Wicked Cool Stuff
Dominick Gallegos, Civil 3D Technical Marketing Manager for Autodesk, shares his unique perspective and ideas on the functionality and use of Civil 3D for a range of different project types.
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- posted 01/29/07 by Anthony Governanti Digging Deeper in Civil 3D
- I'd like to take a moment to plug a new book that has just hit the streets for Civil 3D; Digging Deeper into Autodesk Civil 3D by Rick Ellis and Scott Wolter.
This is a Level 2 version of Rick's other Civil 3D book of the same name and "is 442 pages long, organized into 7 chapters. It begins with creating a horizontal alignment, editing alignments for both in graphical and tabular format, working with superelevations and profiles, then continues through corridors and intersections and designing pipe networks. The book concludes with grading, finished surface analysis, final earthwork volumes and managing project data with Vault."
For a peek at the table of contents you can check out the Cadapult website. This is a great resource for both an intro and now and advanced level of courseware.
For a list of other courseware materials that are available you can check out what the folks here at the desk have created too. The way I look at it, the more the merrier, as you can never have enough courseware or text books (as evident by the overflowing bookcase I have in my cube with some all-time greats, including a copy of AutoCAD and its basic applications R12!)
Till next time,
Cheers,
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This day in history...
Posted 01/26/07 by Anthony Governanti
January 26th...You may ask yourself what is so important about this date? Well let's see...
Many "famous" people share this great date for a birthday. To name a few:
1763 Charles XIV French marshall, king of Sweden & Norway (1818-44)
1905 Maria Augusta von Trapp Austria, singer, inspired "Sound of Music"
1925 Paul Newman Cleveland OH, racer/popcorn mogul/actor (Hud, Hombre, Hustler)
1935 Bob Uecker Milwaukee WI, catcher/actor (Mr Belvedere)
1957 Eddie Van Halen Nijmegan Netherlands, rock guitarist (Van Halen-Jump, 1984)
1961 Wayne Gretzky Brantford Ontario, Edmonton Oilers/Los Angeles Kings/New York Rangers (NHL MVP 1980-1987), Great One
1977 Anthony Governanti New Hampshire, Legend in his own mind
Some great historical events on this day include:
1748 England, Netherlands, Austria & Sardinia sign anti-French treaty - Now that's just funny, no wonder why the English and French never get along!
1838 Tennessee becomes 1st state to prohibit alcohol
1841 Hong Kong proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain
1871 British Rugby Union forms
1875 Electric dental drill is patented by George F Green
1886 Karl Benz patents 1st auto with burning motor
1905 World's largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found in South Africa
1926 Television 1st demonstrated (John L Baird, London)
1930 Cleveland's Terminal Tower opens (52 stories)
1942 1st US force in Europe during WWII goes ashore in Northern Ireland
1950 India becomes a republic ceasing to be a British dominion
1954 Ground breaking begins on Disneyland
1986 Super Bowl XX Chicago Bears beat New England Patriots, 46-10 in New Orleans; Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent, Chicago, Defensive End (Go pats!)
1997 Super Bowl XXXI Green Bay Packers beat New England Patriots, 35-21 in New Orleans; Super Bowl MVP Desmond Howard, Green Bay, Kick Returner (I see a pattern emerging here :-()
1998 President Clinton says "I want to say one thing to the American people, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
2007 Anthony governanti posts his fourty-ninth entry to Blog while relaxing at home during his birthday
If you want to see all the cool things that have happened on this special day, check out this link where I got these fun facts.
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG -
Site Topology Part 2; Grading
Posted 01/17/07 by Anthony Governanti
Ok, it’s been a while since I posted on Part 1, but I hope you can forgive the major interruption in service here. I’d like to take a moment to talk about Grading, and how it fits into our site topology discussion.
When we discuss grading in general, we need to separate it into two categories of features within Civil 3D; Grading and Feature lines. Grading is the use of the Grading layout tools to create the intelligent grading projects and groups that Civil 3D can use to design site grading. A Grading (capitol G) uses a feature line to start with, and then applies a grading criteria to project to different targets. These targets can be a surface, a distance by slope or grade, or an elevation by slope or grade, or to a relative elevation by slope or grade. Multiple Gradings can be grouped together into a… you guessed it Grading group, so that any change to one Grading will ripple or update the other Gradings.
View image
Here we see a simple Grading; note the green dashed line is a feature line, the projection has a diamond glyph, and the target line is another feature line.
Then we have Feature Lines, which are essentially 3D polylines, but with some extra data and behaviour attached. With the introduction of Civil 3D 2007, we were given a whole bunch of powerful feature line editing and creation tools. It is these tools that make feature lines very powerful, in that you can get most of the "grading" needed for a typical site done with just the lines, and then finish it off with the Grading tools.
So this all sounds well and good, but if any of you have tried to use the grading tools, you will have run across some problems at one time or another.Most of the issue that 99% of Civil 3D users run into when attempting to grade is breaking the site topology without realizing they did, and thus either creating a bad grading, or worse, a fatal error. Now I’m of the opinion that a lot of this is our fault (meaning Autodesk) because we should be trapping those errors and notifying the user of the problem, or better yet, should make it so it doesn’t error in the first place. Now all wishful thinking aside, what do we do to try and get our grading to work without a topology problem?
Suggestion #1 - Separate feature lines that may cross.
The first rule in our topology is that geometry is aware of other geometry and in the case of Grading or feature lines, if they cross, we could have issues. The issue is that a vertical point of intersection will be automatically added to any feature lines that intersect, at the point of intersection. And since this happens automatically without the user really knowing about it, this will cause blown shots in the grading, as the PI is set at zero elevation. To avoid this situation, create or move the feature lines that are crossing into separate sites.
Suggestion #2 - Separate grading groups that intersect.
The second issue is that Grading target lines that cross other target lines or feature lines may stop the projection from happening, giving an incomplete grading, or making it look like a solution wasn’t found. To make sure they still project, separate the grading groups into different sites as well.
Essentially if the gradings or feature lines don't need to interact, then make sure they don't by using different sites. The Site in Civil 3D is basically a bucket that you put geometry in that needs to interact or be aware of each other. Conversely, if that geometry needs to be seperated, then you put them into different buckets, or Sites. By adhering to these two suggestions, I think you'll find that grading will work a lot more for you, and you'll avoid "weirdness" with the feature lines getting zero elevations.
Site topology is something that we don’t really know is there, but having a better understanding of it can help us make better decisions as to how to setup a design in Civil 3D, and in the end avoid issues or problems that we may not be aware are there. I hope this information is useful to you; happy grading!
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG -
Tag - Five "CAD" things about me
Posted 01/10/07 by Anthony Governanti
Well, I've been Tagged to blog about five CAD things you may have not known about me, and since its been a while since I posted, I figured it was time for some filler.
1. I started my CAD career on Auto Architect on R12 of AutoCAD. At the time I had ambitions of becoming an architect, but quickly realized that the business side of that industry didn't hold a very bright future for a small town kid like me.
2. I'm only 29 year old - Ok, not really CAD related, but it's something that people seemed to be shocked at when they find out my age after meeting me - it's either a compliment, in that they are surprised someone my age is doing what I do, or an insult, as I probably look 20 years older then I really am - either way, it's probably something you didn't know.
3. My first exposure to Civil CAD was Softdesk 7.5 on Windows. I hate pucks and digitizers, thus I loved this version.
4. I hate the command line, and use as many toolbars and tool palettes as humanly possible while still able to see the drawing - this is where a 23" wide screen monitor comes in handy.
5. My first job was supposed to be as a CAD technician, but instead I tested dirt for 3 months and did construction inspection. Went through 6 microwaves that summer because my boss at the time was too cheap to use a real lab to test the dirt, so we set one up in the construction trailer with a microwave to "dry" the samples, and a siv shaker to analyze them. I would put the dirt in the microwave for 20 minutes on high, and the way you could tell the soil was dry is that the microwave would shut down, because there was no more moisture in the soil to "wave". Needless to say, that was hard on microwaves, so we went through a lot of them. Man that was a blast!
Ok, there you go - now to tag someone else...hmmm, this is tough, but I'll got with Dan and Dave.
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG -
A wicked cool guest
Posted 01/02/07 by Anthony Governanti
I'm very happy and excited to let you all know that I will be having a wicked cool guest author here on Wicked Cool Stuff. Nick Zeeben, formerly of Civil3d.com and EE fame, has joined the mother ship here at the 'Desk, and has been Jonesin (pronounced joan-zing) for some blog time. So in between his many new responsibilities here as a Quality Assurance Analyst he will be posting to this blog as a guest author.
I look forward to some great things from Nick, especially as he brings his expertise with Civil 3D and great Canadian sense of humor. So I hope you all will join me in welcoming Nick back to the blogshere, even if its on a part time basis.
Look for some posts from Nick in the coming weeks.
Welcome aboard!
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG
