Wicked Cool Stuff

Road Design Basics Using AutoCAD Civil and Civil 3D 2009

Just a quick heads up! A new white paper entitled Road Design Basics using AutoCAD Civil and Civil 3D has been posted to the civil engineering product center. There is a lot of good information included in this paper and I think it’s great for someone who is new to the civil product line. Also, as you look through the paper you will see that we have included the ENTIRE subassembly catalog as a reference appendix to assist you when you’re looking for the right subassembly to meet your project needs.

The first 10 pages of this paper go through the concepts, terminology, and functionality of how the corridor works. More importantly, it lays out how all of these pieces fit together when modeling roads. There is also a section towards the end of the paper that explains how AutoCAD Civil and Civil 3D respond when modeling projects that require superelevation. Lastly, this paper has a reference appendix that exposes all of the subassemblies in one central location. Each one of these subassemblies include a description of what the subassembly does, some common uses and it also includes the type of functionality each one of the subassemblies respond to. For example, maybe you are looking for a lane that has multiple courses of material but you also need to control the width and elevation of the edge of travel way. The appendix also includes the new subassemblies that were recently released on the subscription center.

This paper is definitely a must read for new users but it’s also a good refresher piece for those that have been using the product for some time. Take a peek, I definitely think it’s worth your time!

Check it out!

AutoCAD Civil / Civil 3D Update_1 Version 2

Yeah, I know I haven’t posted in a really long time and for that I do apologize. Lately, I have had my head down creating content for some of the upcoming events. Still I wanted take a minute to provide some exciting news to our users. At 5pm EST on Friday, Update 1 Version 2 was posted on the Autodesk support site. By now you may be thinking, what the heck is Update 1 Version 2? From this point on Autodesk has decided to shift from the terms “Service Pack” to the term “Updates”. As Autodesk moves forward with additional content and updates, we feel this naming structure will become easier to understand and manage for users! Plus, this naming convention also falls in line with how the AutoCAD team been releasing their latest updates.

So now onto the Update! Besides the name change there is some really cool enhancements/fixes to our core functionality. Shown below is a snippet of the readme file that comes with the update. If you look closely there is some really exciting changes, especially the Navisworks and grading modifications!

By the way, this is not the complete list of changes, so please refer to the readme file that is available when downloading the Update.

General
- The shortcut notification window in a client drawing is now displayed when the source drawing is modified and
saved.
- Object styles persist as expected when you use the Copy and Paste commands on objects. Previously, using
these commands to copy and paste objects would randomly cause some object styles to disappear.
- A temporary drawing object that is created when you use the View/Edit Corridor Section command is now being
deleted when you exit the command.

Alignments
- The start station and end station properties for a fourth spiral in a SCSSCS curve group now display the correct
values in the Alignment Entities panorama vista.

API
- When using the API extension dictionary, objects are now properly propagated across data references for all
object types.
- Performance is improved when you use AeccPoints:: AddMultiple() to add points.
- The AeccPipe:: ConnectToStructure() method now works as expected when you call the Disconnect() method.
- The AeccParcel:: AddSingleSegmentLabel() and AeccParcel:: AddMultipleSegmentLabels() methods now work
as expected.
- The AeccSurveyLandXMLPropertiesRoot:: getitems() method now returns the LandXML extended properties for
the object. Previously, the method returned the LandXML properties for the survey database.

Corridor Design and Subassemblies
- Material volume calculations are now computed correctly for subassemblies that contain structural parts.
Previously, in situations where these subassemblies overlapped it resulted in crossing line segments and
omitted material in the material volume calculations.
- Material volume calculations are now consistent across stations in situations where surface overhang causes
surfaces to join incorrectly in the cross section view.
- Layers now work as expected when you insert a DWG that contains a corridor as an xref. Previously, the layer
settings were ignored.
- The Import Subassembly command now supports a package file that contains multiple localized languages. At
import time the localized language that matches the installation will be extracted.

Cross Section Views
- Cross sections now update consistently and reflect changes that are made to the corridor using the View/Edit
Corridor Section command.
- Sample line label visibility is now determined by the sample line layer. Previously, the visibility was determined
from the sample line group layer.
- The section 1 and section 2 columns are now correctly displayed by default in the Section View Bands dialog
box. Previously, they were hidden by default.
- Corridor sections that are included as xrefs in a drawing are now drawn as expected.

Grading and Feature Lines
- Elevations at grading projection line points can now be edited. Previously, in situations where the start or end of
a grading touched a PI point of the feature line, those elevations could not be edited.
- Creating a feature line from an alignment, with the Weed Points option cleared, now creates the feature line with
correct data. Previously, the feature line would extend beyond the length of the associated profile and it would
ignore the specified elevation values.
- Grading feature lines created from a corridor feature line that contains gaps or breaks are now created in the
correct location.
- Daylight lines are now created correctly for gradings that overlap each other.
- Surfaces are now built correctly from grading groups. Previously, the grading surface did not always respect
the grading results. To ensure correct results when you open a drawing, you should rebuild the surface.
- Several issues involving grading objects and feature lines on locked layers have been resolved and the program
no longer closes unexpectedly when the drawing is saved or the layer is unlocked.

Labels
- The grade in and grade out properties for Profile Geometry Point labels at Profile Start, Profile End, Overall Low
Point, Vertical Curve-Tangent Intersect, Distance to Previous, and Distance to Next now display the correct
values.
- Points that are imported with a scale in the parameters now display labels correctly. Previously, the labels were
offset.
- The Labels Properties dialog box now displays the specified reference text object name.
- The Vertical Reverse Curve Intersect Geometry Point label now has the correct abbreviation, VRC. Previously,
the text displayed as VCC.

Lines Curves
- Using the Curve Calculator after using the Create Curve commands no longer causes the program to close
unexpectedly.

Object Enabler
Important: The Civil Object Enabler is a separate install. You must uninstall and then reinstall the Civil Object Enabler in order for the following changes to take effect. You can download the most recent version of the Object Enabler at: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL11092427
- Opening previous version drawings in the Object Enabler environment no longer causes the program to close
unexpectedly.
- Error messages are no longer displayed when you open a Civil 3D drawing in a localized version of Map 3D
2009 with the Civil Object Enabler installed.
- Autodesk® Impression is now supported with the Civil Object Enabler.
- The following NavisWorks products are now supported with the Civil Object Enabler.
-Autodesk® NavisWorks® Manage 2009
-Autodesk® NavisWorks® Review 2009
-Autodesk® NavisWorks® Simulate 2009

Parcels
- Using grips to edit parcels no longer causes the program to close unexpectedly.

Pipes
- You can now add a part family to a parts list.
- When you lay out pipes, the program now accepts the point that you select on screen as an endpoint.
Previously, the program would randomly ignore the selected point and the command line would continue to
prompt you to select a point.

Plan Production
- Sheet numbers on match lines are now resolved if the Sheet Set Manager .DST file is moved from its original
location to a supported search path location.
- Matchline text is now displayed in sheets that are placed into a new drawing that contains multiple view frame
groups.

Points
- In situations where child overrides exist in point labels, the arrow is now displayed in the Edit Label Styles dialog
box to indicate the override.
- Inserting a drawing that contains points now populates the _All Points group.
- The Geodetic Calculator now applies the correct transformation Grid Scale Factor for ground coordinates.

Profiles and Profile Views
- A corridor is now correctly flagged as 'out of date' when you make edits to the profile.
- Having a blank row in the Profile Editor no longer causes an Invalid Input message when you click OK.

Project Manager
- Project DWFx files are now displayed properly when you use the Preview option on the Toolspace Prospector
tab.
- Dependencies are now displayed as checked out. Previously, when you checked out a drawing from Vault that
contained a dependent drawing the dependent drawing did not display as checked out.
- Vault Explorer now displays "where used" and "used by" for dependencies.
- The Name field is no longer read-only in the New Project dialog box when you access this dialog box by right-
clicking a survey database on the Survey tab and selecting Add To New Vault Project.
- You can migrate Vault-based project XML files to the data shortcut structure

Surfaces
- Surfaces created from DEM .asc files will use the drawing units if no unit is specified in the .asc file.
- Using the Bounded Volumes command now returns the correct volumes.
- Negative contour lines are now displayed correctly. Previously, if surface data that existed in the specified
contour range consisted of a single data point, negative contour lines were not displayed for the surface.

Survey
- On the Survey tab in Toolspace, the previews for Figures, Networks, and Setups now work as expected.
- When the CgPoints option is cleared in the Import Survey LandXML dialog box, associated figures are no longer
created.
- The LandXML Extended Properties are now saved after you close a survey database.
- The Name and Description fields in the item list view for a new Network and for Network Properties are now
displayed when the Preview options are selected.
- The Import Survey LandXML command now imports CgPoints correctly. Previously, some points were skipped
during import.
- LandXML properties are now saved when you close the survey database.

WisDOT. . . Another great story!

Just a quick thought, for those of you out there that haven’t been keeping up with the latest info about WisDOT. This symbolizes a significant change the winds and how companies and states are looking into what Civil 3D has to offer along with the benefits it can produce. Pretty interesting!

WisDOT. . . . very exciting stuff!!!!

AU Class Selection. . . . .

This afternoon Nick and I worked on the AU class sections and after looking into all the classes, I can tell you first hand we have a very large class list to go through. Last week we ran a survey and thanks to all of you who voted. By using the survey along with along a complicated selection process we have started to narrow down the class list to those that will benefit end users the most. This year we have had an overwhelming response for classes with over 175 proposals submitted. I'd like to thank EVERYONE for taking the time to come up with all these great classes. If by chance your class does not get selected please keep on trying, there is always next year!

Just to give you a little insight into our complicated selection process , I have posted a couple of photos of the boardroom we were working in. We aren’t quite done selecting but a few proposals have floated to the top, if you think your class deserves to be on top you aren’t too late. Just in case you are wondering what our mailing address is. . . here you go. 100 Commercial St., Manchester, NH 03101. . . Fed Ex would be a good idea since the class submission deadline is quickly approaching!

P.S.
Just in case you are wondering. . . we are joking about the bribe part except when I was at Tech Camp James stopped by and tried bribe me with a copy of Mastering Civil 3D 2009, fortunately I was able to get a dollar for it on E-bay! Thanks James! Just joking!

Dominick

World Press Day

It’s amazing how much can happen over the course of a week. Last week Autodesk hosted World Press Day in San Francisco, where we invited journalists from all over the world to take part in the role out and highlights of the upcoming 2009-product release. This year the Autodesk Technical Marketing team (which I am part of) put together a unique story, which featured eight different Autodesk products working together on a Brazilian library project. Together these products showed different parts of the design process while analyzing specific elements of each design. I think the part that sticks out the most in my mind is that we did it all using the same data.

The image below shows a Revit model that has been imported into Civil 3D, thus allowing the civil engineer to use part of the Revit model to calculate the roof area. This could help in designing and analyzing the storm sewer network. This is just one example of how Civil 3D can work with multiple platforms, making the job of a civil engineer easier.

Hydraflow Hydrographs & Express

Those of you out there that have been living under a rock for the past month may still be unaware of the striking new extensions which have been recently released on the Autodesk Subscription site. Hydraflow Storm Sewer Extension, Hydraflow Hydrograph Extension, and Hydraflow Express Extension, while still easy to use, truly extend the Civil 3D functionality by giving users the ability to do all the hydrology and hydraulic functions that their little hearts desire.

View image

While the Storm Sewer Extension has been available for about a month, the Hydrographs and Hydraflow Express have recently been released and are now available for download from the Autodesk subscription site. I would highly encourage you to check out these new extensions so that you can explore the H&H features offered in these products. For all you users who may have been anticipating the introduction of hydraulic functionality into Civil 3D, these programs hold the key to your heart. Remember, if you are unable to login you may need to talk to whoever handles the CAD stuff.

View image

If you are interested in viewing some exciting features of these products, and how they could improve your overall workflow with Civil 3D, join in on the webcast scheduled for Friday, January 25th at 12pm EST. Click on the link below to register, where you will be provided with all the necessary information and a front row seat to see these features in action!

Hydraflow Hydrographs & Express Webcast

A New Year!!!!

Well I certainly hope everyone had a happy Festivus and if you were a good boy or girl, hopefully you received some good gifts. I was fortunate enough to spend the holidays with my wife’s family in Oklahoma and froze my rear off playing golf. Regardless of what you received, or who you spent the holidays with, it is a New Year. That means we can all begin to look forward to new things.

In regards to new beginnings, January marks my tenth month here at Autodesk. It has been eye opening, challenging, and invigorating; all qualities that a good job should embody. I have found the people here at the “mother ship” believe in the philosophy of work hard and play hard. There is a good balance to the employees, which allows for continuous innovation and creative thinking. In just the brief time in which I have been a team member of the Autodesk family, I can already say that this move was the right one for me. More to the point though, for those of you who are interested in looking forward to new things this coming year, I encourage you to take a look at an opportunity within Autodesk which would allow you to stay on the edge of technology, work with a great team, and see a little bit of the world. If you think your work philosophy and drive meet the requirements of what it takes to be a part of this team then I challenge you to apply. You can find all the details about this opportunity, as well as the qualifications needed, by clicking on the link below. If you have any questions about this position, please do not hesitate to email me directly at dominick.gallegos@autodesk.com.

An Autodesk Opportunity

Happy Festivus

With the holiday season right around the corner, I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah , or Happy Festivus. For those of you that used to watch Seinfield you will know what festivus is and those of you that didn’t well, you can visit Wikipedia to find out more. Let’s just say that the Airing of Grievances and the Feats of Strength should be done more than once a year. . . . . . not with me but someone in your family.

Autodesk University Power Track. . .what's it all about!

I often get a lot of requests from people asking what the Power Track is all about, and if it's for them. To be honest I think it gives a great look into the product because if you are a new user it exposes you to the basics such as styles or even points. However, if you are a more experienced user it will also let you see features such as grading or even sewer design. Often when experienced users attend power track classes they are able to pick up on some great tips and tricks that may not have been explained when they learned the product initially.

This year we have some great instructors teaching in the Power Track but we are also allowing attendees to pick and choose which classes they would like to attend in the Power Track. So if you think that the Power Track is simply for new users, you had better think again. While it will expose new users to functionality but it will also give the experienced user something to use when they get back to work using Civil 3D. If you would like to hear more about this exciting event, you can listen to a podcast that will be available on the main Autodesk University site. It goes into a little bit of detail about classes but it will also give an idea of what to expect when you go to AU this year.

Autodesk University 2007-Power Track

PS
Be sure and pay attention to the slaughtering of my name. . . . GUY A GOES. . .phonetically speaking. . :-)

Cheers,
Dominick

A quick update

This one will be short and sweet. The survey extension for Civil 3D posted here was updated today. A minor correction was made and I would encourage all of you to download and install this new version.

Have fun and safe translating for all you survey oriented folks.

Nick

Multiplicity

Hello Again,

After a summer of travelling here there and everywhere I am back in Manchester for an extended stay. I got to spend some time today at the AEC Dev Camp that is going on this week in Wakefield Mass today. Driving down with Peter Funk today we got to talking. I had been out visiting a customer and they had asked for a multiple parcel volume report. It’s a request I had heard a few times before and had even briefly toyed with. As I was at the Developer camp it seemed appropriate I do some developing. I also happened to have one of our Programmers sitting beside me. Between the two of us we made some alterations to the parcel volume report that comes with Civil 3D and I have posted it on the community site here.

Hope you all enjoy, and thanks to John for helping me out.

Autodesk University 2007. . . . .off with a bang!

Well what can I say we are two weeks into Autodesk University registration and we have started off with a bang. This year we are projecting nearly 10,000 people to attend AU in Vegas and so far there are around 3,000 that have already registered so needless to say it’s going to be an amazing event. With that said, a lot of you that have already registered may have noticed that some of the classes have already filled up. We have taken note and we are changing some classes around to allow additional people to fill some of the more popular classes, so please check your schedules in the near future for these changes. In addition, this year at AU we have created quite a lineup of classes from the beginner that has never seen Civil 3D to the advanced that would like to implement Vault. But we have also tried to focus on providing a different type of classes for example, Ian McGregor with Autodesk is hosting a class called AutoCAD® Civil 3D®, Autodesk® Vault, and How To Design and Review a Workflow. I am sure a lot of you out there have taken a peek at Vault and either took it by the horns or some of you have steered away from it and that’s okay too. Ian is putting together a class that is going to show a “real” workflow of how Vault can be successfully used in a real company. Again, some of you are probably thinking that this is going to be a one man show that will have a Vault installed on the local machine and everything works all fine and dandy. However, that is not going to happen in this class! By using multiple machines and dedicating a server Ian is going to show how multiple users can work in a seamless environment while using the Check In, Check Outs that Vault has to offer. Which mean that this class will truly be one to remember! So if you haven’t had a chance to sign up yet or if you don’t know what it’s all about, check it out! Autodesk University

Editing a Surface. . . from a Cross Section View

Many times, we create Corridor models and the top surfaces look amazing. I know when I used to do it using 3D Polylines or even Templates, I would end up with a vertices that were at 0 elevation or just messed up from either my fat fingers or just dumb luck. As most of us know Civil 3D allows us to create top surfaces very easily with a few clicks but what about those complex intersections or funny contours that go astray even though you know your model is correct. Well boys and girls there is a wonderful answer to these types of problems. In the image below, I have introduced a left hand turn lane and we should be seeing two separate contours instead of one that wraps onto the island. In this type of situation a lot of users don't realize that instead of altering the triangles in plan view we can force the top surface to follow our true design intent from a Cross Section View. . . . yes a Cross Section View. When the View/Edit Corridor Section command was introduced, it was a basic viewer so that a user could see what their cross section looked like without having to create cross section but it has evolved into a full-blown editor.

As we dig deeper into this little gem of a tool you can see in cross section view the median has ended but the contour has not tapered down to be completely flat, yet. However, by simply drawing a standard Polyline while you are in the View/Edit Corridor Section command we have essentially created a breakline, in Cross Section View.

Which means we can quickly add this simple polyline to the top surface as a Standard breakline and tada. . . .

. . . . when we switch back to plan view (or even if you stay in Cross Section View) we now have a great looking surface that truly looks as it should and if you look closely you can see the polyline that was created on the edge of the curb and gutter for the median.

Keep in mind that since this works for polylines. . . . try using Points also. Who would have ever thought we can truly edit a surface from a Cross Section View, imagine the possibilities. By the way. . . . I know someone is going to ask. . . no it will not update if the Corridor changes in Elevation but it was easy enough to do the first time, which means it will be even easier to do the second.

The good news and the bad news…

Well, I’ll start with the bad news, because I never like ending anything on a downside. After much deliberation, consideration, and realization, I have decided to step down from the blog and stop my duties as a full time contributor. It should be pretty obvious from the lack of posts in the last two months that my schedule and time aren’t as free as I thought they would be in my new role. In the end, I just don’t have the bandwidth to commit to adding the value needed to make it not only worth my time, but more importantly, worth the time of my readers.
As for the good news; this blog will continue. I’m handing over the reins for the primary authorship to Dominick Gallegos, the new Technical Marketing manager at Autodesk. Many of you are already familiar with Dominick from his own Civil 3D blog that he had before coming on board with the team. I’m very happy that Dominick will continue his involvement in the community, and very pleased that he has chosen to do so with Wicked Cool Stuff. So please join me in giving Dominick a warm welcome and we hope to continue to have you back for more great information and tips and tricks on Civil 3D.
PS – As noted with the last several posts, Nick is still involved as a guest author, and will continue so as long as he can put up with Dominick’s little tricks. 
Signing off for now, but perhaps not forever,
Da Govna

Cross Sections Part 2

First things first. When I wrote the original post I did the text on my plane ride back from Europe and didnt bother to look up spelling in our corporate directory. I should have, becuase I spelled Joerg's name wrong. So now that I have that correct it is actually spelled Jörg in German. Jörg also wante d to make sure I passed along some credit to Chakri Gavini one of our product designers based in Manchester, so I will tick that off the list as well.

And now to the show. Last time I showed a couple of screen caps of some creative cross section labeling to avoid band clutter. Today as promised I will attempt to breakdown just what makes this tick.

I took the existing band style with all of the overlapping offsets, copied it and promptly turned off all the labels. Now you are probably asking why is he turning off labels, that is what we are after, now this is a true statement, but we are going to use DIFFERENT labels to accomplish this task. All we need is an empty band space in which to insert our shiny new labels.

Next step, code set styles. I know, I know, you already spent months learning what these do and finally have cross sections looking how you would like. We need to add at least 3 custom codes to the markers section. See the screen shot below.Insert screen of adding left, right and straight.

Still no labels, but we are getting close I promise. We need some custom Marker label styles for our new codes. I named mine to match the custom codes, so I have 2 marker label styles: Left and Straight. The key to these label styles is the new attachment point option that was added in 2008. Bottom of section view, because I know where my band falls below the section, and how tall my band is I am able to draw a line in the band projected down from the points on my design.

Now the left style is just a little fancier adding in an angled segment to provide me some clearance to the labels next door.
Centering these labels in the band is another trick. I create a line component, with an x offset that matches the change in x of the angled portion, I then set visible to false. I then simply attach the band text to the middle of this hidden line.

So voila, you have flexible band labeling. The example Jörg created had two different angles to allow for a single stretch and a double; I am only giving you a left and straight style. I can’t do all the work for you.

But wait, you still don’t see any labels do you? I know I said we were getting close, maybe I lied, and good things don’t come free or easy so hang with me.

So earlier we added custom codes to our code set style, take you shiny and new marker label styles and assign them as appropriate to your custom codes.

Last stop I promise. How do you add custom codes at specific locations on your corridor assemblies? The answer my friends is Marked Points. Simply take the marked point sub-assembly, type in which ever code is appropriate. See the annotated image below for how I labeled mine.

That’s it that’s all. Hope you liked it, go grab the style here if you didn’t the first time. Due to the nature of this one it will certainly require some edits to fit with the styles you have defined but it should give you a good start.

Creative cross section labels from across the pond.

I seem to be getting out of the office a little bit lately. I just got back from two weeks in Prague, Czech Republic helping with the creation and testing of our Eastern European Country Kits. For those of you wonder what a country kit is. It is a set of content similar to what we ship in the box in North America, this means items like templates, superelevation files, pipe network parts, reports etc. On with the show. I have uploaded an example style drawing to the community site here

Credit for this goes to Jorge Pipo, an Autodesk Civil Applications Engineer based in Germany. A very common problem when working with cross section bands is having overlapping information. Below is a screen shot of a band that show offsets for my design.

Due to the proximity of the curb points the text become an overlapping mess. Well thanks to Jorge we now have a creative solution to labeling this information without clutter. This screen shot shows and sample of Jorge’s Solution.

So for the adventurous in the crowd go ahead and download the drawing from the community and dissect just what Jorge did to make this work. For the less adventurous in the crowd stay tuned for my next post where I will break down exactly how this set of styles is configured.

I would call this wicked cool, but I'm not a native New Englander

Note: I originally published this last week, but due to some technical problems with image uploads I pulled it. Those have now been sorted out, so enjoy!

Well they finally let me out of the office, I am in New York this week taking a training class. I am sitting on the roof top deck at my hotel looking out over Manhattan and I felt like I should write a blog entry, man I am a geek sometimes. At least it pays the bills. Anyhow on with the show.

Corridor featurelines have been a bit of a sticky situation for people out there. Due to the corridor being ala connect the dots, feature lines end up being tessellated line segments rather than true curves along things like flowlines. Alot of folks have asked for a little more control over these, often a profile and alignment are needed along flowline. There is a new command setting available in 2008 for Create Grading Featureline from corridor and Create Alignment from corridor. The command setting is in the popup:

View image

Now first of all, you may be wondering, is smoothen really a word? Yes it is, I checked the dictionary before we shipped because I wasnt quite sure. People with larger vocabularies than I design the product. Anyways our default settings for both of these commands are to create smoothened entities.

So now you are asking what exactly does this mean for me? Well the following two screen shots show exactly what I mean.

Smoothened

No Smoothing

Anthony Who?

Well I've broken a record, but unfortunately it’s not a good one; seems that it’s been over a month since my last post! I can't believe it’s been that long, and I do apologize for those of you that have been faithful readers.

A lot has happened since I last posted; I took a week off for vacation, spent some time on the road getting to know the territory, Civil 3D 2008 hit the streets, and all the while the blogsphere has been moving along quite nicely without me - Dave and Dan even managed to post a couple within the same week!

So to catch up I'll begin with Vacation. My wife Elizabeth and I took a well deserved week off from the world without kids for a cruise to Bermuda. Although the weather wasn't all that great, we still had a blast. If you've never been to Bermuda, I recommend it, it is a great little island that is very traveler-friendly, and just a couple hours from the east coast.

I also had a chance to attend the Experience the Possibilities tour that Autodesk put on down in NYC. We had pretty good turn out in the Civil session and lots of interested folks there to see what Civil 3D was all about. Pete and Steve put on a great show, and I was very pleased to see first hand some folks come away with a sense of urgency that they need to look at implementing Civil 3D in their organizations.

I've also been logging some miles traveling around the territory getting to know my reseller partners as well as some clients. I spent a cool week in Up-State NY with the Imaginit team at their 2008 road shows. We had a great time and met some great clients that are either using Civil 3D or just starting to implement. I also spent some time with Clough Harbor and Associates in Albany NY who are looking at implementing Civil 3D across their organization. We met with a lot of their department heads who wanted to see what Civil 3D can do for their particular discipline, as well as what it could do for the company as a whole. Overall a successful meeting, and I feel they are one step closer to making the move away from plain AutoCAD and LDT to full Civil 3D.

I also noticed that there are several new bloggers out there in the Civil world; if you haven't seen the new ones, you can go here or here and here to check them out. Pretty exciting to see the community grows by the day now.

So with that I'll close this long overdue post with a question I'd like some feedback on;

Does your company track utilization of software, and if so, how?

I ask because I've had a couple conversations with clients who are resistant to making the jump to Civil 3D, and one of the common themes were the effect the new application would have on their utilization. Any thought, comments or feedback is welcome.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Its a small one

Ok, so I feel guilty for the blog neglect and Anthony's attempt to remain technical was a little sad. So I thought I would put this one up.

The Code Set Style Dialog now supports shift and/or ctrl selection for editing!!

Now most of you are probably sitting around wondering why this matters, but as a guy who used to spend alot of time setting up templates and as any of you CAD manager types reading this will likely agree this particular set of styles was a laborious process to setup.

So let's take a look, I'll even put in some screen shots of the product installed on my own machine.

Simply use your ctrl or shift keys to select the desired codes.
View image

Now go ahead and choose a style to change. It is really is just that simple.

View image

I actually clapped in my cube the day I found this. I realize I don't get out much, but they do say it is the small things in life that matter.

I will try and write something a little more substantive later on this week, Anthony's dirty looks in the halls and subtle reminders in conversation were getting the best of me though and I felt the need to post a nugget.

Nick

Heading down the highway...

Well, my third week as Sales Guy is starting with a trip down to NYC to drop in on the Experience the Possibilities Tour. I hope to meet some of our customers there, and also take in a bit of the city, since this will be my first time in NYC.

Of course my first challenge is to get there in one piece! I'll be heading south sometime tomorrow, and hope my navigation skills will steer me away from as much traffic as possible. Anyway, if you are planning on attending the event, make sure to say hello - I'll be the tall Italian in a black suit and tie....wait, this is NY, that would describe most of the people there. Well, I'll have to get up front and introduce myself then so you can come say hello.

It has been a while since I shared any tips here, so I suppose it's time to give one to tide you over until Nick can hit ya with the good stuff. With Civil 3D's new Plan Production feature, there is the ability to define a hatch patter or mask for the outside of the Match Lines. This is a really cool feature, in that you can fade back or hide the line work that exists to the outside of the sheets that are generated. One cool thing you can do with this hatch is set it to a solid color, and it will "mask" out the line work. The problem is that if you set the color to White, when you flip over to a standard Layout, it has a white background. What happens to color White when the AutoCAD background is White? It turns it to Black. Pretty cool for line work, not so cool for a big solid mask.

So when you configure the matchline styles, you can use color 255,255,255 instead of the Acad standard White, and avoid the problem. I'd give a screen shots, but I don't have Civil 3D installed anymore!

View image
Here is what the final output looks like if you use the 255 trick.

See the lobotomy has already begun, but its slower than predicted.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Heading down the highway...

What time is it?

Well, it's been a week since my illustrious world tour ended, and I think I finally know what time of day it is, as the jet lag has worn off. I want to again thank my gracious hosts in Shanghai and Paris for making two very long trip so enjoyable and relatively stress free.

So last week was my first full time effort for the new role as "sales guy", and I must say, its going to be a very interesting, if not exciting year. I've got a lot to learn, and hopefully a lot of knowledge to share in return.

My first order of business was just that, to plan out my business. After referring to Webster’s dictionary to figure out what business means - I'm kidding of course - I worked through a plan of action for this coming year. We use a system here at Autodesk called Goal P.O.S.T . Without getting into too much of the detail, we essentially state a goal for the year, and then the process takes us through creating a Profile of the business, Objectives for the plan, Strategy for how I will achieve the goal, and then Tactics for reaching the objectives.

It is a pretty cool process and forces you to look at a plan from all directions, and make sure you have your basis coverd. With the help of my new teammates, we came up with a pretty good plan, with a lot of tactics that will hopefully translate into a successful year. I only hope that I can stick to my plan, and achieve the goals I set for myself. Because after all, its not just having a good plan, but good execution of that plan that make it happen, right?

So why am I rambling on about this? Well, essentially I just wanted to share my thoughts and observations as to how this can be applied to your world, perhaps with an implementation of Civil 3D (I know, not that subtle, but then again, I am Italian). See I believe, and I think a lot of people would back me up on this, that having a good plan before you try to implement a technology like Civil 3D is paramount to its success or failure. You have to sit down, look at what you want from project, or the goal of the implementation, and then you need to asses the current conditions in your firm, or build a profile of your existing setup. Once you have this, you move into the objectives to achieve during the implementation like starting a pilot project, training certain team members, etc. This will then need a strategy for implementing the objectives so they are achievable, as well as tactics or actionable items for rolling out the plan.

I mention this only because I feel the important part is to realize that you aren’t on your own to do this. We at Autodesk have done a lot of work, and investment, in materials and training to provide the resources you need to successfully implement Civil 3D.

The first level is the CAD Manager’s Guide, which is a pretty in-depth paper that will guide you through the details and direction needed to begin an implementation of Civil 3D. The next level is our ICE program, or Implementation Certified Expert. This is where an individual who works for a reseller or consultant is trained and then certified on an implementation process specific to Civil 3D. To find a reseller who is certified search your area and look for their ICE certification credentials. The next level of support is very similar to ICE, as a lot of or resellers, consultants, and partners have taken the program and customized it to their services adding more value in a packaged offering.

Anyway, I hope you can see the value in at least having a plan when implementing Civil 3D, and with the technology getting better and better each year, if you haven’t taken a look at the possibilities, maybe now is the time.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

What time is it?

How you say French?

So this week I find myself in Paris France, but luckily no drama to tell for the trip over. All the parts of the plane stayed on, and I arrived in Paris’ Charles De Gaul airport at the bright and cherry time of 6:30 AM.

My gracious host this week was Willy Luce, the French Civil AE, and he’s been very kind and understanding when it comes to my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to all things French, including the language. After several cell phone calls and some clarification of where I actually was in the airport, we met up and headed to the Autodesk office. Willy and I took the “local” tour of Paris, as we seemed to hit every red traffic light in the city as we slowly made our way to the eastern part of the city.

I’m here, much like last week in China, to train our internal sales force on the new features and to go over the Tech Camp materials. If you are a reseller, and haven’t been to one of Autodesk’s Tech camps (formerly Boot camps) then you must read Dana’s TechCamp Survival Guide. Anyway, we had a great two days, and I think everyone got what they needed so they could turn around in a couple weeks and train the EU partners and resellers on this year’s release.

Left to Right: back row – Ian McGregor, Alexey Petrinchuk, Brian Kling, Jack Strongitharm, Da Govna, Jim Hughes, Klaus Dahlfeld; Front row – Willy Luce, Marco Martens, Ove Cervin, Tomas Lendvorsky, Joerg Pipo, and Roland Klement.

Here we have a great mug shot of the EU AEs about mid-way through today’s training. It was hard to stay awake, especially with the temp in our training room being about 10 degrees above Stuffy, and me droning on and on about feature lines and corridor assemblies.

We did enjoy a wonderful dinner the first night at a restaurant in the Village Saint- Emilion (Bercy) area.

Marco and I split probably the largest Filet steak I’ve ever seen. The restaurant specialized in steaks, and had a 4 person meal that served a 1 Kilogram steak! That is just huge. As it was, we had the 750g, which is the same weight as a bottle of wine! It was a great meal, and Willy did a superb job selecting some great red wines for us to enjoy (as the French are so known for doing anyway!)

Anyway, it’s been a great trip, but I am anxious to get back home to the family, as I’ve only been home for 1.5 days in the past 12. I’m signing off now, wish me luck for an unadventurous trip back home.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

How you say French?

How you say English?

So I'm on my third day of training here in Shanghai, and I learned something really cool today - how to spell my name in Japanese. Well Katakana (Japanese simplified characters) to be technically accurate.

Thanks to Fukuchi for "enlightening me"

アンソニー - Anthony

ガヴァナンティ - Governanti

Then this started a pretty cool competition as my Chinese and Japanese colleagues were trying to figure out my last name in the correct characters.

So here is simplified Chinese:

安东尼

嘉瓦纳帝

And in and traditional Chinese:

安東尼

嘉瓦納帝

Here is the white board that started it all.

View image

It's definitely been a cool couple of days so far. i hope to post some more pics before i leave.

Till Next Time,
Cheers,
AG

How you say English?

International Travel – the ups and downs

International Travel – the ups and downs

I’m sitting in a very nice Hotel in Shanghai, China as I write this post, and will get to the details of the “ups and downs” of this particular international trip. First I want to apologize for not getting a new post up here in a while. As you can imagine, I’m busier then a one-armed paper hanger at the moment as I transition from the technical marketing job to the regional sales job. Essentially I’m doing (or trying anyway) both jobs at the same time. Anyway, not a good excuse for lack of posts, if Lynn Allen can do it, I can!

Anyway, now onto the ups and downs, and we’ll start with the downs. To get to Shanghai, I had a set of flights that originated in Boston early Sunday morning, and a connection to Shanghai on a flight through San Francisco. All was going well until we got about two hours into the Shanghai flight, and a passenger noticed a piece of the fuselage hanging off of the right side engine – not good. After many trips by the captain back to through the cabin to take a look, and several passengers employing there digital cameras and zoom lenses, it was decided that we’d better turn back and land the plane while we still could.

Bottom line, 5 hours in the air, and I wound up right where I started, back in SFO. We were delayed till the next morning when they got a us a new plane and could take off again. Now I won’t mention any Airline names here, but it started with a “U” and ended with a “nited”. After several less then desirable experiences, I’ve started to doubt my allegiance to this corporation (I’ve been flying them pretty much exclusively for almost four years). This is yet another delayed flight due to maintenance or mechanical issues for me in a short span of time, and quite frankly, I’m fed up.

Anyway, that was the down, what about the up? Well I finally did arrive here in Shanghai, and I must say this is a pretty cool city. I haven’t seen much of it, but was able to take a small walking tour of the area around my hotel The Royal Meridian. What I’ve seen so far I like a lot. Also, I’m reunited (no pun intended for those paying attention) with the APAC AEs and sales team, whom I usually only get to see once a year, and this week should prove to be a blast. I’m here to do “train-the-trainer” classes on Civil 3D 2008, and despite loosing a day to travel woes, we should be able to cover some great new functionality, and of course share some laughs over some Tsing Toa beer in between.

I’ll try to post again from China before I leave on Saturday, then it’s off to Paris France for the EMEA Train the trainer event. Sounds luxurious I know, but I doubt I’ll get to do too much as I only have two days there to squeeze in 3 days worth of content. Anyway, once the whirl-wind global tour of the Da Govna show is completed, it’s onto the dark side of sales full time for me.

Cheers,
AG

PS - This is a landmark event - this 50th wicked cool stuff post. May not seem like much, but that's close to average of two posts a week. Not ground breaking, but I'm happy with it.

International Travel – the ups and downs

Behind The Curtain – welcome to the demo world

So a while back I had posted a couple times on topics I looked at as "taking a peek behind the curtain" here at Autodesk. I promised at the end of the last installment that I would talk about the process I used for creating and releasing the scripted demonstrations you all get to see when you attend a Civil 3D seminar or when a reseller or Autodesk AE stops in for a visit.

My intention here isn’t to brag or call attention to this work; it is more to give you a sense of what goes on behind the scenes and maybe give you a better understanding of why we show what we show when demonstrating the product. I want to point out that the materials I create for demonstrations are merely a starting point for a lot of our AEs. It is in no way the end-all and be-all when it comes to demos, and really is just meant as a baseline of material that our sales force can use to present a consistent and concise message of Civil 3D to customers. I think what you’ll find is that most if not all AEs (Autodesk and resellers alike) don’t use the “canned” demo, but instead prefer to create a custom demonstration for their audience that either uses data provided by a customer, or at least more “locally” applicable datasets. This is where the real value of a local AE or technical expert comes in. They can add their expertise and experience to the presentation to improve its overall effectiveness.

So the way I approach creating a demonstration of the product can be boiled down to several common steps;

- Finding a Dataset

- Re-engineering that dataset in Civil 3D

- Canning certain parts of the demo

- Scripting the messaging

Finding the dataset
This is a very crucial part of the process that will lead to the success or failure of a demonstration. The challenge with finding a good dataset is balancing the need to have a large or complex enough project that can show the power of the application, but not something so huge that its overwhelming to an audience when you show it. Once this type of project is found, then the next challenge is to get the rights to it. In our marketing world, we need the materials we produce to be accessible by all of our partners, resellers, and sales folks alike, worldwide. They need to use that information to sell our product, and so getting the legal rights to the information is paramount. The downside is that many companies aren’t willing to sign their data, which represents their intellectual property, over to Autodesk to do with as we please.

Re-engineering that dataset in Civil 3D
Ok, so let’s assume that we find the correct dataset, and then we get the sign off from the customer to use that dataset. No we need to get that dataset configured so it fits the needs of the demonstration. This means that if the project wasn’t done in Civil 3D, it has to be re-engineered or redone using Civil 3D.

“Now wait a second there Govna, you mean to say that you use datasets that weren’t even created using Civil 3D? What’s up with that?!”

Well, this goes back to the first step; sometimes, well if fact most of the time, its very difficult to get a dataset that fits the criteria so we take what we can get. If that means it’s a project that was built using a different product (LDT most likely in my case) then so be it. Also we need to consider what we are showing, and the features we wish to highlight for the customer to show the value of the product. In some cases, that means tweaking or adding to the original design, and that’s part of this step as well.

Canning certain parts of the demo
I hope that you can agree that we can never show all the steps taken to design or create a project using the software in one sitting. So realizing this, we have to take some license with the data, and have some engineering or work done ahead of time in order to get through the demonstration in a timely manner. As such we typically "can", or have a lot of the work done ahead of time. This streamlines the demo and allows us to create a highlight reel of sorts to show all the critical or cool things that the product can do. What I typically do with the parts of the demo I do "can" is to make it clear to my audience what was canned and why, that way everyone is on-board with where the data or project is at before I demonstrate a feature.

Scripting the messaging
This is probably the part of the process you weren’t aware of. Or at least I should say you shouldn’t be aware of. In order to make our demonstrations consistent across multiple demonstrators, we provide a script of messaging with the datasets. This script is usually just a word doc that lays out the marketing messaging and key points we want a presenter to make while they are showing certain things in the product. I mention that you shouldn’t be aware this exists because it is not the intent that the document be given to customers, or that a presenter stands in front of an audience and repeats the script word for word from memory. Much like the dataset, the script is meant as a framework or a guide for the presenter use so that the messaging and presentation of the features is consistent and on target for the intent of the demo. This again is where most AEs will add their value, in that they can interject their personally experiences and points of view to improve the presentations. This is usually the hardest part of the demo creation process in that you need to articulate the value, benefits, and the importance of features to an audience, and do it in a way that is clear and concise, and for me, doesn’t sound like a bunch of Marketing BS.

With all these steps taken into account, at the end of the process, you should have a demonstration with a dataset that’s on target, a set of steps that are easy to follow for both an audience and a presenter, and messaging that communicates the value and benefit of the product. In my role as the Technical Marketing manager, this process has taken me anywhere from 8 weeks with a large demo like the Overview for Civil 3D 2007, to just a few weeks with a mini-demo like the segment specific ones I’m releasing this year for Civil 3D 2008.

Bottom line is that there is a lot of effort that is put into these demos, so the next time you have the pleasure of seeing one first hand, I hope you’ll get a little more out of it then you would have otherwise.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Behind The Curtain – welcome to the demo world

Where or Where could Anthony be?

So it has been a long time since my last post, and I ha hoped it would have been less, but last week was YAWLV - that means Yet Another Week in Las Vegas.

I know; woe is me; but in this case, it really was a long and tough week. We had our annual Sales conference last week called One Team at the MGM Grand hotel and Conference Center. It was a blast, but probably not as fun for me as it could have been. Two reasons; one my laptop died on the plane ride out there; two I was pulling double duty as both the tech marketing guy and the rookie sales guy.

Laptop woes:
So there I am on my 6 hour flight to Vegas, working away on my laptop putting the finishing touches on what I hoped were going to be some great demonstrations of Civil 3D 2008 for our sales team. I shut down my machine to change batteries, because even with power save mode, I still only get about 3 hrs from this boat anchor. I change batteries and restart - except the machine won't boot - it just hangs there on the IBM ThinkPad startup screen. Hmm, this is interesting, let's try that again. After several more failed attempts, it finally comes up with an error - _System Start Failed - Check system date and time.

This is not good.

So after messing around with the bios and seeing that indeed my system time and date have been reset, I give up and put the machine away, hoping that maybe some alone time will do it well and that it will decide that it feels better after we've had some time apart.

So we land in LV, rush to get a private care cause we are running late for a rehearsal for one of the 5 presentations Dave and I are involved in this week, and we get to the hotel, where I try to boot again, only this time plugged in to see if its a power issue. No such luck, so I am stuck with a laptop and no OS. Luckily, Dave is there to save the day, as he has recently installed a build of Civil 3D 2008, and I have an Ultra-bay adapter that allows me to put my hard drive in as a data drive. All is not lost, but more on that later.

Tech Guy vs. Sales Guy
So the other difficult part of last week was managing what worked out to be a split personality for 6 days. As many of you are now aware, I'll be transitioning to a new role as a Sales Territory Manager in the coming weeks. This made for an interesting dynamic for me at the conference, as I was torn between being the tech guy for all these presentations, and also being a rookie sales guy who needed to meet-and-great all his new resellers and various sales folks within the organization. Anyway, it was quite a challenge, but I want to express my deepest thanks to those of you who attended and helped me ease into the new role by introducing yourselves, or at least didn't mind when I asked you name for the third or fourth time.

It was a surreal experience in the end; as on Thursday afternoon, I did my last technical presentation during the CAD/GIS sales session. I came to the realization that it is going to be something I will miss, as I really enjoy presenting these products to an audience. It was also surreal to talk to all the folks who knew me from that role and the great compliments and encouraging words they had for me. I was truly lucky to have been involved in some of the cool things over these last several year, and I want to thank all of you who were there for the great and not-so-great times.

Ok, so enough reflection; time to start looking ahead, and in doing so, I want to begin to share how truly excited I am for the year ahead! We have a lot going for us this year.

A rock solid product; this year is the year, we worked really hard to get this thing ready to for prime time, and despite a bit of a false start last year, I think the momentum is still strong, and 2008 will be well received.

New opportunities; with my new role comes some new opportunities for me to grow and learn. In the short time I've been the sales guy, I've already seen some great opportunity to do some cool things, and I can only say at this time to stay tuned in for future updates.

A growing business; despite a downturn in the housing market here in the US, the economy from a Civil Engineers perspective is still very strong, as the public sector is starting to rise, with more state and local government projects coming up for bid. Other parts of the private sector are still growing as well, with commercial development continuing to grow. This all means great things to come for us all; more projects mean more work for all of you, which means more need to be efficient and productive; this is where Civil 3D will fit in and be and integral part of the entire process, and this is where I hope to make a difference (well at least for the Northeast states anyway).

Ok, enough of my ramblings for today - I still owe you a post on how we go about building technical demonstrations that you see out there, so I hope to get to that this week before I'm fully transitioned to the new role.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Where or Where could Anthony be?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes......

"Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers"

In the great words of the modern poet David Bowie - It's time to turn and face the strain...or something like that. Anyway, I'm writing today to let everyone out there who peeks in on this blog - all three of you that is :-) that I'm going to be changing positions here at Autodesk at the end of this week.

As many of you know, I am currently the Technical Marketing Manager for the Civil product line, which means I get to do all sorts of cool stuff like present at AU, weekly webcasts, create demonstrations, author White papers as well as some not so exciting stuff too. Well, after almost four years, and some really awesome times in this role, I've decided to take an opportunity in Sales. I will be the Northeast Territory rep for Civil Vertical Solutions here in the US as of March 1st. My territory will encompass Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey. So if you are in one of those states, I hope to see you sometime this coming year, if anything just to say hello.

Now before your shriek with horror and wright me off as a lost cause, I do want to thank you all for the support and guidance over these past four years in this role. A lot of you out there in the community have taught me a lot about this business and this industry, and I hope I was able to return the favor every now and then, and teach you something too. Also, I'm not going away that easy. I would like to keep this blog going, and slowly morph it away from just the technical stuff and perhaps have conversations that center more around the business side of the world we all live in.

But that I will leave up to you, my faithful readers - again, all three of you :-). So let me know by leaving a comment as to whether or not I should keep the blog going, and if you would keep interest even if it wasn't all technical and tips and stuff. I can't promise that I'll have anything that ground-breaking to share with you - but then again I never have. I'll keep to my same philosophy, which has always been to tell it like I see it, for better or worse.

I hope you can share my excitement for this opportunity, and really what should be another exciting chapter in the life of Da Govna. And may our paths cross in a boardroom or conference hall in the near future.

Till Next Time,
Cheers,
AG

PS - I'm still hoping that Nick can add a couple posts every now and then, so that will hopefully keep the technical side of this blog legitimate.....well as much as a Canadian transplant can be legitimatethat that is.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes......

Plans Production is here!

So there are several other bloggers out there already talking about some of the new cool features in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008, and I didn't want to be one of the last ones.

Although its been a source of internal strife lately, I'm going to proactively discuss some features here today, mainly the new Plans Production tools in the upcoming AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008.

But I'm not just going to tell you about them, I'm going to show you. This way I can at least be the first to have a video on the new features :-)

Here you'll see the two main components to generating sheets automatically in Civil 3D 2008 - Creating View Frames, and Creating Sheets.

Creating View Frames

In order to setup how our plans will be laid out, we have a concept of a view frame. This frame is the object that ultimately will size the Plan viewport on a sheet, as well as determines the location for Matchlines between each sheet.

A nice usability improvement is that we have added wizards to help with this process. The first one walks us through the setup of the view frames, including the template to use for the sheets (so it can determine the size of the frames), the styles used for the frames and matchilines, as well as the label styles used, and some criteria on laying out the geometry. As you see in the video, once the frames are laid out, you can make adjustments with intelligent grips that will keep them attached to the alignment.

Create Sheets
Once the frames are where you like, you can create the sheets from them. You can see that we have three options for creation; plan only, plan and profile, and profile only. The wizard again steps you through all the options for creating the sheets, and the end result is a set of plans that have 90-95% of the drafting completed for you. Now that is Wicked Cool.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Plans Production is here!

Corridors Eh!

Howdy everyone,

Before I get going, a quick apology to Anthony and all you anxious readers. I have been a little lax about getting involved over here with Anthony. I think I am finally starting to feel settled in around the office and otherwise, so I am going to try and make this is a bit more regular thing.

On with the show. Everyone, their dog and cat have been posting about Autodesk's 2008 products so I thought I would show a little bit of Corridor Flash for you Anthony's loyal readers.

Corridors have always supported inserting regions, the problem with that is setting up all of the targets for that new region could be alot of work. AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 adds the ability to split an existing region. The command will divide an existing region at the point you have selected, and copy over all the original regions settings, including assembly, and any target surfaces, alignments and profiles.

Corridor surface creation has also had some quirks. I wrote a series over at Civil3d.com about a particular problem with datum surfaces not being created properly.

Now in the corridor surfaces tab we have overhang correction. I have posted two images, one with bottom correction on, and one with none.

Bottom Correction Applied

No correction applied

Well that is all I have for now. Don't worry we have lots more things to show you in the coming days weeks and months. We might even start showing how it all works.

Hello from San Francisco and a Wicked Cool Tip

I'm just settling into my hotel room here in chilly San Francisco where I'll be spending the better parts of the next two days talking to a worldwide press audience about the upcoming release of Civil 3D. I am very excited about this years release, but more on that in the coming week.

I wanted to share a quick tip that I've been using for a while now, and figured it was about time to share. It's not ground breaking, but should save you a lot of time when dealing with (blah) plain AutoCAD tasks.

Drag N' Drop copy:

A lot of times when I'm going through the layout for a design, whether it be a roadway, a parcel network, or a parking lot, I have the need to isolate objects quickly and use them for simple drafting tasks.

Let's take a set of parking curbs for instance. If I'm being a good Civil 3D doobie, and am converting my layout linework to Feature Lines so I can properly grade my site, I may loose some 2D geometry that I need for other things like visualization. So what I typically do is simple copy the geometry into a blank DWG, flatten it if needed, and then copy it back in to a new layer. It sounds dumb at first, cause you're probably thinking, why don't you use Layer isolate or one of the other hundred ways if separating out the geometry needed. Well, quite simply, this is the fastest way I've found.

1 - Create a new DWG using the same template or coordinate zone as the DWG you currently in.

2. Go to the Window menu and select "Tile Horizontally" or "Tile Vertically"

This will put both DWGs on your screen side-by-each. Simply select the geometry in the original DWG you want to work with so the grips show up, and then Right-Click-Drag the geometry into the new drawing. When you release the mouse button, you'll be given a shortcut menu. Choose the paste to Original Coordinate option.

View image

Now that the geometry is there, you can work with it in a clean environment and then simply reverse the order of steps to bring it back to the original DWG. Badda-Bing, Badda-boom.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Hello from San Francisco and a Wicked Cool Tip

Site Topology Part 3; Managing Sites

I've been banging away on a site design these last couple of days, and have come accross a couple tips that I hope will help you when you are using the feature line and grading layout tools in Civil 3D.

The first tip is on using a pretty cool feature line editing tools that will make your life as a designer a lot easier.

Set grade between points:

View image

This command allows you to specify a point on a feature line to start, then a second point to define a range on the line that you want to grade. Then you can either project a slope, grade, or elevation difference between the two points. Really handy if you need a feature line to be a grade line, say the bottom of ditch, or in this case, a swale that runs on the outside of a parking lot.

Here we have the grading group selection dialog. If you don't have a grading group defined, you'll be prompted to create one first. Once here, you can switch to a different site, and select a different grading group, thus making its site current.

Now that I have the grading site current, I can use the editing tools on the desired feature lines (yellow line below).

View image

Here we see that I'm trying to use a feature line editing command on the yellow line, but the command will only recognize the green line, which is in the current site.

So how do we change the current site? Well this is where its a little tricky, or at least not intuitive in my mind. We need to use the grading group selection dialog from the Grading layout toolbar. This allows us to select a new "current" grading group, which by default sets the site current as well.

Setting the current site:
So you may remember from my other posts about site topology that you need to keep feature lines and grading groups separated into different sites if you want things to play nicely together. Once you've adopted this practice, you may run into a situation like I did that took a little hunting to figure out.

Essentially I had two sites for my site design; a Reference site and a Grading site. I used the reference site to collect and manage the feature lines and grading groups I used to crate a reference surface that I use to grade the rest of my site. The grading site was just that, a site to collect the actual grading groups and feature lines that will make up my design.

So here is the situation - I'm working away with my feature lines for my reference site, and then I want to edit one of the feature lines for my grading. When I go to select one of the grading feature lines with an editing tool, they aren't selectable. This is because my reference site is still current.

View image

So I hope that helps you all out hen working through a site design using both feature lines and grading groups.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Site Topology Part 3; Managing Sites

Updated Survey Extension

A while back I posted about a cool utility that Rob Todd created that extended some of the existing functionality in Civil 3D for working with Survey Networks and traverses. Rob has just released a new and improved version of the utility that you can grab here.

Probably the most notable improvement is the Translate Survey Network command:

From the Redme file: The purpose of this command is to perform a simple translation of a selected survey network, given a base point, rotation angle, a destination point, and a change in elevation (optional).

So if you have a need to translate your networks, or to use the other powerful functions that Rob has added, check out this utility today over in the Content Sharing section of the Community.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Updated Survey Extension

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,
AG

Digging Deeper in Civil 3D

This day in history...

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

This day in history...

Site Topology Part 2; Grading

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

Site Topology Part 2; Grading

Tag - Five "CAD" things about me

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

Tag - Five "CAD" things about me

A wicked cool guest

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

A wicked cool guest

Ask, and ye shall receive

So a lot of you asked for the ability to connect to and download survey raw data from TDS collectors. Well, we here at the 'Desk were listening, but unfortunately there isn't much we can do about it in the short near future. Thankfully, our friends over at Carlson were also listening, and they've just released an update for Carlson Connect for Civil 3D. Make sure to download the file for Civil 3D with a date of December 21st, 2006 - that's the latest, but it isn't at the top of the list on Carlson's download page. This update has the ability to connect to and download data from TDS collectors.

A couple of things to note; if you already have a previous version of Carlson Connect installed, you may have to run the install twice, as I did. I didn't uninstall the old one before running the update, so it uninstalled it for me, but then it didn't install the update after, so I just ran the install again, and everything worked fine. No biggie, just something to be aware of.

Now that you have it, simply go to the Carlson Connect menu and select TDS Transfer. You'll get this dialog that will allow you to connect and transfer from a TDS device.

This should really help those of us who were used to the TDS Link in Land Desktop and Autodesk Survey for connecting to our TDS equipment.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Ask, and ye shall receive

Christmas has come early

Well, a couple days anyway. A couple "gifts" for you, and some seasonal wishes.

First off, I want to extent a warm welcome to some colleagues of mine that has joined the Autodesk Blog-world; please pop over to From the Ground Up and say hello to Ove, Jack, and Chris; three "rock Star Application Engineers from our Europe Sales team. They bring a wealth of industry knowledge and experience to the world of Civil 3D, and I expect great things from this "toxic-trio"! If you want to track their posts with a feed reader, use this link.

Secondly, I was messing around with my Parking Lot site, and generated this rendering. What do you all think (that's y'all for my southern friends)?

View image

Lastly, I want to wish all of you a happy holiday and send my best wishes to you and your families. We have next week off here at the 'Desk as the company shuts down for a "week of rest", and I hope to not touch my laptop during the next 7 days. So we'll see you all next year!

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Christmas has come early

Behind the Curtain - Part 2

Ok, so we left off with our peek behind the curtain with the understanding that new features are chosen for a release with a method called Pairwise Comparison.

We also left with a question about how the features that are compared are actually chosen in the first place. Well that is where product management comes in. It's the job of Dave and Peter and the rest of the Product Management team to collect the requests of all our customers, sales staff, AEs, partners and resellers and start narrowing down themes and duplicates and to create a master list of requirements. This list becomes a document called the Product Requirements Documents, or the PRD (Yet another TLA). Early on in the product life, a lot of the features on this list were pretty obvious - we needed to get the core items in the product so we could have a product to work with, like points, surfaces, alignments, profiles etc. Now that Civil 3D is starting to mature, and more and more users are adopting it, we can start to narrow in on specific features that help round out the product, and get us closer to the nirvana of a truly "complete" solution. The problem is, that the closer to this we get, the more input there is from a wider audience, this job get more and more difficult.

So for each release cycle, there is a process of documenting what that release will focus on. The PRD is used as a framework and conduit for communicating the "themes" of features that will be added. Development then takes the PRD, and runs an analysis of the amount of effort needed to complete a feature (this is basically and estimate of man-hours it will take to write, test, and integrate the new code into the software). Once the estimates of effort are weighed against the business case for each feature (this is where your input is paramount; because we can't just say "this would be a wicked cool feature, let's do it", we have to map the need of the feature to solving a customer issue or making the product better for a customers need). This again is where hard decisions have to be made; it may come down to a situation where a feature is really needed, but it will take a lot of work to get it done; the team has to decide to either add that feature, and remove others from the list in order to do it, or not do it, and concentrate on other features (hope that makes sense).

I guess my whole point here is to show you that the decision making process that shapes Civil 3D is very important, but that it is also very complex. It takes a lot of dedicated folks and at times, very hard decisions are made. Just know that in the end, we here at Autodesk are trying to get you the best products on the market, with the highest quality, in the most timely manner we can. The next time you say to yourself "well any 'good' cad program should have that feature", stop to think about this process a little, and try to see the scale of a program like Civil 3D.

Next time for Behind the Curtain; we'll get a little closer to things that are near and dear to my heart; demonstrating Civil 3D.
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Behind the Curtain - Part 2

How do you grade?

I had an interesting conversation via IM the other day with the Civil 3Diva. We were discussing the different ways to grade a commercial site, and we had some differences of opinion when it came down to some of the methods you can use in Civil 3D.

Dana has become a big proponent of using the corridor model to do the bulk of the site grading, and I am a bit more of a traditionalist in that I make heavy use of feature lines and what I call "reference" surfaces. So we went back and forth as to which way is better, and it dawned on us that this conversation should probably be more public.

So we've decided to each post about our methods to our respective blogs, and let you decide which one is better for you. In the end, I think it will depend on the site conditions, and your familiarity with the tools available. Either way, it should make for good conversation, at least in cyberspace.

The site:

View image

This site is a fairly typical commercial development, with large parcels for industrial buildings and a simple road that splits the property in half. Here I have a parking lot laid out with an entrance to the road, and I need to make some decisions for how I will grade the lot.

The Flow:

View image

I've decided to split the parking lot in half from east to west, and will make a grade line that runs parallel to the parking spaces. As you can see, I'll flow the water to the east (away from the proposed building pad that will be on the west side of the parking lot) and will tilt the lot 1% down from the north and 2% down from the south.

The Setup:

View image

With the general flow conditions determined for my site, I can create some reference elements that I will use to base my grading on. I take my flowline and convert that to a feature line, and set grade on it using the elevation editor. I then use the Stepped Offset feature line command to offset this line to the north and south 150 feet, at 1% and 2% respectively. I add these feature lines to a new surface, which is my reference surface for my site. It dictates the flow characteristics for the overall conditions of my design.

Site Topology - this is where the lessons we've learned on site topology are crucial; we need to keep the feature lines for our reference surface is a separate site from our lot grading feature lines. I make it a habit to create two sites as soon as I start my grading; one for reference lines, and one for my actual site grading.

The Grading:

View image
Feature Lines created and then graded from the reference surface.

Now that I have this reference surface, I simply project all my parking lot feature to it, and they become "graded". This is where a lot of time is saved, in that I don't have to set any points, or project any slopes; I simply just grab the elevations from my reference surface, and BAM, my lot is graded for me. I then add these lines to a new surface, and we can start to see the design coming together.

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Feature lines added to a new surface.

Two tips here; when you convert the linework to Feature lines, make sure to uncheck the option for erasing existing object; we'll need this linework again later if and when we do some site visualization. Two, when you get elevations from surface for the new feature lines, make sure to uncheck the option to insert intermediate grade points as this will save a lot of processing time by eliminating a vertical point being added to every triangle crossing point.

Next I create all my curb lines by again using the stepped offset feature line command. I use a distance of 6 inches and an elevation difference of 6 inches.

View image

Now I finish the design by adding the curb lines to the surface, as well as projecting the outer limits of my parking lot to existing ground using the grading tools.

View image
Final Parking Lot surface.

So I hope you can see that by using the feature line tools and the surface capabilities of Civil 3D, you can do commercial site grading. By using my method of feature lines and a reference surface you can quickly grade the site, and if anything changes, you have the flexibility to either make adjustments to individual features using the feature lined editing tools, or to the entire site by changing the reference surface.

With a little effort on the visualization side you can quickly create powerful rendering of your work.

View image

Look for Dana's version of this site to be posted over at Civil3D.com sometime soon.

So I leave it up to you which method you prefer; just know that Civil 3D is capable of doing commercial site grading - its all in the tools and methods you use.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

How do you grade?

Beta for Civil 3D is available

Just a quick tip that the first Beta for Civil 3D has been released. If you are interested in being a beta tester for the next release follow these instructions.

Note, this requires you accept a non-disclosure agreement, which is very important to us, so please don't take it lightly.

Go to the My Feedback portal.

Sign up as a user, and make sure to check on that you wish to test Civil 3D as a product.

Once approved - yes someone does look through the list to make sure we don't have any bad apples, you will get an invite with instructions for accessing the beta project.

Happy testing!

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

PS - I'm starting to shop for a new vehicle, and the Chysler 300 is catching my eye. Anyone out there have one, or has experience with them?

Beta for Civil 3D is available

Behind the Curtain - Part 1

I'm going to try to bring you a series of posts that hopefully give you all a glimpse of the inner workings of Autodesk, at least from my perspective, and the software development process. I'd like to share with you, what I am legally allowed to anyway, some of the things that I find interesting that I see on a daily basis.

Sausages and Software
So what do they have in common? A little more then you might think. When I first started here at the 'Desk more then 6 years back, I heard someone quote a saying "There are two things that you never want to know how they are made; Sausages and Software". This statement struck me as pretty funny at the time, but later I came to realize how profound it really is.

Essentially, sometimes there are hard decisions to make or things that a software company has to do in order to get a product out on time and as stable as possible. Does it always work? No I would say it doesn't, and I'm not just talking Autodesk here, I referring to all software, all types. For sausages, if you could see how they are made, you'd probably not want to eat sausage ever again. Well that's where the analogy will stop short, because what I hope to give you is a sense that things are not all bad here behind the scenes, and that the decisions made and the direction we take with our products, particularly Civil 3D, are made with the best interests of both our customers AND our company in mind. My hope is that you'll come away with a feeling or at least a realization that in the end, everyone that works here is human, and that we care about the work we do, and we care about what you think about it.

So the first thing I want to discuss is how high level decisions are made when it comes to the features that make it into the product each release. We use a system here called a Pairwise comparison. This is a way to compare items to each other in an ordered fashion.

Essentially, we take a list of features, usually in buckets or groups, and we order them, say 1-20. Then a group of folks sit in a room together, and start to compare the items. You start with number 1 and compare it to number 2, ranking which of the two is more important. Then you move to comparing number 1 to number 3, again ranking which is more important, 1 to 4, 1 to 5, so on a so forth. After a while, you will have compared every item to every other item, and will have a ranked list of which ones are most important. We then take this list and start to prepare the development cycle of actually writing specifications and developing code.

This means that there is an actual process and there are hard decisions to be made. Let's face it, there are only so many horus in a day, and only so many days in a development cycle. So the hard decisions have to be made, and sometimes features that would be really cool, or are things that we've been waiting for a long time (cough, H&H, cough) have to be put off until the correct resources and scheduling can be commited. I just want you all to know that there is a real process, and there are real people involved in it, and the process is evolving everyday. I can say from first hand experience that it works pretty dam good, and its only getting better.

So now you probably saying "That's all well and good Govna, but who picks the list of items that get compared in the first place?"

Well, I'll get to that in Part 2.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

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Behind the Curtain - Part 1

Las Vegas reflections

Well, as you may have seen form all the other Civil 3D bloggers out there, AU is over, and I'm just today felling normal again. It was a great - no awesome -conference this year that saw attendance up some 41% over last year!

For me there were some significant events:

Beta preview for Civil 3D - I had the pleasure and the privileged to demonstrate some of the future technology the Civil team is working on to an invite-only crowd of AU attendees. Along with Dan and Dave, we were able to give a sneak peak into what might be coming in future releases, and judging by the applause, ooh and ahhs from the crowd, i came away very excited for our future. Plus, I was able to have a couple beers AND demo, which made it even more fun :-)!

ISD General Session Main Stage - This was a session that I took part in, again with Dave and Dan, where we gave attendees a snapshot of where Civil 3D was a year ago, where it is today, and where we are going tomorrow. Our Geospatial counterparts did something similar for the MapGuide and Map 3D products. The session went well, but I was disappointed in the attendance. I can attribute the low attendence to two things; 1 - classes were still going on during the session, and if you were an attendee, would you go to class or a presentation? 2 - The ISD party was the night before, and I must say that this party was one of the best industry parties I've ever been too at AU. Since the general session was the next morning at 8 AM, I'll assume that a lot of ISD attendees took the morning to sleep in and "recover" if you will.

So hopefully lesson learned there; don't schedule classes at the same time as general sessions, and don't have it the morning after the industry party.

Friday Morning Classes - this year both Dan and I had our one and only classes for the week on the last day; Friday. Since our classes were closely related in topic, we sort of made them into a part 1 and 2 session. Dan did a great job, and had the higher attendance of the two, but it was still about 75% of what it was supposed to be. My class was similar, with about 60% of what I expected. This is not a big deal though, because after all, this was the last day of classes, and these were the last classes of the day. Anyway, I felt my class went well despite the attendence, which was still about 300 die-hards. It was a great way to end a week of networking, talking shop, drinking/partying, and most of all fun. This isn't to say that it wasn't a lot of hard work too, but that all pays off with a successful event and a productive week.

Well, that's my recap of last week's events. There was a lot of work done, and a lot of fun had, and from my perspective, a great conference was had by all.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Las Vegas reflections

Back online and Live at AU

Hello everyone. I hope you all (in the US anyway) had a great thanksgiving holiday.

Well, we are all here (7500 plus) in Las Vegas for Autodesk University 2006. I hope to bring you a couple live updates this week when I can squeeze them in between sessions, rehearsal's for main stage presentation, and of course a couple AU parties.

Things are going well, and despite a long walk from the hotel room (yes it is shorter then at the MGM, but its still long) I got checked in and registered late last night.

The Power Track for Civil 3D kicked off his morning to a packed room, and is going strong. The initial buzz is that its a great set of classes that adds a lot of value to the already action packed track of classes offered here at AU.

Well, I'm headed back to it; scrambling to get some demo drawings ready to go for a special "invite only" meeting tonight. More info to come on that.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Back online and Live at AU

Vault workflow for Civil 3D

We here at the Autodesk Marketing Machine are pleased to announce the availability of a brand new white paper that outlines a workflow to use with Autodesk Civil 3D 2007 and Autodesk Vault. This white paper goes into some detail about the implementation and setup considerations you or your company should make when choosing to deploy Autodesk Vault for Project Management with Autodesk Civil 3D 2007. The paper also details a workflow for using Autodesk Vault on your projects from initializing the project all the way through to creating plan sets.

Please download the white paper below. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section.

Vault with Civil 3D Page

I would like to extend a special thanks to the team at LA CAD for their effort assisting with pulling this paper together.

Please use this paper as a tool to educate yourself or others in your organization on how to setup and use the Autodesk Vault technology for Project Management in Civil 3D to your advantage.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

PS - I've changed the link above to the Vault page on the Civil 3D website. Also note that there is a help file supplement that includes new information about Project management with Civil 3D that can be found here.

Vault workflow for Civil 3D

Vault and creating plan sets

This year at AU (see I knew yesterday wouldn't be the last AU post) I'll be teaching a course on sheet production called "Keep the model, but get that Sheet out of here!" This class really is an extension of Dan's class on using the project management tools that are included in Civil 3D 2007.

In my class, I essentially pick up on a project where Dan has left off, and most of the engineering and design are complete. We use the Vault to store and manage this project information, as it offers some distinct advantages when it comes to plans production.

Well instead of going into a ton of detail here, I've decided to just share my paper to any and all that are interested, before AU. Consider it a preview of what's to come, or an incentive to make sure you can go next year.

Now granted, you won't get the benefit of my powerful presentation and lecture that goes with this paper, but I think you'll still get something out of it :-).

Download file

Here is a PDF version of my paper. For the complete class including the lecture and presentation, make sure to log into AU Online after the event to view a recording of my session, as well as may of the others at this years AU.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Vault and creating plan sets

One last AU post....

Well, maybe, but I just can't help but share this stuff, I think its Wicked Cool.

So registration and scheduling is done for AU, any last minute attendees have to register onsite. I just got the final attendance numbers for the Civil 3D Power Track, and thought I'd share.

View image

As you can see, all the PT classes have at least 300 attendees or more, and six of them have 400 or more!

Pretty cool I think, especially since last year at AU, only about a third of the total Civil classes were on Civil 3D.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

One last AU post....

Define Traverse Stations from a Figure

Shameless plug time; this time on the behalf of a co-worker of mine here at the 'Desk. Rob Todd, product designer and our resident Survey expert, has posted a new utility to the content sharing section of the community that is a must have for anyone doing traverse analysis in Civil 3D.

The utility - Define Traverse Stations from Figures allows you too "automate the process of defining a traverse’s station values before performing a traverse analysis in Civil 3D", a tasks that can be fairly cumbersome if your traverse stations aren't sequential.

It's a pretty cool utility that extends the functionality of the traverse analysis tools in Civil 3D. Here are some screen shots.

View image

Start by Selecting the Network that includes the traverse you are working with.

View image

Then you can select an existing traverse definition, or create a new one.

View image

Then you select the figure that represents the traverse loop.

View image

As you can see, it fills in all the stations from that loop automatically for you. Now all you need to do is enter the initial backsight and the final foresight, and the traverse properties will be filled in for you.

Final traverse properties.

Pretty cool huh?!

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Define Traverse Stations from a Figure

DEM Surface vs. TIN Surface

I've been working with Dan and Dave on the demo set we are going to use during the Civil 3D portion of the ISD breakout session at AU this year, and have a couple of DEM files that we are going to use. While I was building one of the drawings that will have the DEMs in them, I was reminded of a tip that I've been meaning to share for quite some time on the differences between a DEM surface and a TIN Surface with a DEM added to it.

You see, we have two ways of adding DEM information as a surface in Civil 3D; from a DEM file directly, or by adding a DEM file to a TIN Surface definition.

Now I don't know too much about the technical specification of each surface type, but as far as i can tell at a high level, when you create a surface by simply importing a DEM file, it uses a Grid Surface as its definition, then pulls the DEM "points" to define the surface values. With a TIN surface, you add the DEM as a data type, and it uses the "points" contained in the DEM file to build a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN).

Now which one do I use and when? Well that depends on what I need to do with the surface. In the case of the dataset I mentioned above, I need to create the surface from the data, and I need to translate that surface to a state plane coordinate system. To do this properly, I need to add the DEM file to a TIN Surface definition, instead of importing the DEM directly.

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I've imported the DEM in both ways here, and as you can see, they are nowhere near each other when I zoom extents. This is because that a DEM import doesn't do any transformation when it builds the grid based surface. But when I add the DEM to a TIN surface as a data type, I can set the coordinate zones, and the transformation is done for me.

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This is the window you get when you add a DEM to a TIN surface. Note the ability to see statistics on the DEM file, and the ability to set a coordinate zone for transformation purposes.

So basically, if you aren't working with a local coordinate system, or just don't care about transformation, then importing the DEM file directly to a grid surface will work just fine. But if you are working in a Coordinate system, or are taking advantage of other Geospatial data to analyze you site conditions, then adding the DEM as a data type in a TIN Surface is the way to go. Also, you can't export a grid based surface to a LandXML file, so if you plan on sharing this surface via LandXML at some point, TIN surface is the way to go as well.

With the DEM data added through the TIN Surface, I can now continue with my project in a State Plane coordinate system, and do other cool things like underlay a MrSID image using Raster Design.

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So anyway, that's today's wicked cool tip; know that there two different ways to work with DEM files In Civil 3D, and what they are good for.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

DEM Surface vs. TIN Surface

A fix you might care about

So you have probably heard by now that SP3 for Civil 3D 2007 is out, and has a bunch of fixes and a bunch of performance improvements. Here is a fix that you may not be aware of, or at least didn't care about before.

Pre SP3 we had a weird issue with render materials on Civil 3D surfaces and corridors. Sometimes all the textures would show and sometimes they wouldn't.

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Here is an image form a small project I worked on a couple months back. You can see that the grass on the left side of the road and all of the material in the road itself is just a flat color; no texture. But on the right side of the road, the grass has the texture it should.

Here is the same project rendered after SP3 was installed.

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Now you can see it renders all the textures, making for a much better picture. All I did was simply install SP3, and opened the drawing that I had done the original rendering in, and BAM, all was right in the world again.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

A fix you might care about

To share or Not to share....

That is the question. Whether tis easier to leave your vault working folders local or to place them on a network share....Ok Ok Ok, 'nuff of the Shakespearian stuff.

So the debate continues to wage on about how to setup vault with regard to where to store working folders. I've been fairly torn over this battle myself for quite sometime. Just when I felt I had a decision made, and I picked a side, someone would come along and make a great counterpoint to the argument, and I'd be right back on the fence.

Well no more; I'm a pickin' sides, and that's that!

Network locations for working folders is the one I'm stickin' with; for now anyway.

Here are the advantages I see on this side of the fence.

- Locating the Working folder on the server allows for nightly backups of one set of data files.

- IT best practices discourages data being stored locally.

- Drawings that have data references or external references will be notified/updated every time they are saved; they don’t need to be checked back into the Vault (I think this one only applies to a shared working folder).

- Sheet set manager can leverage the network shared Working folder for construction documentation.

- Working remotely can be achieved via VPN.

- This is the way people are already used to setting up there project folders.

Of course, the next level of the debate, even after choosing this side, is whether or not to make the network share have a folder for each individual user, or use a shared working folder. That still remains to be decided.

Now this isn't to say that I'm dead set against local folders, I just haven't heard or experienced enough argument for them as I have for networked working folders. So for now, that's what I'm sticking too, take it or leave it. I'm open to hear arguments either way, so feel free to comment.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

P.S. For those of you who care, I just got my final grade for my first class back at school; A-. Not too bad for a stress case like me huh?

To share or Not to share....

More AU numbers

I know this is probably just a bummer for those who can't attend, but I can't help but be a little proud of the results so far with the Civil 3D Power Track at AU.

The numbers as of last week are pretty awesome. Out of the 13 classes that are part of the PT, only one has less then 300 attendees signed up. 3 classes are full (440), and 6 have 400 or more!

Pretty cool if you ask me; just goes to show that Civil 3D is turning a a major corner, and a lot of people are really interested!

See you all in Vegas - well, those that can convince the boss that a week of debauchery and geek-talk is really beneficial to the company anyway :-)

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

More AU numbers

Data Sharing vs. Data Management

With the release of Service Pack 3 for Civil 3D 2007, we now have an alternative way to share objects between drawings; Data Shortcuts. This is functionality that a lot of customers may have been waiting for after either hearing about or experiencing difficulties implementing vault.

I want to make it clear that this is an alternative to Vault, but it IS NOT a replacement for it.

There are some key differences, and I like to explain it as the difference between Data Sharing and Data Management. Using data shortcuts is simply data sharing. Using Vault and a Civil 3D project is data management.

For the context of this post data I'll define sharing as the ability to share Civil 3D objects (surfaces, alignments, profiles, and pipe networks) between drawings. On the other hand, data management is inclusive of data sharing, but adds some key functionality like automatically creating the data references, automatically updating data references, tracking the file dependencies across drawings, versioning of drawings, and access control.

So now you ask - "OK Govna, you guys are making a big frickin deal about SP3 and Data Shortcuts....now what the heck are you trying to say here?"

What I'm trying to say is that you need to be aware of the differences so you can make an informed decision. Prior to SP3, you didn't have much choice when it came to sharing data across drawings in Civil 3D, Vault was really the only viable solution. Now you do have a choice; Data Shortcuts or Vault. The key thing to understand is that Data Shortcuts are for sharing the data, but not really well suited for managing it. If you are ok with having to do the management of data manually, then they are the right tool for you. But, if - or better yet - when you get to a point where that manual process is too much to deal with, Vault will be there ready and waiting to accept you with open arms.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Data Sharing vs. Data Management

Is 1 Gig enough?

No, I'm not talking about the world tour for AC/DC, I'm talking about RAM. I often see or get questions about the minimum system requirements for Civil 3D, and what is "really" recommended. Back in the day when I was in support, we used to always recommend 2x the minimum. These days that's a little harder because Autodesk now just makes a "recommendation" that isn't necessarily the minimum, it's more of an average.

In those recommendations, it sates that 2 GB of ram is needed...really, TWO GIGABYTES of RAM, wow that seems a little much don't it?

Well, actually it isn't, and I've seen the ill effects of not having at least 2 GB of Ram first hand. See my laptop decided to have some fits on Monday. I went to plug in my Black Berry to charge it via the USB cable, and Bink - she shut down on me. No blue screen of death, no forced restart, nuthin, just lights out!

After a coupe tried to get her back to life, I gave up and called our IT department with urgency in my voice, and fear of the unknown trouble ahead of me. Afterall, my life exists in this machine - all my current work files, including the scripted demonstrations I'm working on; all my email (well, the 7.5 GB that I have local in my PST file anyway); a bunch of work from my recent class; the list goes on and on.

Anyway, after some great tips from the IT Gods, I was back up and running as I finally got it to boot and successfully start up - whew, no data lost thankfully. Ok, the pulse rate finally got back normal, and I settled back into the Monday routine of checking email and catching up on NG posts and Blogs, when I noticed that my USB ports were now dead. Another call to IT, and they came with a new laptop "chassis" for me to temporarily use while they ship mine off for a new system board. Pretty cool if you ask me, they just swap out the hard drive, and since they share the exact same hardware, it boots without problem.

Ahh, but there is a small hiccup here; I forgot to have them grab the extra 1 GB bar of ram that my machine had, and so I'm currently running on a machine with only 1 GB. (yeah, yeah, yeah, woe is me, right:-))

So back to my point here and yes there is one, so bear with me. It's really a good idea to follow the recommended system requirements, because now that I only have 1 GB of RAM, life in Civil 3D is not as good as it was. It takes longer to launch, it takes longer to login to vault, and it just plain takes longer to use - all from an apparent lack of RAM.

So the moral of the story kiddies is that you make sure your machine at least has what the 'Desk recommends for system requirements; it'll save you a lot of headaches, and more importantly, time.

Till next time,
Cheers
AG

Is 1 Gig enough?

Vault feature that's just Wicked Cool!

Ok, so I'm finally getting around to writing my AU Paper, which is due next Friday, and I'm setting up a project to use to show how you can create sheets from the Vault. I setup my folders like this:

As you can see, I decided to separate my source drawings from the other drawings and created a folder called "Source". My initial thought was to have all the objects spit into their own drawings that would reside here. But as I started working through the project, I realized that the only drawing I was keeping there was the Existing Ground. I was creating my alignments & profiles, corridors, and other design objects in the "engineering plans" folder.

So I decided that I would move the Existing Ground drawing from the Source folder into the Base Plans folder to consolidate. The problem is that this drawing is referenced by a lot of my other drawings.

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So how can I move this drawing without having to going in and manually re-path all my data references? This is where it gets cool. I opened the Vault Explorer, and simply dragged and dropped the Existing Ground drawing from the Source folder to the Base Plans folder. When I do that, I get some dialogs with progress bars that pop up.

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Vault took care of all the work; it re-pathed all the Xrefs, as well as all the data references! Now I just do a "Get Latest Version" so my working folder drawings are up to date, and then keep working as normal.

Notice how the Source folder is now empty, and the Existing Surface drawing is in the Base Plans folder. Now when I open or check out any of the engineering plans that was referencing the EG surface, everything works just fine, as Vault took care of the new source file location.

Everyone is out there debating whether ort not Vault is usable, or if its worth the effort of setting up. I say that without a doubt, this is one of the reasons you have to consider it. I mean, come on; have you ever moved a drawing, and lost all the paths to the Xrefs? You had to manually go in and browse to the new location to get everything hooked up. Now you just make the move in Vault, and everything is taken care of for you.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom.

Now that is pretty cool if you ask me! I dare say Wicked Cool

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Vault feature that's just Wicked Cool!

Peter Funk strikes again

For those of you that don't know who he is, Peter, among other things, is the newest Product Manager for Civil 3D. He has a programming background, and before the recent switch to his current title, was the API Product Manager for Civil 3D. Anyway, he's too smart for his own good sometimes, but it's great for us, because we can reap the rewards.

This tip is solely Peter's doing, and I can neither confirm nor deny any of the credit!

Displaying cut/fill labels with appropriate colors.

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Here is the end result of this tip. Note that the cut volume labels are red, and the fills are green, and they are each inserted on a grid.

Here is how to do it:
1. Create a volume surface that represents the two surfaces you are comparing

2. Create an expression for Surface Spot Elevation labels
- Name it "Negative Value"
- Use this expression; -1 * {Surface Elevation}

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This expression will take a value, and multiply it by negative one, changing a positive integer into a negative one, or for this case, taking a negative and turning it into a positive. The ole double negative trick!

3. Create a new Surface label style for Spot Elevation Called "Cut Fill"

- Rename the label Component to "fill"
- Change its color to Green
- Modify the Surface Elevation label component
- Edit the text component and change the Sign Modifier to "Hide Negative Value"

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4. Make a new component for the Cut value
- Copy the Fill text component
- Rename to Cut
- Change the color to Red
- Edit the Text Component, and replace with the Negative Value expression
- Change the Sign Modifier to "Hide Negative Value"

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Now add Surface labels to the Volume surface on a grid, using the Cut Fill style. All the spot elevation in a cut area (the negative values from the volume surface) will be labeled with the Red label, and all the spot elevations with a fill area (where the volume surface is positive) will label with the green text. Because we chose to hide the negative values, and we used an expression to turn a negative into a positive (the cut), it automatically display the appropriate spot elevation.

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Pretty cool huh? Thank You Peter!

I've added a drawing with the expression and label style to the community site here.

I removed the file here so that you can get it from the content sharing section of the community. If you aren't a member yet, please go here to sign up.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Peter Funk strikes again

AU plugs, and some other stuff to keep in good graces...

I'm back again, this time late at night, and browsing all the other Civil 3D blogs out there. James had a little dig at me for not promoting his AU class in my Civil 3D Power Track post a couple days back, so to be fair, I'll put the plug in now, and hopefully I can get back on his good side.

SO there are 53 total Civil classes in the Civil part of the Civil & Geospatial college this year, of which 4 are being taught by Mr. Wedding himself! 3 out of these 4 are already full, but to be fair, they are labs, which tend to fill up quickly. Using some quick math, that's roughly 8% of the total classes; not too shabby for a VP huh?

Other leaders include Angel Espinoza with 3 (~6%), one of which is already full.

Eric Chappell with 3 (~6%) as well, 2 of which are labs and are full already.

Lucy Kuhns with 5 (~9%), 4 of which are labs and are full.

Mike Choquette who has 3 Civil classes (~6%), 2 that are labs and are full already, as well as 1 Design Visualization class.

I think that's it for most of the presenters who have more then one class, but if I missed anyone, I apologize; I don't
have a good way to sort my list to figure out all the duplicates.

Now we can also look at attendence leaders:

Leading the pack there is Scott Wagner, with CV13-2, with a full house at 440!

Next we have our Evangelist Pete Kelsey with his class CV32-2 with 439!

Angel's CV25-3 and 425!

Scott Kent with CV34-1 and 396!

David Garrigues with CV33-4 and 381!

The list keeps going, and there are another 5 classes in the 300's! Just for posterity, I have to say that my class is doing OK, hovering in the middle of the pack at 267 :-|

Another statistic to throw out there, as of last week, of the 53 classes, the current enrollment was 9,149 with a total availability of 12,710 seats spanning those 53 classes. That's a ~72% attendance rate! This also totals 13,723.5 learning hours on Civil 3D! How's that for some training!

Bottom line is that we have a great mix of new presenters, veterans, and some in between with a wide range of expertise, experience, and background. They all have the presentation chops as well (or we wouldn't have selected them), and I'm confident they will all rock for us this year and make it a great experience for the 1200+ Civil & Geospatial attendees that have signed up so far!

Till next time,
Cheers
AG

AU plugs, and some other stuff to keep in good graces...

Site Topology - Part One Anyway

Site Topology, what is it, and why should you care? I'm going to try to make this brief, and I'll address the details in more posts to come, but there is a lot of questions out there about site topology, and what its effect on Civil 3D is. I hope to clear some of it up, and educate those who care to know.

First off, what is a topology? Well, in mathematical terms, Topology (Greek topos, place and logos, study) is a branch of mathematics concerned with spatial properties preserved under bicontinuous deformation (stretching without tearing or gluing) as found in this Wiki.

For me, and as it applies to us Civil folks, I see it as a "network", or a mesh, of interconnected objects that are aware of themselves, and their neighbors. The easiest way to explain a topology is to see and example;

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Here we see a set of parcels. In a topology, these parcels are defined so that:
1.) They are aware of themselves - a parcel knows its perimeter, its area, and all the segments that are used to define itself

2.) They are aware of each other, if they are next to each other. This means that if parcel 25 is next to parcel 26, and they share a lot line, then the lot line only needs to be drawn once, and they both share its definition.

3.) There is a notion of the parcels as a whole or a group, so that if a lot line is removed, then what used to be two parcels is now turned into just one.

So in Civil 3D, we use a topology behind the scenes to get a lot of things to work and interact with each other. Parcels use this topology, but so do alignments and grading groups (feature lines included). This is how parcels do what they do; when you create a new lot line using the layout tools or converting a polyline, that line is added to the topology, and will react according to the rules that topology dictates.

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More on the rules later. This topology also explains how we can add labels to all of the parcels at the same time. The topology is aware of what lines are "shared" and will only label a lot line once, even if two parcels use that lot line.

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The next level of this topology is that it will allow for interaction between object types; an alignment will divide a parcel if it crosses through that parcel. Again the topology is what makes this happen, as the parcels are "aware" of the alignment, and one of the "rules" is that when an alignment crosses a closed parcel, it should subdivide it.

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A third level is how grading groups and feature lines fit in. Again the topology is aware of these objects, and if they cross other things in the topology, like parcel lines or alignments, there is interaction between them.

"OK Govna, riddle me this one; what if I DON"T want this stuff to interact?"

Ahh, there is hope for us after all; Sites. A site is a container that collects the "stuff" you do want to interact together. So if you don't want something to interact, or better put, you don't want them in the same topology, then you simply create the "stuff" in a different site.

So that's probably a good start, I'll be back with more soon, and we'll dig into some of these parcel rules....

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Site Topology - Part One Anyway

Survey Database - It's Wicked Cool

I've seen several posts on the Newsgroup now about the "lack of editing" tools in Civil 3D for survey information. I hope to dispell some of those notions, and show you some of the cool things the new survey features in Civil 3D have to offer.

Editing an observation
Probably the first comment I hear from users (and reseller alike) is that they can't edit the points in the drawings because the points came from the the survey database. First off, its not true, you can edit these points, its just not done in the drawing like regular COGO points. This is because the points created from the survey database are locked in the drawing. This is as designed; it prevents a person from inadvertendly "editing" an observed point, which from a sureyors perspective is a coordinate from the field which shouldn't be changed unless the observation that created it is changed.

Ok, so now what if I do want to edit it? This is what's wicked cool; you use the observation editors. We start by selecting a Setup to edit from the Setups collection in Survey toolspace.

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If you select a setup, and right click, you have a couple editing options.

Edit the setup

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This allows you to make changes to the setup that was used to collect observations. Often you need to adjust a target hieht, or maybe adjust the northing and easting to match real world coordinates. Either way, you can use this editor to make the changes, which are then saved to the databse and update the data that is based on the setup.

Edit the Observations

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This is where you make edits to the "points" that are created from the observations in the field. Notice we have many option and thus power here; we can edit the angle, the angle type, the distance, the distance type and so on. And since we are editing the database, this information propegates to all drawings that contain the survey points, not just the current one we are doing the edit in.

"Ok Govna, but what if I don't know the setup a point was collected with?"

Don't you worry my young Jedi, we have a cool tool for that too.

Edit Setups that Observe

This is accessed from the point itself. If you select the Survey Points collection in the Survey Toolspace, then the list view is populated with all the points in the database.

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Simply select a point and right click and choose Edit Setups that Observe. This will jump you to the setup that created or "observed" this point in the field. This makes it very easy to troubleshoot a problem, or make the simple edit you may need on a single point.

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"Ok, so now we know how to edit indivdual points as needed, but what if I need to rotate or move the entire survey?"

We can try to get it rotated by editing the original raw file or FBK file, reimporting, and overwriting the database. But as the Jedi Master Yoda always says "there is no try, only do". So let's do it with the proper editing tools :-)

Edit a Datum
To move an entire survey, say like changing form an assumed datum to a known coordinate system, you can simply edit the Control Points that your survey is "tied into". Again we are going to select the appripriate collection in the survey toolspace, this time, Control Points.

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We right click and select Edit and are presented with this editor:

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We can use the Point Inverse inquiry tool to select the appropriate coodinates for the new location or simply list them from the command line, and copy and paste them into the control point editor Once applied the network, figures, and points are moved, since all the setups and thus observations, where based on that control.

Edit a Direction
Last but certainly not least for today, is the concept of rotating a set of points. A common survey practice is to collect or begin a survey by shooting a direction, and then base the rest of the observations from that observed direction and setup. In this case, often an assumed direction is used, like a bearing of North - zero degrees East. When the data is imported in the office, it maybe determined that the real bearing should have been North two degree East instead. Thus all the points need to be "rotated" two degrees.

You may now be in the habit of selecting a collection in the Survey toolspace and right clicking; its a good habit to be in as we'll do it one last time for the Direction.

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As we edit this collection we get an editor that will allow us to modify the vaule and type of direction used. Again, once updated with the new direction vaule, it will update all the setups, observations and figures that are based on this direction.

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So there we have it, some qucik tips that should get you pointed in the right direction (pun intended :-)) for getting more vaule out of the survey tools included in Civil 3D. I hope this clears up some misconceptions, or at least gets you to take a second look at the tools that are there. For me its all wicked cool stuff, I hope you think so too.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Survey Database - It's Wicked Cool

Back in Black and a Cool Survey

Well I'm back from a much disserved vacation with just my wife and I in Orlando Florida. We had a spectacular 6 days at Universal Studios, and enjoyed every ride and attraction they had to offer. My favorite was the Hulk at Islands of Adventure, which we rode five times. My wife's favorite was The Mummy, which we rode six times!

Anyway, it was very relaxing, and a great break in what seems to be a never ending "busy time" here for me at 'The Desk'. Since I'm a huge AC/DC fan, I've decided to wear black for my return, and have been listening to the album Back in Black all morning to try and keep the adrenaline going so I can make it though the first day without a nap and a rum drink.

Another cool thing I'd like to tell you about is a survey our technical documentation folks have released. They posted an announcement in the News Groups about it, but I thought its worth an extra plug here, as this is your chance to give us some valuable feedback on the tutorials and help system that ships with Civil 3D.

Subject: Tell Us What You Think about Civil 3D Documentation
The Civil 3D Tech Pubs group has just posted a new online survey to gather users' comments on the Help, Tutorials and other documentation, with special focus on things we changed in response to the last survey, about a year ago. We would really like to hear from you.
The new survey will take about 15 minutes of your time.
Here is the link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=94722579496

So please take a few moments to take the survey, and keep on rockin'.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG
Hope all is well in your world!

Back in Black and a Cool Survey

Naming Conventions or Confusions?

Ok, so there have been numerous posts on the Civil 3D Discussion Groups about the naming conventions used for the Civil product line from Autodesk, and as of this posting, I'm not sure the confusion that surrounds these names have been cleared up. So I'd like to get it straight for those of you that may be confused (don't worry, you're not alone), and try to put this thing to bed for those of you that can't seem to let it go (cough, cough, you know who you are).

So the short answer here is to simply see the different names of the products and the uses for those products from a Civil 3D perspective.

Autodesk Civil 3D - pretty simple, this is Civil 3D in all its glory :-).

Autodesk Civil 3D - Land Desktop Companion - this is a "special" version of LDT that is included in the box with Civil 3D, and will use the Civil 3D serial number and license for authorization.

Autodesk Civil 3D - Civil Design Companion - this is a "special" version of Civil Design that will install and run on the Land Desktop Companion that ships with Civil 3D.

Autodesk Land Desktop - regular old LDT that uses an LDT serial number and license for authorization.

Autodesk Civil Design - gone! It is no more, well, it is, but now its called Autodesk Civil 3D - Civil Design Companion.

So that's the short answer, for a more in-depth explanation see below if you need some good bed-time reading :-).

OK, here is the deal; with the release of Civil 3D 2005, we had a weird predicament. We wanted to package Land Desktop with Civil 3D to make the transition for customers easier, allowing them to make the switch at their own pace, without having to manage LDT licenses and Civil 3D licenses separately. Sounds reasonable right?

So in order to get the LDT that ships with Civil 3D to license properly, it had to be a separate build, which translates to English as a different version of LDT that looked for the Civil 3D license (or activation). The technology wasn't available at the time to do this automatically with special license or activation code, so it meant that for all intents and purposes, it had to be a different product (to Autodesk anyway). In order to differentiate the two different "versions" of LDT, we needed to name the one that ships in the box with Civil 3D something different.

After a lot of ideas and deliberation, Companion was the name that was selected, for better or worse. I think the real confusion though is that we had to add Civil 3D to the name because it ships in the box - thus giving us "Autodesk Civil 3D - Land Desktop Companion."

Now that we've established that, let's throw Civil Design into the mix. At the time, we also introduced a bundle of software called Civil 3D Professional; this added Autodesk Civil Design to Civil 3D and Land Desktop, and allowed a customer who used both LDT and CD to again make the transition to Civil 3D at their own pace, without having to carry a bunch of liceneses or activations. Again we had a "version" problem, in that the Civil Design needed to run on the Land Desktop "Companion" that shipped with Civil 3D. So another name change and we have "Autodesk Civil 3D - Civil Design Companion". The big problem here is that Civil Design can't be installed on Civil 3D, even though Civil 3D is in its name. It still has to be installed on Land Desktop, in this case the Companion. This is where a lot of questions come up, and people who are just being introduced to the products get confused. So here it is in black and white, and I hope it clears it up - Autodesk Civil 3D - Civil Design Companion doesn't get installed on Civil 3D, it gets installed on Land Desktop Companion.

Anyway, that's the scoop on naming conventions, and hopefully they aren't confusions anymore.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Naming Conventions or Confusions?

Getting the most from your Community experience - Part 2

Part 2 of my recommendations for getting the most out of the Civil Community experience.

Tag it baby!
So now you should have your network started, and should have a completed profile. Next you can begin to interact with the community site itself by using Tags. Tags are essentially keywords that you as a member can add to content on the site. Almost all the content in all of the community can be tagged, and once something has a tag, it becomes easier to search on that content in the future.

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Here we can see a tip that hasn't been tagged yet. I simply add a keyword for the tip in the tag field in the lower right of the page, and now the content has been tagged. Why is this cool you may ask? Well if we select the tags link in the upper right of the site, we'll see why.

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Here we have the tag cloud, which shows the tags being used on the site, and the larger the font on the tag, and the bolder the font, the more that tag has been used. We can select a tag, and it filters through all the content on the site, and returns all the items that have share that tag. It's a pretty cool way to classify and search on content in the site, but only works if you as a member use it. So go out there and start tagging items you find helpful if they haven't been already.

Now you're cooking with oil man! So get in there and start being an active member of our community, it will only get better if we make it better!

Till Next Time,
Cheers,
AG

Getting the most from your Community experience - Part 2

Have you got the Power?

This year we are very excited to bring to Autodesk University the Civil 3D 2007 PowerTrack of classes. A PowerTrack enables attendees to enroll in a series of classes that focuses on a particular product or topic. PowerTrack classes are sequenced throughout the week to show full spectrum of how the product can be used. Space is limited and preference will be given to those that sign up for the entire track.

For the Civil 3D PowerTrack, we have a great group of speakers from all aspects of the Civil Engineering industry that will share their personal insights and experiences with Civil 3D and how it is being used in production today. These classes will take attendees through a project in real time, and hit on many of the major design components of a typical civil project as well as how Civil 3D offers tools and techniques to complete these tasks quickly and efficiently.

Civil 3D PowerTrack classes:

To register for AU visit the AU Website, and then register for the Civil 3D PowerTrack classes by going to the eScheduler and enrolling in the classes highlighted in blue.

I’d like to take moment to highlight a couple of the speakers and give you a sense of what to expect from these classes.

Angel Espinoza: A second year AU speaker, Angel returns to present one of the more popular Civil 3D classes from last year; Cul-de-sacs are not a dead end. Angel's class will show you how to use the corridor model in Civil 3D for designing cul-de-sacs and knuckle designs, as well as step-by-step instructions for enhancing your 3D models. Angel brings many years of Civil Engineering experience to the class, as well as the being a “Civil 3D Guru”. He is the Civil Engineering Applications Director for KETIV Technologies in Fullerton CA. Angel is also an Autodesk Civil Implementation Certified Expert for 2006 and 2007 versions of Civil 3D. As many of you may know, Angel is also an active Blogger for Civil 3D, and can be found sharing great tips and insight on the world of Civil 3D at Angel's Civil 3D Thoughts.

Scott McEachron: An AU veteran, Scott is returning as a speaker for his fourth year and will be featured in th PowerTrack presenting Introduction to the Corridor and its Elements. It is here that he’ll give an overview of all the concepts and components of the Corridor Model in Civil 3D, as well as some insight into the types of conditions the corridor can be used for. Scott hails out of Dallas TX, and is the Senior Civil/Survey Solutions Specialist for DC CADD. He has over 14 years experience in this industry, and has been a long time user and advocate for the Autodesk Civil product line. Besides being an all around cool guy (despite being from Texas (I'm kidding of course)) Scott is also a fellow blogger, and you can find his unique perspective and thoughts at Paving the Way.

Anthony Governanti (hey it's my blog, I can put a shameless plug in here if i want too!): You know my Bio already, but if you haven't read it, you can here. As far as my class, Keep the model but get that Sheet out of here!, I will go into creating a plan set of drawings for the projects that the PowerTrack is using, but will pay particular attention to using the project capabilities with Vault to show how you can reference all your data from the project and still create sheet sets with ease. I will also be involved in many mainstage presentations, including the Civil 3D portion of the ISD Breakout session on Wednesday, November 29th from 8-9:30 A.M.

All this information and more can be found on the AU Website, so if you’re thinking about attending AU, the Civil 3D PowerTrack offers another compelling reason to make the trip to sunny Las Vegas! I hope to see you there, and if I do, please make an effort to introduce yourself, and let me know that you are following my blog, right now I think my Mom is the only one reading! (thanks Mom for your support)

Til next time,
Cheers,
AG

Have you got the Power?

Getting the most from your Community experience - Part 1

I'd like to take a moment to share some tips and tricks for maximizing your civil community experience. First off, if you haven't become a member of the Civil Community yet, go here now to get started. Once registered, there are several things you can do to get a more rich experience as a member.

Build you profile
The first thing you need to do once you're in is complete your extended profile. Your profile is an integral part of being a member of the community for several reasons:

1. It communicates to other members more about you, your job, and where you are in the world

2. The site uses the information in your profile to help build your network of other users that share common interests and background

3. The site also uses this information to keep you informed of events and resources that are available to you in your area or product interests.

At the time of this posting, there are just over 1000 registered members in the civil community, but unfortunately, less then a third of those members have completed their profiles. So take a couple of minutes to edit your extended profile and fill in the data, it will be worth it.

Build your network
Now that your profile is complete, you can begin to build your network of peers. The site has a great system for being able to quickly search on other members, and quickly add members to your network.

A couple of things to do:

1. From the home page of the community site, once you've logged in, select the My Network tab on the top menu

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This will show you the members that are in your network, as well as members that have you in their network. Since this may be your first time, you won't have anyone in the network, don't fret though, its easy to add them.

2. Search for other members by using the Search Network feature. This works like a typical search engine, and allows you to quickly find other members based on simple criteria. Here I've searched for other members that live in New Hampshire (NH), my home state in the US.

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3. Add peers to your network by selecting a member from the list and using the Add member to network link. Notice that I can also send this member an endorsement. Endorsements are used to give a "shout out" if you will for other members, and if they approve the endorsement, it will be shown in their profile to other members.

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In this case I may want to say that "Paula is a real cool person who knows her stuff when it comes to technical writing." This helps to build community, and Paula can in turn choose to endorse me, and now we've built a connection through the site that other members can see and get involved in. Also note that you can recommend a member to someone else making it easy to build a network of peers that share interests or common backgrounds.

Create or join a group
You can also create a group, and invite members of the community to join that group. These groups can then be used to have public or private discussions, where you can meet and discuss topics within the community. I created a group for Civil 3D Gurus, but you can see some of the others that are in use at the time of publishing this post.

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Ok that should be a good start to getting the most our of your experience in the community. Do these things, and I guaruntee you'll enjoy the experience more, and will want to keep coming back for more. Next time I'll explore tags and how they are important to you as a member.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Getting the most from your Community experience - Part 1

Continuing Education

So I've taken the plunge back into the world of education and have enrolled in the University of Phoenix to complete my undergraduate degree. I'm studying to get my Bachelor's degree in Business Management, and my first class begins tomorrow. I'm very excited, but also trying to be honest with myself about this commitment, as I'll need to fit at least 10-15 hours a week of study and class time into an already over-booked schedule. But on the upside, even though my background up to this point in my life has been highly technical, I feel that having some business experience will help me understand the other side of this industry a little better.

Ok, so I don't think I mentioned this in my Bio, but somehow I've managed to get to where I am today (granted, its probably not as far as I'd like to think it is) without a bachelor's degree. I currently have two associates degrees in applied science from Vermont Technical College. The original plan was to get just one, in Architecture, but I quickly realized at the time the my passion for CAD and my under-developed art skills really didn't point to a successful future designing buildings (I found myself having heated debates with my drafting professors about the merits of manual drafting, and they often ended with me saying something like "just give me 15 minutes with AutoCAD, and I'll give ya perfect lettering", and me throwing my Leroy template across the table and storming out for some fresh air!). But, since the two programs at VTC were very similar (they shared a lot of core classes) I decided after my freshmen year to make the switch over to Civil Engineering Technologies.

So now you're probably thinking - what the heck does this have to do with CIvil 3D? Well, not much to be honest, but then again, not everything I post up here will be. In this case I will tie this bit of information into an Autodesk related story by explaining exactly why I wound up getting both degrees.

See at the time (1996) AutoCAD had released R13, the first release on Windows (no comments on that one please, we all lived through those dark times, and its something better left alone). OK the exact date might not be correct, but this is when my school made the switch anyway. The powers that be in admissions at the time had it in their head that any of the CAD classes I had during my freshmen year would not transfer from the Architectural degree to the Civil degree because of the new version. This meant that I would have to take the Freshmen CAD classes again, only in the Civil track, and that meant a third year of classes in order to get everything in synch. So since I already had one year under my belt for the Arch degree, why not just finish it off AND go ahead with the Civil classes to get that degree as well.

SO there you have it, Autodesk was in my destiny even back then, when I had no idea what my future would hold, and how things would circle back to Autodesk playing a role in my life again.

Well, enough of my rambling for now, but I hope you find it interesting; its one of those fate things, you never realize what an effect a decision like that can have on your life; for me it was a pretty monumental thing, because if it weren't for me switching to that Civil Degree, wouldn't have started working for civil engineering firms, where I eventually met my wife, I wouldn't have gotten a job at Autodesk in Civil support, and I wouldn't be here today blogging about my Civil 3D thoughts and opinions.

Pretty cool huh?

Till Next Time,
Cheers,
AG

Continuing Education

Light up your world - adding 3D symbols to a design

This is a tip that I briefly explained on the Discussion Groups the other day, and I thought it was worth digging a little deeper into for clarification. Many users out there have begun to really adopt the "3d way" of thinking. They've started to use 3D views of their models to better understand, communicate, and check to see if there are problems with a design. I went over some of the techniques used to visualize a design in this weekly webcast, so I'll refer you to that for more detail on visualization in Civil 3D.

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The question that was posed in the discussion group was the need to add a 3D symbol of a light pole to a corridor design, and have these symbols show up at the proper elevation. I'll go through the steps I use to add 3D symbols to a road model below, but please note that this method can be applied to any type of design.

Establish your points.
First step is to create or group the points you want the 3D symbol to display on together. In this case, we don't have any points in the drawing to use, so we'll create them from an Alignment. The light poles for my design will be placed along the right hand lane of the road, using a 4 foot offset from the top of curb. I begin by creating an alignment from the top of curb feature line in my corridor.

- From the Corridor menu, select Utilities > Alignment from Corridor
- Select the back of curb feature line
- Name the alignment and assign styles as desired
- Check on the option for Creating a profile

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When creating the profile, sample from the finished ground surface from your design, in this case the corridor surface. This is how the points will pick up the correct Z elevations when we create them in the next step.

There are many ways to create these points, but in this case, we'll use the alignment as a reference, and use the measure command to create them at a certain interval along that alignment.

- From the Points menu, select Create Points
- Select the Measure Alignment command (third set of buttons, third down on the drop down menu)

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- When prompted, select the alignment, then choose the profile

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- Select the starting and ending station, then enter an offset of 4
- Enter an interval, I used 50 for this example
- Enter a description like LP for Light Pole (make sure to assign something here, as we'll use this description in the next step)
- Select enter to run through all the points until all are created.

Get a 3D Symbol
Many of you may already have the 3D symbol you want to use, but in my case, I need to find one before I can move on. Luckily, Civil 3D ships with a small library of 3D blocks (called MVBlocks) that I can quickly browse to find what I need. i do this using Design Center (that's right, I'm actually going to use an AutoCAD command - see you can teach a new dog old tricks).

- From the standard toolbar, open the Design Center
- Browse to [\install directory]\Autodesk Civil 3D 2007\Data\Symbols\MVBlocks\
- Select the Street Light folder
- Drag and drop the Light Pole 01.dwg from design center into the drawing
- Accept the defaults for insertion when prompted

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Now that we have the 3D block definition in the drawing, we can use this as a marker for our points.

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Assigning the symbol to your points
We'll use this new symbol as the marker for a new point style. There are many ways to create the style, but I'm going to do it from the Point Group Properties dialog, as it will save a couple steps. First we need to create a new point group that will collect the light pole points together.

- From the Prospector window, right click on Point Groups and select new
- Name the group appropriately, and then go to the include tab
- Use the Raw Description option, and enter the same description used above when creating the points, in my case LP
- Go to the Information tab, and set the label style to none
- Create a new Point Style from here, and name it Light Pole, or as appropriate
- Go to the Marker tab, select the option for Using an AutoCAD block
- Scroll the list of blocks, and select the 3D symbol, in my case I_MISC_LIGHTPOLE_M

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- Set the size options to use a fixed scale, and the orientation to Object
- Go to the Display tab, and make sure the marker is turned on in BOTH the 2D and 3D view directions
- Select Ok to save changes

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Now we have points that will use the new 3D symbol, and a point group to use to manage the points. You may notice the markers aren't aligned at every location as needed, so you can use the point group to edit the points and assign the proper rotation to each point. This is a little tedious, but once its done, you are all set.

Now when you move into a 3D view, you'll have the 3D symbol showing up, and its at the proper elevation because we created the points from the alignment and profile. We can now continue to create powerful visualizations with Civil 3D.

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Hope that sheds some light (pun intended thank you very much) on how to add 3D symbols to your Civil 3D models. Pretty cool huh? One might even be tempted to say that it is Wicked Cool Stuff.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Light up your world - adding 3D symbols to a design

New Blog - Pete Kelsey's The Dirt

I'm very excited to let you know that Pete Kelsey, the new Autodesk Technical Evangelist, has started his own blog on all things Dirt. So take a moment to check it out, and get a unique perspective on the Infrastructure world.

Welcome to the Blogsphere Pete!

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

New Blog - Pete Kelsey's The Dirt

Code names – The early years of Civil 3D

Ok, you’re back again, which means you are either really interested, and I have a captive audience, or you stumbled onto this page while searching for a license key for that old version of DCA you found in the back of the desk drawer. Either way, this will be the third and final segment of the Civil 3D history lesson, as told by Da Govna.

We pick back up on our timeline in the early 2000’s when LDT was quickly growing into a strong contender in the Civil Engineering CAD market. About this time is when I became a member of the Autodesk family. Up to this point, i was working in the industry, but quickly grew tired of the “move-copy-rotate” routine of the typical CAD tech in my area, and after a couple job changes in a very short time, was lucky enough to land a job in Support at the ’Desk.

Man, this was cool; to walk the hallowed halls of the mother ship – where it all began. Unfortunately they kept us Support techs pretty confined to our desks, with a chain cleverly disguised as a phone head-set. Every now and then I’d fake indigestion or a bad cough and could slip away from the phones long enough to roam the halls of the development areas. It was here that I’d overhear weird conversations that didn’t make a lot of sense, mainly because they were speaking in a tongue few outside of the walls of Autodesk can speak. I later found out that this odd dialect of English was know as “code names” and was practiced by an indigenous species of programmers who seldom saw the light of day, but when they did, would use these code names to confuse and startle the enemy so as to not give away any secrets of what was waiting in the wings and was to soon be unleashed to the public!

The first code name I was aware of was Olympus; this was the first time you had an installable product that could create data, manipulate objects, create a design, and stuff like that. Then shortly after that it was renamed to better align with our Mapping brethren to Vine (a play on words, since the Map being developed was code named Hollywood, and the overall project of for the two applications was called Crossroad – so that when and if the products were built together, you’d have Hollywood and Vine. Pretty clever huh?! (insert sound of crickets chirping here)).

So Vine was slated to be the first release of this thing that had been nurtured along and growing in the shadow of LDT for a couple years. One problem though – its gotta have a name! Well, that part has been covered by James already, so refer to him for that story; bottom line; Civil 3D was the choice that was made, and Civil 3D it would be. That brings us to the fall of 2003, and the first release of Autodesk Civil 3D; it could have been a fairly momentous event, the only downside is that we choose to release it as a preview of the product. What does that mean? Well a preview is a chance to get an application into the he hands of our customers without charging any money for it (hmm, giving away software – what’s so hard about that – well its something that the government and the SEC has made very difficult to do if you are a publicly held company) and allow users to get their hand on it and start to put it to the test.

We had a lot of great feedback in those days, and I personally had a lot of fun showing 2004 to eager audiences (I became an Applications Engineer wit the Civil sales team at Autodesk at about the same time) to give a glimpse of what was coming down the pipe. Anyway, the preview lived for about a year, and if my memory serves me right, I even think we had a Service pack for it. Then in October of 2004, we released the first commercial version of Civil 3D, code named Dozer - I think a much more apt name considering it’s a program that deals with moving dirt, but the real reason for the name was the movie The Matrix. All the AutoCAD based product were given a code name after characters from the movie.

We had Neo (AutoCAD), Trinity (Map), Tank (LDT/CV/Surv) and some others that I can’t remember. Anyway, since I was a huge fan of the movie, I was quite pleased with those code-names.

So Dozer was much more of a momentous event; at least for us here at Autodesk, and for a bunch of subscription customers who received the first shipment just in time for the holiday season. This was also the beginning of some really fun times for me; I used to demo LDT to audiences, and right in the middle, would switch over to Civil 3D and show them some parcels being edited graphically, and let them watch all the annotation and table automatically update! That was cool – but the best reaction I received was when you would change the scale of the drawing, and all the labels would automatically resize – that always got the biggest oohs and ahhs – even from the project managers and owners in the room! Anyway, I digress again, but I can’t help getting a little nostalgic.

Soon, and I mean very soon, we then released Macallan (Civil 3D 2006) and for any Scotch drinkers out there, I think you can see where the motivation behind that code name came from. It was April of 2005, and in just a mere 6 months, the Manchester crew, along with an extended team in China, was able to turn around a full release of the software and still include some great new functionality. This is probably where most of you starting becoming aware of Civil 3D as more then just some experiment by Autodesk, but as a real-world engineering application. This is when I made the move over to my current position in marketing for the Civil team, and again really started to have a blast. I was one of a handful of folks who taught a Civil 3D based class at AU that year, and was enjoying touring the globe training our internal sales staff and partners on how this thing worked.

One more year in the books, and that brought us to where we are today – Fenway (Civil 3D 2007) so named after a great run to the World Series by the Red Sox (who play at Fenway park in Boston MA for those not up on America’s favorite past time). Well that’s it, your brief, or not so brief history lesson on Civil 3D and how we got to where we are today. I hope you enjoyed the tale, feel free to ask questions or post comments if you like, and thanks for tuning in!

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Code names – The early years of Civil 3D

What the heck is Kriging?

So a lot of the tips and tricks out there right now are for things that most users may run into on a day to day basis, and that's all well and good - but what about the stuff that you don't even know is there? Well I thought there isn't a better candidate for my first wicked cool tip then to talk about a little known surface editing tool called Smooth Surface.

So basically, smoothing a surface allows for two things. One, quite obviously, you can smooth out the data in an area of a surface to help create a more pleasing set of contours, and I recommend this for all you LDT users who are used to the Contour Smoothing option for contour styles.

The second and less obvious use is that you can interpolate for and fill gaps or holes in a surface where data doesn't exist using something called the Kriging method. The Kriging method enables you to extrapolate data beyond the extents of a surface based on statistical trends in the existing data across the surface. Now I'm not going to pretend that I understand any of the theory or mathematics behind the Kriging method, I don't have the IQ or the time to get into that much detail. I have however played around with the settings and tried it on several different surface conditions, and I must say that I'm quite impressed with what it can do.

So, with that said, let's give it a try on a surface I have and see what kind of output we can get. The scenario with this example is that the Surface I'm working with has a large U-shaped gap in the middle of it, and the road I wish to design will run close to the edge of this gap. In order to be sure I have enough room for daylighting my corridor design, I want to add some data to the left side of the U, as seen here:

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So the first thing I'm going to do is establish two areas of interest with closed polylines. The first one is the area I wish to fill with extrapolated data, shown here as the red polyline:

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The second polyline is the area I want to sample the data from to use for the extrapolation, shown here in yellow:

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With these two areas defined, I can now run the Smooth Surface command. Its important to note that I don't have to have these polylines done ahead of time, as the routine allows me to define the areas from either polygons, rectangles or just drawing a shape while running the command.

From the Prospector tab of the Toolspace, I expand the Surfaces collection, then expand the surface I am working with. I then right click on the Edits collections under Definition, and select Smooth Surface. We get this dialog:

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There are two methods for smoothing as I mentioned above, and they are specifically called Natural Neighbor Interpolation and Kriging. I'll select Kriging, since its the one that will fill gaps or holes in a surface. The Natural Neighbor option is used for simply smoothing an existing area of the surface. Once selected, the options for the Kriging method are now editable. I'll activate the value column for the Select Points row, and pick the button with the three dots which prompts me to select the sample region. This is the area that it will use to extrapolate data points from, so I select the yellow polyline shown above. As the dialog comes back, I can see that the bottom view is filled with a picture containing a series of dots which represent the extrapolated points from that area of the surface.

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This is the cool part; as we select different semivariogram (Ok I can't even pronounce that word, much less explain what it is, so check out the link to get an idea of what it means, if you're into that sort of thing) methods, we'll see different best-fit lines projected on those points. Simply pick the method that gives the best best-fit line, in this case I'm using the Gaussian method. (See we don't have to be geniuses, we can just look at a pretty picture and choose the one we like!) Ok, now we setup how the extrapolated points are added to the surface to fill in the gap using the rest of this dialog. I choose to use a grid of points, and set the output region using the red polyline I defined earlier. One thing to note, the smaller the grid you define, the more points that are added and the more processing the command will need. I used a 10 unit grid, which for this surface is probably too tight, but let's see what it gives us. Once the output region and grid is setup, I select Ok and let it run the calcs. It may take some time, but I can use this opportunity to have a snack or something.

Here are the results.

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Not too shabby huh?

Now before you go off and say 'but that's not real data, how can you have more surface where you don't have data?!' I want you to realize that this is an extrapolation of trends across a given area, and not a replacement for real data. So keeping that in mind, let's realize that this isn't as accurate as sampling real field data, but in those situations where you can't get good field data, this is a great tool to help fill in areas of need that will be pretty dan close.

I'll leave it up for discussion as to the merit of its use, but for me, this is Wicked Cool Stuff!

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Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

What the heck is Kriging?

Civil 3D; A History Part Deux

So to recap where I left off; we had set of tools that started from humble roots to grow into a great civil program, an acquisition, and a couple somewhat new programs given great names that fit the TLA standard at Autodesk. These were my glory days, as I gracefully exited college with two associates degrees in hand, and that innocent and somewhat naive outlook that I was about to take on the world and do great things as a CAD Technician. Then I started working..testing dirt; so much for all that CAD training, but that's another tale for another time.

Anyway, back to the history lesson; sometime in the early days of the Autodesk/Softdesk relationship, a grass-routes effort was undertaken to develop the 'next big thing' for Civil Engineering software. Some of this effort did see the light of day, and as I've been told (unfortunately, I was out testing dirt on a hot job site in the middle of nowhere NH at the time so this is a story being retold, so please excuse the second hand information) there was a program called AEC-X.

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This was a mysterious piece of code that was shown by none other then Dave Simeone with Carol Barts at his side at some big Autodesk event back in the day. It showed an alignment being edited on the fly, and the profile built from that alignment automatically updating! Wow, that's cool stuff, but surely it must be parlor tricks or smoke and mirrors; well, yes and no. It certainly wasn't an application you could design a real project with, but then again it wasn't meant to be.It was an experiment to see what could be with the right know-how, and more importantly, with the right investment.

Now I get to the part where ADT fits in. Part of Autodesk's reason for acquiring Softdesk was for the Civil engineering software, and part of it was for the Architectural software Auto Architect. So a decision was made early on after the acquisition that investment and resources would be pushed towards the architectural side of the house first, and that investment grew into ADT, which represented a significant rework, if not a complete rewrite of the Softdesk architectural code. What this meant for us civil folks is that we got LDD (now LDT) which was a more scaled back approach at 'integrating' the Softdesk code into an AutoCAD desktop application. Several releases of ADT went by, and finally the day came to set 'those civil folks' loose on some R&D money and time! A significant effort was undertaken, and the roots of Civil 3D began to sprout from the minds and hard work of some very talented and very determined folks in Henniker/Manchester (there was a move in 2000 to a new facility in ManchVegas). This will bring us to the beginning of Civil 3D, and probably the biggest chunk of the history lesson...in my next post.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Civil 3D; A History Part Deux

Buon giorno fellow colleagues!

So if my Geek-cred wasn't fully established before now with a couple years participation in a Solar Car Club and Radio Station back in college; the time I spent living in a Technically Advanced Residential Dwelling with some great friends of mine; the two and half years as a support technician at Autodesk (I'm sure I've talked on the phone to most of you LDT users at least once in that span of time); the two years as an Applications Engineer; my fourth year participating as an instructor at Autodesk University; and the fact that most of the lights in my current house run on remote controls; if all that was't enough I've decided to jump into the world of Blogging with Wicked Cool Stuff. Its here that I'm going to talk about and share my ideas, tips, tricks, as well as rants and random thoughts about Autodesk Civil 3D; what I consider the best thing to hit the Civil Engineering industry since the Slide Rule.

So what's this Civil 3D thing?
Ok, you've heard some rumblings on the newsgroups; talked to some colleagues at a user group meeting, or may have even tried to use the software in your spare time (hmmm, that's a new concept huh? spare time I wonder what its like, I should try to explore it sometime) and you've heard the marketing speak; dynamic modeling, instant updates, 90% time saving, etc, etc, etc. Well I'm here to give you a little history, a little background, and maybe even some insight into what this thing is, and why it might be worth your time to take a look at it, at least before the rest of the world around you has already standardized on it.

Ok, history time; what three letter acronym (TLA) can be used to describe why Civil 3D exists today? - anyone, Bueller, Bueller - DCA. That's right; some of the old-schoolers in our midst will remember a program that ran as an add-on to AutoCAD called DCA. This program was born from the idea that it's got to be easier to plot survey points in CAD then to have to use a pen or pencil on a drafting board. Over time, the small set of lisp routines for surveyors grew into a fairly complete survey and civil engineering package. As it grew, so did the name, eventually becoming Softdesk.

This is where my hands-on experience with the software begins, as I learned Softdesk on AutoCAD 13 in school. Yes, I'm a late bloomer; this helps me avoid sayings like 'I remember when DCA came on 32, 5 1/4 inch floppy Disks' or one of my favorites; 'I had the fastest computer in the office; a 286 with 4 MB of ram, man those were the days'. Instead I have fond memories of perfectly timing my regens of a 12 MB drawing so that I could take my lunch break while my Gateway, with 32 MB of ram (the most in the office mind you) worked hard at regenerating my current view to make sure all my Wipeouts were at the correct display order.

I digress though, back to the lesson; so Softdesk became one of the more popular civil applications for AutoCAD till eventually Autodesk took notice, and acquired the company out of little Henniker, New Hampshire. Two major things came out of this move; Architectural Desktop and Land Development Desktop. Since LDD (yet another TLA (YATLA)) is probably near and dear to most of our hearts, we'll concentrate on LDD, but we'll see why ADT is worth mentioning in the next installment. Bottom line is that LDD consolidated what had become quite a group of modules from Softdesk into the configuration we still see today; Land, Civil Design, and Survey. LDD would grow over the next couple years into a pretty powerful program, especially when coupled with Civil Design. A lot of seats were sold, and a lot of companies around North America standardized on it for site development and subdivision design. We even ran across the occasional municipality or local government that used it for all aspects of civil design including road and highway. Through my time in the field as a user, I got great exposure to the inner workings of LDD and Civil Design, in particular the Pipes routines, and did a lot of work in sub-surface design and site design. What we'll get into next is what was going on at Autodesk during this time, and how it would change the future of civil engineering CAD.

Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

Buon giorno fellow colleagues!