From the Ground Up
A European perspective on design and out of the box thinking with Civil 3D.
About Jack About OveLatest Post
- posted 12/20/07 by Ove Cervin Tool Palette
- Hello again,
HAPPY HOLIDAYS to ALL !!!
I found this little thing interesting and I hope you'll like it ;-)
We have our familiar Tool Palettes as seen below.
Open up Design Center.
In Design Center we have this interface. It's an excellent tool to get data in from other drawings.
Select the Tab "Folders" to the upper left.
Browse to a folder where you have a drawing containing a number of Blocks/Symbols. I will use a drawing that has several ground- base map symbols.
Mark the drawing and you get a preview.
If you then, on the left part of the window, mark the sub-item "Blocks", as I have done, you'll see the Blocks in that drawing.
If you want a Block in to your drawing now - just drag-drop it in to the design.
Better - try this!
Select all nice Blocks that you might want to use more frequently. (Use CTRL and Shift to get more at a time)
Right click and select "Create Tool Palette".
This gives you all symbols/Blocks as a separate Tab on the Tool Palette.
Great - isn't it!? ...and of course you can also rename all things in the Tool Palette.
Have a great Christmas, all of you!
Cheers / Ove Cervin0 comments In From the Ground Up > Tips and Tricks
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Enhance your search for help
Posted 12/18/07 by Ove Cervin
Hello!
I think a lot of the Civil 3D users are missing this Search tool when they are trying to find written help/support etc.
In Civil 3D there is a search tool, found at the upper right. Yep - you have touched it I guess. It actually brings up a lot of information when you use it.
If I try a search on Gradings I get this:
But to get all that, more than from a "standard" search, you need to tweak the settings a bit.
Use the "Star" to access the settings.
Select "Settings".
Here you can select what Help Files that are searched when you use the Search tool. Tick mark all that applies.
Used it before? ;-)
Cheers / Ove C
-
Coordinates to ASCII
Posted 12/13/07 by Ove Cervin
Hi everyone.
I have been a bit quite the last couple of weeks due to several reasons...
Here in Scandinavia it is totally pitch black - complete darkness has come as it is late December. What we do have regarding lights is - Lucia. December 13:th (today) is the day for celebrating Lucia.
It's a tradition here in Scandinavia. (Read about it here if you want more feeling for it...)
This topic will be about how to use a function that are within AutoCAD Map 3D 2008, which you have also in Civil 3D. If you have a set of objects, Polylines in this example, and want the coordinates for them out to a file, this is one way. I have saved the Polylines in one drawing called "Polylines input to Map.dwg". They look like this:
Save that drawing and close it.
Open a new drawing and use the Map Query to get the data. To do that I will explain how to get the "Tools" available.
On the command line, use:
Command: _mapwspace
Task Pane [On/oFf]:
Task Pane is visible.
Then select the Tab "Map Explorer".
Right click on "Drawings" and select "Attach".
If your drawing is located anywhere else than locally on "C:\" you need to set up an "Alias" for that drive/folder.
Click the button to access the Alias dialog.
Type in an alias and browse to the folder - use ADD.
After that you can use the alias and browse to and select the source drawing.
Once the link is established you can see it in the workspace.
To get the data in to this drawing you can right click on the link and select "Quick View".
Use Zoom Extents to see the objects as a "Preview". Note that you can't access the objects. They are only shown as one object.
Now we know that data is connected, and we do see it.
Create a Map Query. Right click on "Current Query", as below, and select "Define".
Now we need to tell what to get/select in that attached drawing. (It could also be from a dwg containing loads of different data).
Select "Location".
Select "All". This will select all data from any location in the dwg.
Then select "Property".
To make sure we don't get any "hidden" objects we specify that we also have the condition "Layer". Here you set "Value to match the Layer where the Polylines are stored.
Value will be "Exported-Polylines" which is the Layer in the source drawing.
As we don't (in this case) want the graphics in, only a Report, we select "Report" instead of "Draw".
Hit "Options" and then "Expression..."
Use "Properties" and scroll down to "X1,Y1,Z1"
Type in a path and report name. Also use "Process Sub-Objects".
Click "OK" and then in the main dialog - "Execute Query".
As seen on command line - the query found some data.
It is now stored in the .txt as below. X, Y and Z value.
I hope it can help in some way. Note that you also get all data as "one string". Just to be aware...
It might be enhanced in several ways in the Report and Expression.
Cheers / Ove C -
Another little plug
Posted 12/10/07 by Jack Strongitharm
So you will have seen that I have plugged the Dynamite VSP Plugin to Civil 3D a couple of times. This is for high end visualisation and animation using 3DS Max.
But there is another plugin to Civil 3D that has been available from the start.
For that daily quick and easy way to visualise your project but also for checking your design for sight lines.
At AU this year they annouced a new application that takes this checking to a new level.
Below is some information about it and also two webinars that are planned for the next two days.
Through 3D analysis the Rapid Road Safety Analyzer will help customers make informed decisions regarding road safety based on a complete picture and full understanding of the roadway environment.
Project planners face daily critical design issues relating to budgets, cost, and deadlines. Traditionally geometric road design has been based upon mathematic equations where site distance is a key factor driving design parameters. In the real world, things are much more complex. With over 1.2 million fatalities worldwide annually in road crashes - it is clear that more can be done from a design and analysis perspective to improve roadway safety.
Learn more about this amazing new tool by participating in the webinar on the Rapid Road Safety Analyzer on:
Tuesday December 11th at 16:00 GMT, 11:00 Eastern Time, 8:00 Pacific Time.
Wednesday December 12th at 19:00 New ZealandTime, 17:00 Sydney Time.
The 45 minute live webinar sessions take a task oriented approach aimed at solving everyday real-life visualization challenges that face civil engineers, designers and land planners. The series will provide a broad base of information for all interested parties regardless of the design and visualization software they are using today. Civil 3D users will find extra value in the online seminars as the concepts are both optimized and will be demonstrated in the Civil 3D platform.
www.rdvsystems.com/wcr.php
Until next time
Jack Strongitharm -
Viva Las Vegas!
Posted 12/07/07 by Jack Strongitharm
Well back from my first AU.
Top event and a must if you can get there.
All the class papers and screencasts are now available if you login at http://au.autodesk.com
Thanks to my colleague Marco Martens (The Italian paparazzi!) for the piccys.
Have a good weekend!
Jack Strongitharm
