Wicked Cool Stuff

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• Plans Production is here!

  Posted 02/16/07 by Anthony Governanti

  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

  0 commentsIn Wicked Cool Stuff > All

• Corridors Eh!

  Posted 02/15/07 by Nick Zeeben

  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.
  
  

  2 commentsIn Wicked Cool Stuff > Wicked Cool Ramblings

• Hello from San Francisco and a Wicked Cool Tip

  Posted 02/12/07 by Anthony Governanti

  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
  

  0 commentsIn Wicked Cool Stuff > Wicked Cool Tips

• Site Topology Part 3; Managing Sites

  Posted 02/08/07 by Anthony Governanti

  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
  

  0 commentsIn Wicked Cool Stuff > Wicked Cool Tips

• Updated Survey Extension

  Posted 02/05/07 by Anthony Governanti

  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
  

  1 commentsIn Wicked Cool Stuff > Wicked Cool Tips

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