From the Ground Up
A European perspective on design and out of the box thinking with Civil 3D.
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- posted 10/30/07 by Jack Strongitharm Some more Civil Stars from the UK and Ireland
- Some more interesting reading from the UK and Ireland of companies and loal authorities are really making the best of the technology in AutoCAD Civil 3D.
I would personally like to thank them all for sharing their stories with us.
First
Duffy Chartered Engineers
A company in Dundalk in Ireland north of Dublin, doing everything from housing estates to stadium developments. Cut and fill to full blown road design.
Thanks to Tom Duffy, Gary Baron and Kamil Kieszkowski who are really showing the way.
This one is on a website based magazine called V1 take a look from this link
V1 Magazine
CB&I
CB&I deal in the oil and gas, petrochemical and chemical, power,
water and wastewater and metals and mining
industries.
Harprit Dogra is leading his team using Civil for the site development
Link to case study
Wigan Council
This is where I worked prior to Autodesk and my friends there are using a combination of technology to address their needs for major project approval for planning permission.
Chris Wilson adapted what he knew in various software to take on the project
Link to case study
Civil regards
Jack Strongitharm
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Change of terms?
Posted 10/29/07 by Jack Strongitharm
Users from the UK and Ireland, we have our own terminology and language version called British Language Version.
However within the country kit I did not fully address some of the terminology that appeared from the corridor.
However I have made some changes and brought it here.
For everyone else, this may still apply as we all have our variations and would like to control it a little more.
So say goodbye to ETW, Sidewalk and more besides.
Located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2008\enu is a file called
C3DStockSubassemblyScripts.codes
BEFORE I GO FURTHER, IF YOU HAVE A GO WITH THIS, PLEASE BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL .CODES FILE FIRST
This controls the regional variations and gives the user the ability to have your own version
The file looks like this in Notepad
//Attention; do not use commas in comments,,,,
//,,,,
//Index No.,Localized code,Original Code,Description,
//,,,,
1,Crown,Crown,Crown point between travel lanes on finish grade,
2,Crown_Pave1,Crown_Pave1,Crown point on the Pave1 layer,
3,Crown_Pave2,Crown_Pave2,Crown point on the Pave2 layer,
4,Crown_Base,Crown_Base,Crown point between travel lanes on the base layer,
5,Crown_Sub,Crown_Sub,Crown point between travel lanes on the subBase layer,
6,EC,ETW,Carriageway Edge; inside or outside edges of travel lanes on finish grade,
7,EC_Pave1,ETW_Pave1,Carriageway Edge on the Pave1 layer,
8,EC_Pave2,ETW_Pave2,Carriageway Edge on the Pave2 layer,
9,EC_Base,ETW_Base,Carriageway Edge on the base layer,
10,EC_Sub,ETW_Sub,Carriageway Edge on the subBase layer.,
11,Lane,Lane,Slope break point between lanes on finish grade for broken back roadway.,
12,Lane_Pave1,Lane_Pave1,,
13,Lane_Pave2,Lane_Pave2,,
14,Lane_Base,Lane_Base,,
15,Lane_Sub,Lane_Sub,,
But in Excel it makes a little more sense
The second column is where we can change the code and the third is the original US language which is how the supplied sub aseemblies are coded.
If you change any codes here, save your excel as a .csv then rename it to the original name 'C3DStockSubassemblyScripts.codes' and start Civil 3D.
The only thing that needs considering is the Code Set Style, you will need to add some point codes to match your naming and or change the originals. Check them first by placing a relevant subassembly, right click and check its properties.
For my UK and Ireland users, take this one and it will work with the Country kit template you already have
Download file
Jack Strongitharm
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Surface breaklines
Posted 10/25/07 by Jack Strongitharm
Apologies for disappearing for the last couple of weeks from here.
I see Ove has been throwing some great things up here anyway, you must try the contour tool and dont forget the automatic rebuild on your surface!!
Anyway, this week I am at the home of CIvil 3D in Manchester, NH meeting with all the developers etc.
Back home today, but I thought I would post you something to look at
When adding a breakline to a surface, you may have seen that around your radius corners you dont have much detail in the surface and also along large spaces in any straight lines you get very big triangles.
What we need is to add some extra detail to the surface without adding more points to the feature lines
This panel shows a 'mid-ordinate distance' - this is used to tessellate the polyline arcs from which the breakline is being created.
Selecting ‘Supplementing distance’, is used to add more triangles along straights in the breakline to create a smoother surface.
The result would be this
This can really improve your surfaces but without adding more points to your linework, which in turn can save you a lot of time in setting levels and gradients.
Jack
Just a little reminder I will be presenting at these two events next month, please come along if you can
AUGI event in Birmingham http://www.augidesignacademy.co.uk
and
AU 2007 at http://au.autodesk.com/2007
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Updated - Elevations on contours
Posted 10/18/07 by Ove Cervin
Hello!
As I got som nice tips on how to update and slightly modify Nicolas nice little .LSP last week I thought I could update it here as well, to all of you.
What has been done is:
Additional functionality to get the "temp line" erased automatically when the contours has been modified.
Also changed to fit non-english versions. (Hopefully)
Here it is, the new version:
Download file
Use "Appload" to get the lisp loaded in to C3D. Then use the command "chelev".
Please see last post on the general functionality:
http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/6/blogpost/7629/
Cheers / Ove -
Assigning elevations to contours
Posted 10/08/07 by Ove Cervin
Hi again,
Today I got some great help!
Our colleague Nicholas Menu, Autodesk EMEA C3D Support team, wrote a .LSP for us as we had a whish regarding elevations on contours.
Sometimes you're stuck with old data that has Zero elevations. If those are drawn as Polylines to present contours, but has Z=0, you have quite some work to create an existing ground surface.
Nicholas Lisp moves the polylines to an elevation automatically if you set the starting elevation and the interval for the set of Polylines.
Below I have some images showing the procedure:
First - a set of Polylines without elevation.
Here I have created a Surface just to make it more obvious that they have no elevation.
Use the command in the loaded .LSP, "chelev"
Pick the first point for the line to be drawn. This should be on the lower side of the "slope" presented by the contours.
Click the second point of the line on the higher side.
Then add "Start level" for the contour set.
Set value for interval between contours.
VOILA!
As Civil 3D is a dynamic software, and so is the Surface, it is updated directly with the correct elevations.
(See the Tooltip on the cursor)
Enjoy!
Thanks Nicolas.
Here's the .LSP-file for download.
Download file
// Ove Cervin -
Leica FDE
Posted 10/01/07 by Ove Cervin
Hello!
I'm not sure about all of you but some of you are using Civil 3D as a tool for handling Survey data.
There are several things to think about depending on what kind of equipment you're using. Also depending on what data you have and how it is surveyed.
Today I saw that Leica has release (some time ago) an additional software that saves the ".JOB-files" to .FBK. This way you have an additional way to get the Leica survey data in to Civil 3D, besides using the plug-in "Leica X-change". This is an "on-board" softare to be used with Leica TPS1200. It was released 2007-07-17.
You can find it here.
Next post here from me will be on how to get survey Figure lines in to C3D from a Trimble unit. I have heard that it has been a tough time getting it in. Now I have a partner here that has a good solution to it. I just have to translate it from Swedish... ;-)
Stay tuned!
Cheers / Ove