thanks
    Dave S

    4 commentsIn The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show > Project Management

  • Civil 3D Project – the "Game Changer"

    Posted 09/14/06 by Dave Simeone

    With the release of Civil 3D 2007, we’ve had a number of people question the move to Vault as our underlying Project Management foundation. Why change from shortcuts? What were shortcuts? How is the "Project" different than what we had in LDT? How does this compare with manually importing external data files? Why shift to a broader data management environment from a more targeted focus on the Civil model data?

    Before I answer the "Why Vault" question, let’s first talk about the goals of a Project-based engineering solution. Here are some things that we hear daily:

    - Model data needs to be used by many people in many different forms through the life of a project. For example, the centerline of an alignment will be used in many different production sheets or by many different project team members as a project is developed. Agreed?

    - Referencing central model elements (ie, one version of the alignment that everyone shares) greatly reduces the risk of someone working with the wrong version of the model. In other words, one version of the alignment that will be displayed in all sheets and used as a design reference for profiles, corridor models, pipe networks, etc. Make sense?

    The basic concept of the project capabilities in Civil 3D are:

    1. Create a drawing that includes the full, editable Civil 3D object (ie, an alignment)
    2. Check the alignment object into the project so that others can reference it
    3. Any user who is working in this project can create a reference to the alignment object. What’s real important to understand is:

    a. Users cannot edit/modify the object reference

    b. When you create a reference, you can set the style to whatever is needed in the drawing that you’re inserting it. Example – EG surface may be displayed as 1’ contours in the Topo drawing, but then only as a border in the utilities sheets.

    c. If the master object is updated and checked back into the project, you can update references of the object (ie, alignment Elm is correct in all drawings)

    d. All of the object intelligence is available in the reference. This means you can create drafting details, reports, tables or use the objects for further design from referenced objects.

    For you LDT users, think of the LDT project structure, but add the fact that there is a ongoing link between your drawings and the central project. If the central project updates, there’s no need to re-import project data, recreate drafting, etc. same with products that allow you import data from external data files to create drawings or to use in the design process. With Civil 3D, the process is much more dynamic and automated. Referenced project data in Civil 3D can always remain in sync. Correct me if I’m wrong, but having one version of critical model data that is intelligently shared by any number of project team members or that shows up in any number of drawings can provide some serious productivity improvements. Make sense?

    OK, so how does Vault fit in?… Oh my, look at the time! I’ve gotta run – I’ll cover this in my next post!

    4 commentsIn The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show > Project Management