From the Ground Up

!!! WE HAVE MOVED !!!

Just like what we expect from our customer we thought we would get ourselves out of our current blogging software and move on to something much better.

We have a new blog site to give us much more flexibility and ability to post more while we are traveling around the country as always! Also we look consistent to all the other Autodesk blogs out there.

So please click below and reset your RSS feeds to this new site

The original web link has also been repointed

www.autodesk.com/fromthegroundup

There are some new posts ready and waiting for you!!!

Jack Strongitharm

Welcome back from your Easter break

Hope you have all had a good Easter break and some of you lucky buggers are even still on holiday.

Well a great weekend for me as I went to see 'The Prodigy' in concert at the M.E.N. arena in Manchester.
Those that have been to my AU classes for the last couple of years normally get blasted to wake you up at the start.

image from MEN website

I have never seen so many grey heads raving! unfortunately that included me.

There was even parents taking their kids, I suppose if you have them early enough they may even follow the music you like. No chance for me I guess.

Also the sun broke out this weekend, which doesn't normally happen in northern England and got the barby out.
That is probably our summer for the year done.

Jack Strongitharm

AutoCAD Exchange

A new forum for your attention.

AutoCAD is the platform to Civil 3D, so is a very important part of our technology.
The more you understand about it, the more you can actually apply into your Civil 3D designs.

Think of this, parametric and constraints are the new big thing in AutoCAD 2010. Well what about storing them as dynamic blocks to apply in Civil 3D? I am thinking turning heads, islands etc

So please take a look at this new site as it will be a valuable tool in advancing your Civil 3D capabilities.

http://autocad.autodesk.com/

Jack Strongitharm

Launch Day!!

It is March 24th and finally the AutoCAD family of products are officially launched.

This year is a huge release for AutoCAD Civil 3D.

3D Junction Design
Dynamic geometry offsets and widening
Quantity Take Off
Context Sensitive Design Workflow (UI)
Automatic linework processing in Survey and UI improvements
Plot/parcel design improvements

Also there are many other things

A number of country content pack kits are on the DVD
New cross section reports with coordinates
Within the UK Country Kit there are additional tools for 2D to 3D contours conversion, drawing frames and surface analysis from a file
Staggered labels in profiles and cross sections
AutoCAD graphical performance
Full object properties visible in Navisworks 2010 with the object enabler
Revit Building 2010 import
And many more...

I would like to publicly thank all the guys in Manchester, New Hampshire and the support guys around the world for pulling this together and also putting up with me bugging them this year!!
Also to all those who participated in the Beta testing for their comments and ensuring that this years release is a great quality product.

Jack Strongitharm

'Junction Jack' has just retired

Hmmm, I think it is time to get a new nick name as I have been put out of work.

I have uploaded a new video (finally!) to the Youtube site of myself trying to design a junction (aka intersection) as quick as possible and then try the same design in 2010.

I had to speed up the 2009 quite a bit!!

Excited?

Its like having a mini me inside the box doing all the work for you!
For those who have learn't from first principles, you will appreciate what it is now doing, but also you can get into the design and make any required edits.

Official launch is next week, so we can start to get into the detail then while your lovely DVD's are on route to you on subscription next month.

Thanks to Dana Probert for also filling up the YouTube channel site also, so please have a look around if you haven't been for a while.

Have a great weekend, its amazing the sun is still out and it is dry!! (its normally grim up north!)

Jack Strongitharm

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 - Whats New

Take a look at what is new with this presentation from Terry Bennett, Senior Industry Manger for Civil and Construction at Autodesk.

Is this a big release or what!!

Lots more to come

Jack Strongitharm

'GENIO Import' and now 'Export Tool'

For a little while we have had the ability to import GENIO files which are generally a file exchange for Bentley MX.

We have just released an updated tool on the subscription center which includes now Export functionality to convert your alignments, profiles, corridors and surfaces to be able to be read by MX and other software that support the format.

This will be very useful for those using Civil 3D to do parts of a project which has potentially already started on the other product.
Also for those who are required to supply a GENIO file as a deliverable.

Many of my clients in the UK and Ireland have been using Civil 3D as a complimentary product to support other project teams and also work out quick alternatives, volumes and drawing production aswell as using it as the complete solution for their projects as their skills increase.

For Import, I have included a layer table to assign 3D strings to some common layer names.

Export, will convert our potentially larger object names down to the four character names that MX can only support.

To get hold of the tool you need to log into the subscription center.

So you may need to contact your IT department and or reseller if you don't have your own access.

If you already have the previous Import tool, you will need to remove that first as this is a replacement for that.
This new tool is only available for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009.

Jack Strongitharm

Civil 3D TV

Been flat out the last couple of weeks, with putting the finishing touches to the new Country Kit for 2010 release aswell as my normal job.

I am probably the last one to post, but Update 2.1 is now available to download.
This now include Map 3D Update 2, ability to add the Bonus Pack for AutoCAD that is on the subscription center and some little fixes that needed to be corrected

Update 2.1 link

Something else to have a watch over your lunch break is a new video to show an overview of Civil 3D which is worth spreading the word about within your company for those who have not seen the software before.

http://www.adskmedia.com/theroadahead/

Have a good weekend

Jack Strongitharm

Another new fellow blogger

You may have seen this one, but my colleague in the US, Dana Probert who is a Technical Marketing Manager for Civil 3D has got her new blog site up now.

BIM on the Rocks

Please give her your support also, as she has a wealth of knowledge and covering another flavour of the product for you.

On another subject, this past week we have been able to finally get some better stats on you our wonderful readers and where you are reading from.

Not too bad. Obviously we are not in the same league as the likes of Lynn Allen and Shaan Hurley.

We appreciate everyone of you.

Thanks

Jack Strongitharm

Civil 3D 2010 Sneak Peek - The Ribbon, part I

Our support colleagues from the 'Being Civil' blog have dropped a sneak peek video on 2010.

Take a look to start finding your feet

YouTube Video

To be honest it takes about five minutes to get used to this amazing enhancement and you will wonder how you ever worked without it.

Just remind yourself,

Would you be still on a drawing board or was the computer a good move,

AutoCAD in DOS or AutoCAD current day,

tablet digitiser and puck or a simple mouse.

I could go on but I won't bore you.

I know what I would choose.

Better get my finger our and make my next video for our YouTube site that a lot of you have already taken a look at and subscribed.

Jack Strongitharm

Another new fellow blogger

A guru colleague of mine living in Wales, Harold Alberto has now put up a blog also.

He was sending out tips and tricks in his company, so thought it would be better to share with our little global Civil 3D club.

How civil of him!

See how he takes on a 90degree corner in a corridor

http://civil3dexperience.blogspot.com

Jack Strongitharm

Civil Engineering just got easier! - the next release is coming!!

So last week on Friday was the press launch of the new Autodesk products including of course AutoCAD Civli 3D.

This will take some time to cover everything that is going on in the release and I am limited to what I can publish at this time. (so you will have to wait just a little longer)

However what I can say is OMG!

I will need to hang up my title as 'Junction Jack' as junctions (intersections) just got automated and dynamic in full glorious 3D

The user experience has been enhanced to make it easier to follow the design workflow through the design.

Need to report the quantities out of the project? Well now you can with an easier-to-use method for calculating
quantities using model data from AutoCAD Civil 3D software directly.
Quantity information can now be extracted from both corridor models and site features.

As we are still in Beta you can be the first on the block to test it out!

For those of you who aren’t aware, Autodesk has a formal beta program where people can begin testing new Autodesk technology. The hottest thing up there right now (at least in the opinion of this humble civil bloke) is the Tuckerman project!

If you’re curious about what’s in development and would like to test it out, you should join the Beta program. It’s easy to join. Just go up to the beta program portal and sign up:

http://myfeedback.autodesk.com

If you’re new to the beta program, you’ll need to sign up. Make sure you enter “Tuckerman” in the beta code field as this will ensure that you are added to the Tuckerman project. (note - if you’re already a Myfeedback member, you should edit your profile and add Tuckerman to the beta code).

You will be asked to sign to the terms and conditions of the Beta testing program which includes an Non Disclosure agreement, i.e means you cannot discuss or publish any information about the release.

There is however a great discussion forum on the site to talk to your fellow testers and there’s a vBook that you should review to get you up and running quickly.

As we get near actual shipping release we can divulge some more.

Should be a fun year!

Jack Strongitharm

You Tube - Transportation scheme clashed and sequenced

Thank you to all of you that have subscribed to the You Tube channel already when there was not much up there.

I have posted a video with a run through of how you can use Navisworks for clash detection and construction sequencing of a road scheme designed in AutoCAD Civil 3D.
It also has my voice on there, so I hope you can understand my northern english accent!!

www.youtube.co.uk/CivilFromtheGroundUp

More videos to come!

Jack Strongitharm

Tab between drawings

Is it just me but I missed out on this one.

Using the 'Ctrl' Key held down and then hit the TAB key you can switch between drawings in AutoCAD.

Probably been there ever since AutoCAD could handle more than one drawing at a time in one session.

Nevermind, but I bet there are plenty of you that missed it also.

Jack Strongitharm

Revit Civil

HA HA, I got your attention.

Revit Structure has now gained the ability to create bridge structures using data from AutoCAD Civil 3D.

It is available on the subscription center for those with Revit Structure
http://www.autodesk.com/subscriptioncenter

Bridge Toolkit for Revit Structure 2009

The Bridge Toolkit for Revit® Structure 2009 software provides information, tools, content, and datasets that will better enable structural engineers and drafters to address infrastructure build-out as it relates to bridges. Specific components include:

Box Girder Methodology and Datasets
Precast Girder Methodology and Datasets
Bridge Components .rfa Content
Bridge Modeling Using Revit Structure 2009 Software (Tips and Tricks)
Better design and model your bridge using this toolkit along with Revit Structure 2009, a powerful and parametric structural software solution from Autodesk, Inc.

You can also register for Webcast on January 27th to take a look at it.

Civil Structures with Revit Structure 2009
Date & Time: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. PST

This webcast presentation will explore the versatility of Revit® Structure and how it is used throughout the industry for civil structures such as tanks, retaining walls, and bridges.

www.autodesk.com/structure-webcasts

Jack Strongitharm

Revit Civil

Update 2 available !

Hi all,

Just a quick notice today on the fact that Update 2 for AutoCAD Civil 3D is out and available.

You can find it here:
http://updatesdl.autodesk.com/updates/files/c3d2009sp20.exe

What I also would like to mention at this stage is the fact that you, as a valued customer, is VERY important to us getting these Updates as good as possible.
Every time you spend a little extra time on filling in these "Error forms", and a little information on the issue, it get logged. If you also provide you email address at that time you will get, as I just got, an email when the Update is out.
That email also explains what issues has been solved and if your logged issues are among those.

Please see below, part of the email sent to my address, and that it has information on my logged issues.

-----------------

-----------------

Best regards / Ove Cervin

Benelux User Group

Those that are reading from the Benelux area maybe interested that a new AutoCAD Civil 3D User Group has been setup.

http://www.c3dbenelux.org/

It is in local languages with technical forums and blogs and will hold its first user event in March.
Most importantly it is run by users.

Please support the group and meet some like minded people.

Jack Strongitharm

New Civil 3D Blog to add to your list

My colleagues in support at Autodesk have started up a blog also.

These guys really know their stuff and are responsible from anything from installation to how to perform a design task.

So please give them your support and subscribe to their site as there is going to be some great posts from them.

http://beingcivil.typepad.com

Brian Kling

Justin Ziemba

Jason Hickey

Jack Strongitharm

AU Online 2008

AU Online is live and has the Autodesk University 2008 content including the recordings of the keynotes and some classes including the most valuable of all the HANDOUTS.

There is some really good materials on there for all the Civil 3D classes including yours truly.
(CV404-2 Junction Jack is Back)

It was great to see some familiar faces at my second AU. I am sure everyone who went really enjoyed this amazing immense event of over 9000 people where you can get served your lunch without queuing.

http://au.autodesk.com

Jack Strongitharm

AU Online 2008

You Tube - From the Ground Up Channel

To follow the official Autodesk Youtube Channel, we thought we would also join in.

So take a look and subscribe and we will start posting more videos up here as we will use this for some adhoc videos as sometimes it is easier to watch a video than understand a written document I think.

I have placed a little sample on there just to get started.

www.youtube.com/civilfromthegroundup

Also to view the Autodesk Channel click below

www.youtube.com/autodesk

Jack Strongitharm

!! Happy New Year !!

I hope you are all well and have had a good break over Christmas and New Year.

Lets have a good year and hopefully the silly season of the economy will come back to normality some time soon.

There is one think that I can say on this subject is that most governments intend to spend themselves out of recession as much as possible and a focus on infrastructure is one of those they intend to spend on which is good for the civil engineering community across the world.

Companies will be looking for areas to save money on and I think everyone here is best place to save money by reducing design time, drawing production and most of all ensure that their designs are accurate and as intended from the creation of a true 3D model using AutoCAD Civil 3D and Navisworks.
Its a much more efficient way over the traditional individual Engineer and Draughter setup instead by having the design and drawing production linked dynamically from the one model.

This is a way I used to work before I joined Autodesk as I used to work for a local authority where I did everything from concept, detailed design, bill of quantities/costing, tender preparation, project supervision and final payment.
This cannot always apply to all schemes, especially large schemes, but I will tell you one thing it did help me learn design much quicker and the responsibility of my designs being built and see how they turned out and fit for purpose.

Both myself and Ove will continue to share our knowledge and support via this blog so that we all share best practice and knowledge and find the best routes to work out solutions to our design problems.

Happy New Year everyone

Jack Strongitharm

Updated - Points on TIN vertices

Hi everybody,

Obviously we have, at least, one reader on the Blog ;-)

As we published this last post on "how to create Points on a TIN surface..." a few days ago, it was spotted by Christopher Fugitt at the Blog "Civil 3D Reminders" who came up with a better solution. It will need you to do some work to get it done, but the solution is more smooth when it is done.

Check it out here: http://blog.civil3dreminders.com/2008/12/how-to-create-civil-3d-points-for-each.html

We also would like to wish you all a happy Christmas time!

Cheers / Ove Cervin

How to Create Civil 3D COGO Points in each TIN vertex

Hello all,

Today I'll share a tip from my colleague - Tomas Lendvorsky in EMIA

// Ove

How to Create Civil 3D COGO Points in each Surface triangulation vertex

Objectives: We need to create COGO Points from TIN vertexes for stake-out

- Create a new Surface and copy the Surface to a new one using Definition-Edits-Paste Surface
- Create a new Style where only points will be displayed, and points will be displayed as dots (Points-Point Display-Data Point Symbol)

- Explode new Surface. (You will get ACAD Points)
- Set-up Create points Dialog
Prompt for Elevation Automatic
Prompt for Description Automatic
Default Description Something you want. (It will allow you to create Point Group later on.)

- Create Points-Convert AutoCAD points
- Create point Group etc

How to Create Civil 3D COGO Points in each TIN vertex

From the AU - direct!

Hi all,
Hope some of you made it to AU this year.
Me and Jack are meeting a lot of you, our customers, and that IS really a pleasure.

Of course we have time to do some fun stuff here as well, but now and then we also proceed to the serious events ;-)
This morning, on the Key Note, we sa Civil presented in the BIM workflow. Dana Probert presented how well Civil fits in under that process.

Take care / Ove and Jack

Combine with an Analysis Surface

Hi there,
Last week I was on Iceland again - and this time I spent some relaxing time on the Blue Lagoon. www.bluelagoon.com
Not bad, not bad at all... Half way between the airport and the city of Reykjavik.

In Civil 3D, as you are well aware of, it is very easy to create Surface of almost any kind.
I just want to give some hints to new users, to open up for a "broader mind", on how you can use it in an "extended" way.
For example, one thing is that because of the linked objects, you can relate a Surface easily to another.
If you then design a simple parking with elevations, Feature lines etc - present it with contours etc, like below:

What you can easily do, besides assigning a number of Surface Labels, is creating Slope arrows on the Surface.
Like below:

To avoid Slope arrows on the whole Parking Surface (including the Grading slopes etc) and just keep it over the paved area, you can create a new Surface.
In my case called "Parking Analysis". Then under that Surface, Definition, use "Edit" - "Paste Surface" and add the Parking Surface.
Apply a Surface Style that has Slope Arrows "ON" and set the "Analysis" parameters on that tab.
After that is done you simply put a Border to it using a Polyline etc from the "Curb stone" and then you don't have the Slope Arrows on the Grading anymore.
In my case, below, I get only a few Arrows. That's because we get one Arrow per Triangle.
If we add more Points to the Feature lines, preferable after we have given them proper elevations, grades, mid/low/high points etc, we can get more triangles.

Use the button with the Yellow triangle "Insert PI". Then select the Feature line, and type "I". Set a distance that will divide the Feature line in to more segments. In my case I use 15 meters. See the small grey triangles presented.

This gives a more dense triangulation as the Feature lines gets more segments. See the orange Triangles below that correspond to the Slope Arrows.
Of course you don't present the Triangles in YOUR Style... ;-)

Now I am really looking forward to AU next week.
Hope to see some of you there!
Best regards / Ove Cervin

Live from the Civils 2008 Show - London

Its Civils Show again this week and myself and my reseller colleagues from the UK are in London showing Civil 3D on a daily basis.
If you are interested in coming you can still register and arrive on the day.
We are here until Thursday
www.civils.com

Daily line up

10am Autodesk - AutoCAD Civil 3D and NavisWorks 2D to 4D
Explores how Civil 3D can be viewed in a 4D environment, tracking time during
the construction sequence. Including clash detection against other civil and
building objects for design collaboration

www.autodesk.co.uk/civil

ME

11am Benchmarq - Automated Sections & Volumetric's
This presentation will show how to very quickly and easily create cross sections,
long sections and volume reports from existing survey data and the proposed civil
engineering design using Civil 3D. This demonstration will show how much time
and money can be saved over standard AutoCAD when doing typical everyday civil
engineering design tasks.

www.bmarq.co.uk

Carl Alford

12pm Excitech - Project Documentation with AutoCAD Civil 3D
Producing high quality production drawings and project documentation using
AutoCAD Civil 3D.
www.excitech.co.uk

Dave Bosworth

2pm Excitech - Design Review & Analysis using RDV
Analysing design data and reviewing designs by visualisation using RDV
www.excitech.co.uk
Dave Bosworth

3pm Benchmarq 3D Visualisation
This demonstration will show how to create stunning visualisations using
Dynamite DVSP, by linking dynamically with a Civil 3D model this visualisation
software allows users with minimal visualisation experience to create
photorealistic fly-throughs of their civil engineering design.
www.bmarq.co.uk
Carl Alford

4pm Datech - Importing Survey Data into Civil 3D
The starting point for most Civil Engineering projects; this session concentrates
on importing and creating 3D geometry from site survey data utilising the tools
within AutoCAD Civil 3D.

www.autodesk.co.uk/civil

Paul Lloyd Smith

Jack Strongitharm

Getting our hands dirty

So last week we decided to go and do some surveying as it is fine showing software with data but if you actually created it yourself makes all the difference. (plus I think that our data from Wigan Council has been seen quite a bit!)
Also to look more carefully at the workflow of transferring raw survey data through our survey capabilities in Civil 3D.

With the help of our colleagues at Trimble and Leica we were provided with some kit and some initial help to get us running.

So our site selection my seem a strange one when we could have gone anywhere, but Stoke Park in Guildford, Surrey in England was where we went. Why there you may ask, well we did some surveying there a couple of years ago and it was the nearest public field to Farnborough that we had other mapping data for. Its a shame!

So from Leica we had Mark Smith providing us with a TCRP 1205+ System 1200 Total Station which was a reflectorless EDM which tracked you with the survey pole and logger.

Leica Total Station 1200 Series

Mark Smith from Lecia

From Trimble we used a GPS system called R8 GNSS GPS and a TSC survey Controller

Trimble TSC Controller

Me and my bald head!

Ove in his element pushing buttons and Paul Lloyd Smith (Datech, UK)

It was amazing how quickly we did the survey, things have definitely changed since my time surveying, with mobile phone connection to OS base stations, quick coding, the total station following your every move...

Also we did a laserscan of the site with Leica and their ScanStation 2 equipment which was even quicker than us running around.

Paul Burrows from Leica HDS and his Scanstation 2

View from Leica Cyclone software

Also I put what was a 440mb ptx point file into Navisworks and created a 20mb NWD file

So in Civil 3D, using 'Trimble Link' and 'Leica X-Change' from the RAW data using Survey in Civil 3D we get all the points with coding, linework with our coding that included begin, curve type codes for automatic linework creation.

Not bad for a day and a half, especially us lot.

Many thanks to both Leica (Mark Smith, Paul Burrows and Steven Ramsey) http://www.leica-geosystems.com and

Trimble (Mark Harper, Tor-Erik Djupos) www.trimble.com

for their help and providing us with the equipment for the two days.

Jack Strongitharm

Navisworks Navigator in Civil 3D

As jobs get more complicated you may find that you want a more powerful reviewing tool to look at your Civil 3D models.

I am now working with Navisworks quite a bit now and I am presenting at Civils Show 2008 at Earls Court 2 in London on how you can use Navisworks along with Civil 3D. This will be looking at clash detection and also 4D modelling.

What is 4D?

Time

So the construction sequence is critical and can make or break the project on site from when underground cables need to be diverted to when a truck load of fill material is delivered and stored on site and potentially blocking the site for vehicles etc.
So if you are interested I will be presenting each day at Civils Show on 18th, 19th and 20th of November.
There also will be my other Civil colleagues presenting different topics using Civil 3D during the day.

www.civils.com

Anyway, I wandered off the topic of this post.

If you have Navisworks installed along with Civil 3D on the same machine you can export to a NWD file but you can also enable a simpler viewing engine in Civil 3D.

By typing 'nwnavigator' will open up the panel.

Then hit the refresh button and your model in Civil 3D will load in the viewer within a couple of seconds.
Then you can fly, walk and orbit the biggest of models with no effort.

This viewer only shows shaded and wireframe mode.
If you want render materials, you will need to use the actual Navisworks software.

Then you can clash away and look at construction sequence also.

Now we are getting into what I call True BIM of 'Building the Information Model'. Its not just for Architects you know!!
We could have our own acronyms such as CIM or RIM, but maybe that is taking it too far!!

Have a good week

Jack Strongitharm

Navisworks Navigator in Civil 3D

Editable ground profile

Sometimes we may want to work closely to the existing ground, but not want to retrace all the existing ground profile to get a design profile.

Of course there is a little trick that you can pull off to get this desired effect.

What you can do, is draw the ground profile

Click on profile view properties and profile tab.
Then change the status to 'Static'

You know you have a Static profile, when you select it as it will display lots of grips

Then what you can do is edit the profile, with the grid panorama window, grip edit or in this case I will raise it 100mm up, just so you can see the result.
Also maybe change the name of the profile and change the style so it will look different to the original ground.

'Raise VIPs/PVIs'

You also probably want the original ground back, so just go back to 'Profile from surface' and add the existing ground surface again and click ok, not draw

Final result

Could be handy

Jack Strongitharm

Stage Storage - a sample

Yes!
Finally, yesterday, I was able to call a person who 6 month ago called me and asked about if it was easy to calculate the volumes up to a certain level in a Pond. I then told him that this was possible, but not, at that time, fully automatic.
Now, today, all Subscription customers are able to download and use the new Stage Storage extension. This easy tool directly gives the volumes of a pond to all levels of interest. Subscription center is the place where to find it.

Below is a sample pond.

Bottom is at elevation +73m

To get the volumes we start the extension in the Toolbox.

Give it a name (optional) and then choose calculation method. There are, as you see, also other settings.
Choose the "Define Basin" button.

In my case I use the "Define basin from contours" in this dialog.

When we select a contour line on the pond/basin Surface we get a number of white Contours presented.

Then we get the report - smooooooth...

We get the areas for each contour line, the volumes between each level, incremental, of contours and the total, cumulative volume up to that level.
If you need the volumes up to, let's say, +77.25m - just change the Style for your Surface to match that interval and do the calculation here again! Eeeeeeasy... ;-)

Note: As all units are at the moment in imperial. The easiest way to get them metric is using the resulting ASCII-file and put it in to Excel.

We also get a ASCII-report that can be saved.

Go try it out!

Cheers / Ove C

Stage Storage - a sample

New Pipe trench Subassemblies

Hi there,
This week I finally got some time working a little bit more on the new Subassemblies we provided over Subscription center recently.
As I have a number of customers in Sweden working on Pipe Networks I wanted to see how these Pipe Trench Subassemblies could be used.

This is what it looks like in the Tool Palettes

If I create two Pipe Networks, add an Alignment for each, add a existing ground profile to them, and build a Corridor - we get this. I have also added a simple Pipe from the "right" in to the Pipe Network nr 2, seen below.

What happens is that the new Subassembly finds the Pipes and adjust the width automatically to the Corridor.

Here is a sample of some Sections showing the widening.

Hope you'll find them useful.

Cheers / Ove C

New Pipe trench Subassemblies

Webcast and NCE/Autodesk Survey

Want to see a little video from myself?
You will have to put up with the Northern English accent, even though I tried to put on my posh phone voice!

It is an introductory video for people interested in the AutoCAD Civil 3D for its 'Design and Analysis' tools.
You may even see a couple of nice little touches that you may not have seen yet.

Click on the image below to get to the page

Also on that page is a survey that we are carrying out with the NCE magazine in the UK. The survey is applicable worldwide, so readers outside the UK please also join in.

Jack Strongitharm

AUGI AUGI AUGI

Its just a week off the AUGI Design Academy in London next week on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th of September.

We have some attendance also from our product team from the Manchester in the US

The Godfather of Civil 3D, Mr Dave Simeone (Senior Product Manager)

one of the lead product designers Chakri Gavini

And finally from the UK, Ian McGregor (EMEA Product Manager)

What a good looking bunch!

So some bending of ears over a beer may just well take place!!

Just a reminder of what I am presenting

Designing Turning Heads

Also storing them and other features as Dynamic Civil Blocks, so to drag and drop onto your model!

Also the latest tips for Junction Design.

Also my colleagues will be presenting on Survey and Visualisation from Civil 3D to 3DS Max.
For everyone that attends will receive all handouts to all sessions. These are very useful for you to recreate the steps and also for those sessions you cannot attend for going to others.

Below is a discount for attendance if you sign up by Friday this week.
It will be great to see you all here

Special Announcement: Register by September 19th and save an additional 5% on top of the early bird discount.

Dear Autodesk User,

Registration for the AUGI Design Academy is now open. Don't miss out on your opportunity to receive AU-level training, learn best practices, and network with power users -- all with the convenience of a low-cost, local two-day event.

Join us in London on the 25th and 26th of September.Register today!
• Custom training: Choose from over 60 different courses that will enable you to work better, smarter and faster -- immediately!
• Professional certification for Inventor users: Autodesk Inventor Certification.
• Convenience: 25th and 26th of September in London (at the Novotel London West).
• Expertise: Industry- leading experts are your instructors, including:
o Autodesk Technical Evangelists Lynn Allen and Jay Tedeschi
o Top Autodesk University Speakers, including Paul Aubin, Robert Green and Matt Murphy
o AUGIuk Board Members and regional favourites, including Philip Medeley, Paul Oakley and Jack Strongitharm
o Insights: See the future of design and engineering technology with exclusive previews of new Autodesk solutions.
• Networking: Discuss everything from best practices to the latest industry and market trends with 'top-shelf' instructors, power users and design and engineering professionals.
• Food and beer! Free giveaways, breakfast, lunch, and the Second Annual AUGI UK Beer Bust.
• Bonus Discount: Register by 19th September and save an additional 5% off the early bird rate. Just use adapromo5 when you register.

Registration is easy. Just click here.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Best Regards,

AUGI Professional Development Team

Autodesk is the official sponsor of AUGI Design Academy.

Platinum Sponsors - Lenovo and PNY

Gold Sponsors - Wacom, CADSMART, NEC, Shark Finesse, GTX, Craft Animations, 3am Solutions, New Visual Solutions, 3D Connexion, and Object

Reseller Sponsors - CAD Academy, CADAssist, CADLine, CADPOINT, and Excitech

Jack Strongitharm

Is there room for another Strongitharm?

As Ove mentioned in his last post I am now a dad for the first time to my son Aaron Strongitharm

My wife Vicky, gave birth on Sunday 24th August.

So I am very happy and now I am back from my two weeks paternity leave.
So back to Civil 3D for a rest!!

Jack Strongitharm

Updated Dynamite VSP 3.6

Hello everybody,

Just before summer vacation I had the opportunity to meet, discuss and get trained on the topic of visualization - this time using Dynamite VSP from 3AM-Solutions.
We usually try to find useful "add ons" to C3D that really make use of the C3D functionality and this is one example.
Dynamite has now been released in a new version, called 3.6. This has several enhancements and the rendering is better than ever.

Dynamite now uses a new "easy-to-use mental ray® based materials and lighting workflow".

Sample:

It has always been a hazzle to get road markings correct. This is easily done in Dynamite - and it is still connected to the Corridor Code Set using the same codes.

For more information on Dynamite - see this link:
http://www.3am-solutions.com/products/dvsp3/

And finally - if YOU have a great example of a third party application that is using Civil 3D technology in a good and outstanding way - let me know and I will inform everyone here. We can all benefit from great software.

Cheers / Ove Cervin

Updated Dynamite VSP 3.6

Stage Storage Extension

Hi all,
I hope you have seen the new tools available on Autodesk Subscription center.
What I had in mind here is the new extension called "Stage Storage Extension".

Here is a description on what it does:
Stage Storage Extension for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2009 – Download

The Stage Storage Extension for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2009 is used to calculate incremental and cumulative volumes of a basin from an AutoCAD Civil 3D Surface. Polylines that represent the basin contours or Civil 3D surface contours can be selected to calculate basin volume and area values. Volumes are calculated by average end area as well as conic approximation. Volume and area analysis tables may be saved as .AeccSTT files, inserted into the drawing as an AutoCAD tables or sent to a .txt report file.

This extension is only available to AutoCAD Civil 3D users. The extension is available in English and will install on all language versions of AutoCAD Civil 3D.

There are also a number of new Subassemblies on Subscription center. Check them out! Hopefully they can help you in you daily work ;-)

I am also glad to tell you all that our colleague Jack finally had a son. Congratulations !!
Maybe we will see a shifted focus here on this blog in the future? A more soft "baby skin" feel to the postings ? ;-)

I'd also like to remind you going in to the AUGI webpages and review the whishlist for next C3D. Please do.

Until next time, take care! / Ove C

Stage Storage Extension

Restore your corridor codes

Wow, I've actually made it one blog a day all week!!

Probably think I have nothing better to do with my time.
Well actually I am grounded at present waiting for the arrival of my first child as he is due any day now.

This is Aaron Strongitharm, time he made an appearance!

So while I have been patiently waiting I have got my AUGI and AU class papers together and hopefully giving you some good posts this week.

*Anyway back to some Civil 3D stuff.*

It seems that the Update 1 (aka service pack) has restored the codes file in Civil 3D to the US one.

What do I mean?

The codes file will ditate whether you see a feature line code in a corridor as either ETW (US terms) or EC (British term).

There is a backup of the file that was installed with the UK and Ireland Country Kit and also your local country kit that you should have installed.

With Civil 3D not open.
Go to one of these paths depending on your operatiing system

On XP
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2009

On Vista
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2009\enu

Rename the C3DStockSubassemblyScripts to a temporary name as a backup
Change the C3DStockSubassemblyScripts_en-GB (or your country) to C3DStockSubassemblyScripts

Start Civil 3D and the British codes etc are then applied

Jack Strongitharm

Create your own subassembly toolpalletes (2009)

Nice little feature of 2009 release is that you can create your own toolpalletes of assemblies and subassemblies.

So you are not a code person, doesn't matter.

How many times do you enter parameters into a subassembly to set width, slopes etc that you use everytime.
Also do you hunt through the palletes searching for the couple that you are using the most?.

Well that we can sort!

In a clean drawing and save it (this is temporary) click on a subassembly and hit return key (for detached)
Place it in the drawing.

On its properties, set all the parameters the way you like

Once you are ready, create a new pallete and then with left mouse button click and hold on the subassembly in the drawing and drag it to the toolpallete.

Once its there you can rename it to something sensible and also specify an image.

If you browse to
On XP
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2009\enu\Tool Catalogs\Road Catalog\Images

On Vista
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2009\enu\Tool Catalogs\Road Catalog\Images

You can find all the Civil 3D icons

For my UK and Ireland users I have created a simple set and also included kerbs and edgings to British Standards.
These will work better than my old set that I made from polylines.
Hope they are of use.

Click here to download

To install, extract the zip file to a location on your computer and by right clicking on the toolpallete click then on customize palletes

On the left hand side, click on Import and point to the XTP file that extracted from the zip file.

Should save some time and effort on a daily basis.

Jack Strongitharm

Create your own subassembly toolpalletes (2009)

Widening Part 2

So where we left part 1, I created a surface to look at what I had done and all was not well.
Why, could be a couple of reasons, the survey was not clean, the road was that deformed along the original crown and left channel that meant it was not going to be suitable.
So we need to revisit and do a little more design work. Also the local authority has a bit more money to spend, so we can actually resurface the whole area as it will improve the friction of the road for braking purposes and generally improve the drainage.

So rather than the crown just being a 3d polyline, convert to 2D line and generate an alignment from it.
Looking at the profile, we then redesign and create a smoother vertical profile.

If we draw the profile along the ‘Widening Alignment’ and display the surface profile we got from the extended surface projection, you can see where some of the problems came from.

So what we can do here is say we will want the new road cross section to be -2.5% (1:40) from the crown line to the widening. We could simply just apply this in the assembly, but we have to tie in the start and end profiles.
Therefore the method I always use is that of creating a temporary corridor or what could be called surface projection to help me design the profile on the widening alignment.
So create an assembly that has the -2.5%, but make the width much bigger so that it will be overlapping the widening alignment in plan.

The reason for this is that we can then make a corridor surface and cut a profile from it.

So the thick pinky red line is showing surface levels at -2.5%

Design through a vertical profile based on this line and tie into the original ground at both ends

To then overlay the original road surface and then have new construction to the widening area we need to have an assembly such as this one.

From the crown line I have placed the generic pavement assembly, found in the Metric/Imperial Roadway or Carriageway (depending on your language version)

Why?, well we can specify our own codes and also all I want is to show 100mm thickness and anything below that will be regulating base course or planing. So give a top link code of overlay and bottom link code of Formation. For linework an outside top point of EC, ETW etc

For targets, the left channel for width purposes of the overlay and the widening alignment for the new construction. Also target the widening alignment profile for level.
For the opposite side just use the 3dpolyline for the channel edge to tie into existing. (you may want to join your channel lines together if you have a gap)

So here is the result (you may want to add that link code style for Overlay to your code set style so to colour it in etc)

And also if you create a surface to the corridor you can see that the contours and slope arrows look good.
As we only called the generic subassembly link code overlay, you can add both TOP and OVERLAY to create the top surface.

Next, we can look at volumes, for this we need a formation or datum surface to the underside of the paved surfaces to measure, regulating and planing for the overlay and also earthworks for the formation of the new widened section.

So create two surfaces in the corridor and name accordingly and add the link code for the formation/datum.

From the prospector and create surfaces, then create tin volume surfaces from the ground to these surfaces.

Using the 2D solid level banding style we can go to the volume surface properties and analysis tab.
Add two ranges, and set as below where you have the biggest cut to 0 as red and from 0 to the biggest fill as green for instance. Set for both tin volume surfaces

So here you can see there is quite a bit of cut and planing to be achieved.

So we can now add some surface tables to reflect the data, so from the surface menu and tables add two tables for each tin volume surface.
Make a copy of the table style, because then you can add you own table title and extra columns, in this case surface area and volume

Don’t forget everything here is dynamic, so now you can spend some extra time on the design of the crown line and maybe optimise the earthworks and overlay regulating and planing.
The only thing you will have to do is reset the limits of the analysis to the tin volume surfaces.
Another easy addition!
Until next time, will there be a part 3?

Jack Strongitharm

Another plug

I like to give our development partners a plug when I can to support those working with our technology.

This time it is for 'New Visual Solutions Ltd' and their Quickscape product from the UK.

Since the FBX capabilities between Revit and 3DS Max have been introduced, more users are creating renderings and animations in 3DS Max.
To complete the scene you need some existing and proposed ground models which obviously can be designed in AutoCAD Civil 3D and brought through into 3DS Max and Max Design (improved with the Civil 3D Object Enabler).
But then you need to add many features to bring your project alive such as road signs, signals, road lines and markings, fences/railings, vehicles, trees, people etc …….
This is where Quickscape will prove itself to be useful.

http://www.newvsol.com/

Quote from their website
'Quickscape is a comprehensive toolset for 3D Studio Max/ Max Design comprising over 40 unique tools and hundereds of high qaulity modelling assets. The software works seamlessly with 3DS Max, focusing on the creation of highways, external works and landscape, using design data from AutoCAD, Revit Architecture and Civil 3D.'

Jack Strongitharm

AutoCAD Civil 3D Object Enabler - Update 1

As with what is now called Update 1 rather than Service Pack 1, see Dominicks blog for the explanation to the change of name, the Object Enabler for Civil 3D has just been updated also.

This applies to:
AutoCAD® 2009
AutoCAD® Architecture 2009
AutoCAD® Electrical 2009
AutoCAD® Map 3D 2009
AutoCAD® Mechanical 2009
AutoCAD® MEP 2009
Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2009
Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2009
Autodesk® Impression 2009
Autodesk® NavisWorks® Manage 2009
Autodesk® NavisWorks® Review 2009
Autodesk® NavisWorks® Simulate 2009

One of the signicant changes is the support for Navisworks and its support of Civil 3D drawings and its objects such as pipes, structures and corridors etc. Using the Object Enabler means that you can clash against Revit, Revit Structure and other data in one true BIM environment. Make a change in Civil and simply hit refresh to see an instant update and the clash resolved.

Link to download page

Jack Strongitharm

Widening Part 1

Got a scheme like this and wondering how to go about it.

Scenario
Creation of a ‘Ghost Island’ to enable safe turning into side road

What we want to do is
• simply extend road surface levels to the new widened channel line and
• new kerbline,
• new footway and
• tie into existing ground with earthwork slopes.

We have a 3D survey drawing.

You need two reference lines from the survey, so you made need to string them together, or in this case I copied them out of the drawing, joined them up and brought them back.

You need two alignments, one is the inside channel line, so the line you copied and joined together, covert to 2D
The second alignment for the widening.

Convert the existing channel 3dpolyline to a Civil 3D alignment and ensure you don’t tick ‘add curves between straights’.

Next with the existing channel edge alignment, create a profile from your ground surface, (you can just click OK rather than draw it)

Next we create an assembly, for this we need a subassembly that probably won’t be in your toolpalette, there are a lot more than you think!

So goto the catalog icon
Select Metric or Imperial and then ‘C3D Rehab’

The subassembly we will use is the ‘OverlayWidenMatchSlope1’

This is written slightly different as it does not have a left or right option, so set the ‘Insert Point Offset’ to a negative value for ‘LEFT’ and a positive value for ‘RIGHT’.
The value does not matter as we will be targeting our widening alignment for the width, so just enter a value so it shows in the assembly view. Also set the overlay to 0, for no overlay to be applied.
Then add the next features you need such as a kerb, footpath and earthwork slopes to the assembly.

Create the corridor using the Existing Left Channel Edge – Alignment as the baseline for the corridor. Start and finish the corridor distance to the limits of your widening alignment.
Set the frequency similar to the image below and include any critical chainage points as required.
An option is only calculate at a regular chainage interval rather than at the surface profile geometry points, if desired.

Next go to the targets of the corridor, and you will see that you can target the overlay subassembly to the ground surface as this will check the levels along the corridor.

From the help file, you can see that the ‘Sample Point’ is what we target for the centreline (in this case our centreline is a 3dpolyline (2009 only) and the insert point is actually our existing left edge alignment that we based our corridor on.
The width is what we will target to our widening alignment.

Result!
Much easier than working out levels and drawing profiles manually!

You can now see the potential of subassemblies much more than just standard widths and slopes.
Try moving your alignment grips around with the corridor on ‘automatic rebuild’.
Also if you want the nice colour scheme to your corridor, that is applied from the code set style as material area fill, where the users of the UK and Ireland country kit template have it already setup.

A day’s work down to minutes, with flexibility for change!

In the next part I will go through how to overlay and refine the profile level design as maybe the existing crossfall of the road is deformed from heavy vehicles etc.

Jack Strongitharm

From the ground up 101 and SP1 for Civil 3D

My last post was actually the 100th post from this blog.
After a year and a half, I would like to thank everyone for reading with us and hopefully making use of some of our tips and tricks of some of those out of the box ideas using Civil 3D.

Well, some other good news, Service Pack 1 is now available for download.

Click here to the download site

Here comes the next 100 posts!

Jack Strongitharm

AUGI Design Academy UK 2008

Registration is now open for this years AUGI UK Design Academy.

Two days of expert classes on Autodesk products including of course AutoCAD Civil 3D.

I have three classes this year

(S1 - 5)Designing Turning Heads in Civil 3D®
(S5 - 2)Dynamic Civil 3D Blocks
(S6 - 3)Junction Jack is back (yes cheesy title, but I have some tricks up my sleeves)

Other Civil 3D classes

(S2 - 8)The CAD Engineers Guide to Creating Surface Models, Ground Profiles and Cross Sections
(S7 - 7)The Engineers Guide to Importing Survey Data and Creating a Ground Model
Instructor: Paul Lloyd-Smith

(S4 - 6)Importing and Manipulating LIDAR Data in AutoCAD® Civil 3D®
Instructor: Philip Madeley

(S5 - 8)High Level Civil Visualisation in 3ds Max for Civil 3D Users
Instructor: Bruce Harfield

(S8 - 6)Interactive 3D Visualization of a River Renaturation Measure
Instructor: Ruediger Mach

Of course there is classes on all of our other software, so plenty for everyone!

Click on the links below for information on what is happening this year

I look forward to seeing you there.

AUGI UK Design Academy Webpage

Jack Strongitharm

Another UK Star!

Take a read of the latest UK case study from ADL Highways in Bristol

Read case study

Points where Lines intersect

Hello everyone

Last week we got the question if it is possible to create Points where Lines intersect with each other.
After some thinking we came up with this solution, and it is possible right out of the box.

This might be used for several reasons. You might want to create COGOs or just to get Points for Surface creation etc.

If we use the Map command, "Drawing Cleanup" we can get markers where Lines intersect.
This is the way to do it:

- Start the command "_mapclean"
- Use "Select all" (or select manually, a Layer etc)

- For Cleanup Actions, select "Break Crossing Objects"
- In the same dialog, select "Interactive" at the bottom.

- For Cleanup Methods, select "Modify original objects"

- For Error Markers, select "Maintain markers when command ends" (Necessary!!). Choose a symbol.

- After Finish, you get this dialog. Don't miss to choose "Mark All"...

- ...and in the end you get a series of Blocks presented where the Lines intersect.

...and as you can see they are Blocks...

I guess similar methods using MapCleanup might help also in other cases.

Good luck cleaning! Cheers // Ove

Tools - fixes and enhancements

Hi there,

As time goes by there is always things changed and sometimes added in the world of software.
After what I know it is easy to miss out what is released regarding your daily tool (at least we hope it is ;-) I want to mention two things available to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009.

One of those is the "Scale List Cleanup Utility". This is not only for Civil 3D, but it is a necessary thing also for us...
Most of you, I guess, have seen a loooooong list of scales in the list in some drawings. This is not useful and sometimes a bit frustrating. Use this fix and the problem is hopefully history.

The other thing is the Object Enabler, AutoCAD® Civil 2009 Object Enabler

Remember to check out the page for Civil 3D on the Autodesk.com website.

Have a nice day! Cheers / Ove Cervin

A tool for the job - 2D to 3D

No a 2D flat drawing again!!!!

Yes I am sure you hate when this happens.
You are given a job to design and the data for the survey is 2D. There is nothing you can do as this is what the client has provided and to them, that is a survey has it has spot levels etc.

As we know there are some tools in Civil 3D to deal with the problem such as

Surface menu, Utilities and 'Move Text to Level'
This does simply read the text string and move it to that level. When you create a surface the point is the grip point of the text string.

Ok, so in the Map tools we can do a query on the drawing and aswell as doing the same task you can also move the text a specific distance.

But problem is that the survey drawing has had a number of manual edits such as moved text and rotation so that the drawing looks better.
This could be hours of going through the drawing trying to sort out the problem.

Luckily, as you know AutoCAD Civil 3D can be programmed by everyone and a large number of you make little macros and tools to deal with tasks like these.

A fellow user Will Forty has done such a task and has kindly given this tool to everyone on the Civil Community.
So I have loaded it up and here is the link

Link to the Utility

How does it work

Download the file from the link above 'NewExportPoints.dvb' to a location of your choosing

You can only do one type of block at the same time, so select a block and a text string near to it, right click and hit select similar, then go to Isolate and isolate selection

Type VBAMAN and click on load and find the file

Once loaded, highlight the tool in the list and click on VB Editor
This loads the VB editor and all you need to do is click on the play button

Select the block and hit 'Auto Associate'

You will see that is will draw a simple line in graphics to show which text string will be associated with each block.
You then need to confirm which ones you are happy with. Generally you will accept them all, so you can just select everything in display.

From this you will get a message to say that AutoCAD points have been generated.

So you now will have AutoCAD points in the position of the shot at the correct level.

Create your surface then from drawing objects and AutoCAD points!

Could be a huge time saver and ease the pain of poor survey files that are thrown on your desk (digitally of course!)

Have a good week

Jack Strongitharm

A tool for the job - 2D to 3D

Surface Labels - Slope and Grade

Hello friends!

Have you driven on Manhattan - or in Tokyo ? I have - now!

Why don't you try it out here...?

http://geoquake.jp/en/webgame/DrivingSimulatorGM/

and you might also want to try driving a truck/trailer...

I had some fun there ,-)

Our friendly colleague, Tomas Lendvorsky has created a few tips&tricks I'd like to share here.
The first one is on "How to set up a Surface Slope Label Style using Expressions" that makes it possible to present "0:0" on Horizontal Surfaces. Might seem easy, and you might try it out - getting "0:0" on a Run:Rise Label ;-)

Here's how Tomas did it:
As you can see in the following image the Labels on the upper right part present Horizontal areas as text "Horizontal" and on the other side of the Surface it present the grade with % (-5.7% in that case).
On the bottom left side the same data is presented with a new Label, presenting a Run:Rise info on the flat area (0:0).
To get this; follow the below steps.

Edit the Label Style.

Here it has the name "Slope 1: "

To make a short explanation on the following; What is done here is a Labels with three parts. A slope arrow, a text containing "0:0" and a text containing the actual Surface Grade.
Depending on the value of the grade (Expression) the Text Height for these Label parts are shown as really small, or normal. That way it LOOKS like it is presenting 0:0 on flat areas only, even if that text IS there also on non-flat areas - but VERY small. And the other way around; The text presenting the correct grade (value from the Surface) IS there all the time, but if the grade is flat, that text part of the Label is really small. That is the reason you will see double data on top of each other in the dialogs here.

Detailed: The Surface Label here has three parts (below):

The "Slope Text" contains information from the Surface but has a Text Height from an Expression (below) called "SlopeNotZero".

For the part of the Label presenting "Text Horizontal" the content is "0:0".
The Text Height is here (below) set to the Expression "SlopeZero".

The Expressions used in the Labels to get the proper Text height is done like this:
We have two Expressions.

Create these two Expressions.
Named: "SlopeZero"

...and named "SlopeNonZero"

Then use them as described above in the Surface Label.

Hope you'll get the idea. ;-)

Thanks Tomas for sharing this!

We have a few more nice tips from Tomas that will be shared here soon.

Cheers / Ove Cervin

AUGI UK Design Academy 2008

UKs answer to the Las Vegas AU event is back again for the second time.
You wont loose your shirt on the slots and tables anyway!

Mark in your calendars 25th ad 26th of September in Hammersmith, London.

Also if you are up for presenting there is still time to submit a proposal.

For more information click below

AUGI Design Academy 2008

The event covers all Autodesk products and CAD Management sessions for

AutoCAD®
Revit® Architecture
Revit® Structure
Autodesk® NavisWorks®
AutoCAD® Architecture
AutoCAD® Mechanical
Autodesk® Inventor™
Autodesk® Showcase
Autodesk® Alias Studio
Autodesk® Vault/ Productstream
AutoCAD® Civil 3D®
Autodesk® Impression
AutoCAD® Map 3D
Autodesk® Maya
Autodesk® 3ds® Max

So want to learn more in the UK, this is the place to be.
Registration starts from July 1st

It will be good to see you there.

Jack Strongitharm

UK and Ireland Country Kit 2009

Hot on the trail of Ove and the Swedish.

Finally we also have released the UK and Ireland Country Kit for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009.

Easiest way to find all the country kits is from the memorable weblink

http://www.autodesk.com/civil3d-countrykits

This includes

General template for UK and Ireland
Template for Irish Local Authorities
Template for importing OS Mastermap

Roads standards file for DMRB and NRA

The UK and Ireland Pipes Catalogue for Sewers for Adoption 6th Edition and Underground Utilities

Link to Microdrainage WinDES

and other suitable reporting outputs

So worth the wait.

Also there is a pdf file with a pictorial guide to what is in the country kit and please note the installation notes as it describes how to bring in the toolpalletes for the visualisation content that is not automatically shown in the British Language Version.

This kit is an evolving set, so please let me know what you think should be part of it and supply some examples.

Jack Strongitharm

UK and Ireland Country Kit 2009

C3D 2009 Country kit - Swedish

Hi all,
This has really been a fully loaded period in my calendar, but finally we're right ON track again - getting new stuff up here.

I just have to mention two things that has happened to me the last quarter;

First - I went skiing in Zermatt, Switzerland, during Easter holiday. There I found a slope named "cervino" on the Italian side of Matterhorn. Oh yes - "cervino" is my login name on Autodesk! Cool!

Second - I was recently on Iceland again, what a nice place to visit. BUT - beware!! I was, by group pressure, forced to eat of their traditionally SPECIAL food - ROTTEN SHARK! Don't ever try that...

I was there with Bruce Harfield from 3AM-Solutions. Bruce didn't really like the shark either...

If someone wants to try it out - check this:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/places/culture-places/food/iceland_rottensharkmeat.html
or http://www.simnet.is/gullis/jo/shark.htm

To the proper stuff - this week we are very happy to announce that the Swedish Country kit for Civil 3D 2009 is out on the Autodesk website for download:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7271531&linkID=9240698#2009

There are more CK coming out real soon... I do know my colleague Jack is desp.... to get the UK one out... ;-)

Downloaded Country Kits that can be added to your AutoCAD Civil 3D 2007, 2008, and 2009 installations giving you access to country- specific reports, templates, and much more.

Content varies by country and may include:
- Drafting and design standards (Civil 3D label and object styles)
- Design standards files for calculation of superelevation
- Drawing templates (AutoCAD .DWT Files)
- Sheet templates for Plans Production (AutoCAD .DWT files)
- Codes files to localize the point, link and shape codes for corridor models
- Reports

Below is what the page looks like (the links below can't be used from here as it is an image)

Getting back to you soon again

Cheers / Ove Cervin

GENIO Import Tool for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008/2009

Hopefully this is not necessarily new news to you all, as your Communication Centre in Civil 3D should have already alerted you to this new import tool for GENIO files into AutoCAD Civil 3D.

For those that have to deal with files from other design and survey companies etc that come in GENIO format you need a method to bring that into Civil 3D. Also if it is a design file that contains, surfaces and alignment and profile geometry wouldn't it be nice to actually have them converted to Civil 3D objects!

Well that is what this tool does!

GENIO files orginated from 'MOSS/Mx' and has been used in the industry for many years for transferring data with design and survey data.

So where do you get it, well this tool is for you guys that are on subscription as an additional benefit to what came in the box software.

You need to login into http://www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin and download it from there.

If you don't know your login details, please contact your IT department who looks after your Autodesk software and or your reseller who supplied you the software.

Finally want to watch a short webcast on how to use it?

Join me, next Friday 6th at 2pm UK time

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/autodesklearning/join?id=MF8HBK&role=attend

Add to my Outlook Calendar to help with time zones:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/autodesklearning/meetingICS?id=MF8HBK&role=attend&i=i.ics
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Another UK Civil 3D Star

I always like to share our users experiences from the UK and Ireland that really embrace Civil 3D.

We have a new case study from Bury Council (North West England) who have been making a difference to their civil designs making the best of AutoCAD Civil 3D to their working practices

Read their story and other like them by clicking on the image below

Jack Strongitharm

Drawing overviews

Hello everyone
Hope all has seen some sun by now, even Sweden has... ;-)

We are working on several Blog posts, me and Jack, that will cover a lot of the new functionality in the 2009 version.
To get something up here during this "working period" I thought of this nice tool to get an overview of all drawings open on you computer.
As all users of AutoCAD knows, there are several tools at the very bottom of the screen, OSnap, Ohrto etc etc. Now we have a few new ones again.
Check this one out;
If you have some drawings open like this (three in this case),

Check the bottom of the screen, to the right side. There is an icon showing a symbol like a "book".

When you click it you will get an fast overview of all drawings currently open, and also their Layouts etc shows above the drawing.

Hoover over the Layouts for the drawing and you will get it magnified - select it by clicking on it - or use the direct "Print" as seen by the icon in the image below. Nice tool.

Promise to be back soon with some more "Civil related" stuff here... ;-)

Cheers / Ove

Just when you thought I am finished with 2008

Most of the things you will hear from us from now on will be of course based around our new release 2009.

However we recognise that it may take some time until you all can follow.

So to keep my friends in the UK and Ireland going we have just released an update to the Country Kit for Civil 3D 2008.

So whats in it?

Pipes and Structures and plenty of them !

We now support Sewers for Adoption 6th Edition and manufacturers pipes and manholes types. Also including CAD linetypes, styles and colours.
Also to accompany the Microdrainage WinDES Link Tool a generic pipes and structures catalog, which is material independent and supports all the sizes required.
Finally to complete the set a collection of underground pipes and styles for underground utilities for gas, electric, telecomms etc

An example from Ramboll Sweden by Mats Ericsson of what can be done.

Next a new template file for Ireland for the local authorities that gives them familiar look and feel to what they are used to, all set as defaults and including the above pipe catalogs.

Finally for the UK, Ordnance Survey Mastermap template to assist in theming this newer mapping format to create maps as they were intended.

Download it from here

Jack Strongitharm

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009

Probably wondering where we have been on this for the last couple of weeks as our Civil 3D blogging friends have been revealing some of the new key features.

As Autodesk staff we have a different date we have to work to, but never mind.

So rather than just talk about the same features here is something cool and not obvious to your first glances. (i like these ones the most!)

Those that saw me at AU last year got an early look at these as we now have 3D content to aid visualisation in your 3D models.

They are designed as Multiview blocks (i.e. have a 2D display and a 3D display, similar to our Civil 3D styles)
This is so when plotting a drawing in plan you get a nice simple appearance, but when viewed in 3D you have a model.

2D

3D

Where do I find them?
Right click on the toolpalettes grey bar on the side and you can see the selection of 'MV Blocks'

There is four catagories

Highways, External Works and Landscaping

Also there are some simple Building footprints

These are all really a sample of what is possible as we could never give every single content type. But use them to create more realism and also copy what is there to change colours, image types for sign faces and even add a little model of yourself on a billboard to place in the scene!

There are plenty of hidden gems that are in this release and myself and Ove will help you explore these as you start with this great new version.

Jack Strongitharm

Corridors and Sections in separate DWGs

Yo!

This week we are in Vegas - trying our very best to spend every $ we have... No! ;-)
The event in Vegas is a great way to meet all partners, some customers and also colleagues from everywhere. Looking forward to a meeting on the Survey Topic. (Will be back here on that topic)

Some people asked about how to get the Corridor Cross Sections (Multiple Views) stored in a separate DWG. It is very common that users have all data in the same DWG, although we have Vault and Data Shortcuts.
Anyway - here is the way to do it:

Below is my design drawing, a lot of things in it.

Create a Data Shortcut (.xml-file) with at least the Alignment you need for your sections.

Open a new DWG and set the proper Scale in it.
Use the UI for Data Shortcuts again to bring in the Alignment as a Reference.
(Here is a Blog Post on Data Shortcuts in general)

Once the Alignment is in you will also have to XREF the DWG that has the Corridor in it.
Use normal XREF to bring it in (also works from Vault) and set it placed on origo 0,0,0

This looks a bit much in terms of needed graphics and I'll tell you how to make it a bit better here, on another blog post. (Fading Layers)

Well, once you have the Corridor DWG in - Create Sample Lines the normal way. If needed - use "Send to back" on the XREF to be able to select the Alignment more easily (or use right click).

Sample lines created!

Now you can create the Multiple Views - on a scale that is normal for those Sections.

Now all is fine - but to avoid having all graphics presented like this - see this solution.
There might be other ways as well to hide the Xref with the Corridor.

Hope is explains how easy it actually is... ;-)

// Ove

Corridors and Sections in separate DWGs

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

So here we are myself and Ove back in Vegas in the sunshine and away from dark days and rain!!

This week is the annual Autodesk conference OTC.

So while we are all in one place we tried to gather all the Autodesk Civil AEs together and some of the US resellers such as Mark Scacco of Engineered Efficiency from Chicago.

The great thing about Civil as I am sure as you as users/readers are finding is that we are all acting as one big worldwide club. Its great to share experiences and knowledge and it really pushes us all to a higher level.
There is so much in Civil 3D, we have not even started even one year on with this blog site.

The Civil 3D team from around the world

The godfather of Civil 3D, good job his wife does not read our blog as he will get in trouble, Dirty big cigars!!

More useful posts on their way!

Jack Strongitharm/Ove Cervin

Share Now - Civil3D on Autodesk Labs

Greetings everyone!

Back now from an internal trip at the ski resort Hemsedal, Norway. (Yes - I'm going to Zermatt as well, over Easter)
Hemsedal is a nice place. Go there on a vacation! ;-)
60°51'51.91"N
8°33'10.94"E

We rented a few motorized things and raced for while. I got cramp in my arms...

But the most fun machine was this one!! Not for rent, but I was allowed to try it out ;-) GREAT FUN!

Anyway - this night I got an e-mail from Autodesk Labs saying they have enhanced the "ShareNow" technology a bit.

It now supports all AutoCAD based products - also Civil 3D.

I tried it out (on my own risk of course...)
You have to log on to this page to get an free account,
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ShareNow/

Once downloaded and installed you get a small Toolbar in C3D.

Use it and it creates a DWF to be shared automatically.

It will also automatically bring up an web browser with a session that loads you design file.

You can zoom, pan etc

You can then Share the Session with others.

Set a Session name

An e-mail gets created...

Someone get an invite - and, yes I got it myself ;-)

Join the Session and you will see a list of participants (Graphics gets better than shown below)

All participants can zoom etc and also use the tools for Markup.

Some notes...

The markups gets saved in a list and if you "hover" over them you get "zoom to".

Give it a try - it's free... Just remember - it is a Lab thing...

Tomorrow I go to Las Vegas. It's "only" a 22 hour trip over three flight legs... I wonder how Sweden can be so "close" to all places...?

Cheers / Ove

Sorting Point Groups

Hello again,
Sorry I have been a bit quite... There is a lot coming up soon, which has been my focus for some time ;-)
Here in Sweden I can actually say now that it is not "pitch black" anymore in the morning when I head for office or airport. Nice! Spring will be here within a month, finally... one day with snow this "winter" in Gothenburg. Too bad.

Below I want to mention a way to handle Survey Points stored in Point Groups.
When I import a Survey .FBK and sort the Points in to several Point Groups I might want to use some Point Groups for my creation of a TIN, but not all.

As I have several Point Groups in the drawing I have to pick which one to be used for my Surface.

Include Point Groups for the Surface.

Selecting which Groups to get there. Imagine selecting ten, thirty or more Point Groups - not great...

Instead - create a separate Point Group first.
Call it "TIN", "TIN data" or something.

Under the Tab "Point Groups" you can select the Point Groups that will go in to this "major" Point Group.

Then it is much easier to select only one Point Group for the Surface.

Have a nice weekend! Cheers / Ove

Microdrainage WinDES Link for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008

This one is for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 and Microdrainage users in the UK and Ireland.

We have just realised an update to the Microdrainage WinDES Link tool that is part of the UK and Ireland Country Kit.

This update now has the ability to now import the .SWS or .FWS file back from WinDES and automatically updating all the pipe and structure properties in your AutoCAD Civil 3D model drawing.

Download this file from

www.autodesk.co.uk/civil3d-downloads

The installation will update the toolbox from the general menu with this functionality

Jack Strongitharm

Autodesk 2009 product range is coming!

Just in case you are not reading some of the other blogs.
Our AutoCAD bloggers are now at a point of been able to release some information on what is new in AutoCAD.

As CIvil 3D is based on AutoCAD, we all need to keep up with the new things that are coming our way.

Shann Hurley - Between the Lines

and of course

Lynn Allen

It won't be long until AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 is coming this way and the Dave and Dan Show Webcast with thousands of you clogging the internet around the world.

Fun!!

User Contours

Hello again,
Now back again from the Gunslinger Jack mentioned. That WAS an exiting week. I'm REALLY looking forward to all new things coming up... ;-)
I'm also looking forward to the Easter Holiday as I am a big fan of skiing downhill. I will go to my brothers place in Zermatt in Switzerland.

Anyway - here's a tip on something I didn't find myself. There's always tools and settings in C3D which is a little more hidden than others... A colleague mentioned where to find this. Thanks Peter Funk ;-)
If you have a Volume Surface (or general Surface as well) where you want to present custom/user defined contours to use for area calculations etc, here's a way to do that.

In this case the customer wanted to calculate the area for some volumes within a range.
Sample below shows a Volume TIN Surface.

As you can see this is presented with a Surface Style for Color analysis with a range.

To show also the contours for the very same range/interval you can do like this.
Go to the Surface Style for this Surface and turn on "User Contours" under the Tab "Display".

Then go to the Surface Properties and the Tab "Analysis".
Choose Analysis type "Elevations" - set color range.

Then select the Analysis type "User-defined contours" and set the interval where you want the contours to display.
Set range/interval

This will present your Volume Surface with also a Contour between the color ranges in the analysis.

Then you can use (Surface menu - Utilities), Extract Objects from Surface.

All Contours are now available for area calculation.

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers / Ove Cervin

Setting Out? (Stake out) - Part 1

Had some discussions with a user recently on how best to create setting out (stakeout) from their models.

So this next series of posts I will try to enlighten you to what is possible from the box as standard.

Corridor - Points and tables

So you have this lovely model and want to build it.
Contractor wants levels and coordinates every 10m on a straight and every 2m on curves on the junction.(yes junctions!)

You want to have the setting out information on the drawing.

Step one.

Temporarily adjust your corridor frequency to suit this criteria

Original

Set frequency

Main road adjusted

Junction area adjusted

Step two.

Go to Corridor menu and utilities

Export COGO

COGO Points are created in the point group with your default style

As the points are stored in a point group you can now change the style easy to just show a point number
Change the point style to display what you want or numbers in this case

Step three.

From the Points menu, select tables and select the point label style and also the point group that you saved your points to.

Result is a table for that feature line at the interval required.

Next you may want to have a specific table title so to link it with the feature line

Right click on the table and go to it properties. Copy the original table style with a new name

Click on the table title (POINT DATA) and enter a new table title.

Resulting table now has the new title

Next repeat the export for the kerb return alignments

For the junction area, when you export COGO, remember that the corridor creation is from the kerb return alignments, so the corridor feature line is actually the CROWN. Also here you can see that you can isolate a specific baseline alignment, rather than the whole corridor.

Step four.

Repeat the exercise for all the feature lines you want to create setting out for.

NOTE

This method creates points from your corridor, however these points are static, i.e. if your corridor is adjusted, your points and tables will not be updated
Therefore do this output when you need to and also name groups etc to suit the design state as a reminder.

Hope this helps.
I will show some other methods in future posts.

Jack Strongitharm

EMEA Gunslinger - Munich

This week in Munich in Germany we have had what we call a Gunslinger for the first time in Europe for Civil 3D.

This is where we get together a number of top users from various countries and also ourselves.
We then spend a number of days looking at the new features in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 and then design with them to test them out.

We had representation from countries such as Poland, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and more.

Also we had the Dave and Dan show(Dave Simeone, Dan Philbrick), Jessica Tar, Dave Blanchette from Autodesk US to guide us through it all.
The aim is to put everything into practice and to ultimately find any problems so that they can be addressed before release.

It has been a great week and we cant wait to discuss what is new to you.
However this will have to wait until March when we can officially release to the public.
It's not that far away.

Enjoying a small beer! (myself and Dan Philbrick)

(Dave Simeone, me, Ian McGregor, Marco Martens and Ove Cervin)

Finally a big thank you to all the users for taking out time for this event and to the companies that they work for.

Jack Strongitharm

There is another product in there you know!

Happy new year to you all!!

This blog is now one year old now! Thanks to all of you for keeping with us.

There is so much more to cover and we are nearing another version in April.
Myself and Ove are off to Munich ths week testing 2009 along with our other Autodesk AEs and also a number of top Civil 3D users from around Europe.

Anyway, we often dont really cover much on Map even though it is sat there in front of your eyes.

However one of my English colleagues, Greig Richardson, has created a blog site decicated to everything Map and also Mapguide.

Find it here

http://cad2gis.wordpress.com/

Jack Strongitharm

A few things

Hello.
The weeks are really running away... I have already a full calender until late April ;-) But I do prefer to have things to do, rather than the other way around...

First I'd like to mention that we have done a minor update to the .lsp regarding how to "Change Elevation" on contours, from Z=0 to a range of Z-values. That lisp had a slight "bug" in the header explaining that it was to "rotate blocks"... which it was NOT intended to. Anyway - I have updated the text in it now.
Here it is, again: Download file
For those of you who have not seen/used this earlier - here's the link to the original post:
http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/6/blogpost/7629/

And now - also for our german speaking/reading readers - a totally new version, only for you ;-)
Our german collegues has re-written it for your region and here it is: Automatische Höhenzuweisung - Download

Please enjoy!

Another small thing that I know people have asked about is why the arrows presenting slope/grade doesn't follow scaling in the drawing. Well - sorry, you have to set the length of them under Style. There might be a reason for it - who knows ;-)
Sample below - horrible large arrows on my parking.

Change under Surface Style and Analysis. Set color and length etc.

Gives a nicer look - or at least I think my parking looks more nice...

Until next time - have a nice winter time!
Cheers / Ove

Online Blocks

Ohla !
Hope you all had a REALLY GREAT Christmas !!

This will be a short tip on another part from Design Center that I'd like you all to be aware of.
Open up Design Center.

Starting up Design Center - as we did just before Christmas...

Select the last tab - DC Online

Browse down and check what categories you find in the list.

If we select, for example, 3D Architectural - Landscaping, we will see this:

As you can see there is an option to "Save this symbol as...."
You can also drag and drop the symbol straight in to the drawing.

It is an 3D object that can be nicely orbited.

...and another sample might be..

Put it in...

Now we have two new symbols for Landscaping drawings.

...and they are all for free.

Now we´re just about to go for a week in Munich - testing out next version, Civil 3D 2009. Looking forward to that... !!

Cheers / Ove

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 Cervin

Enhance your search for help

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

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

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!

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

Packing my bags for Vegas!

It's Friday!!

Happy thanksgiving across the pond!!

AU is now upon us and just getting the last things sorted here.
Any readers of this blog that are going please say hello if you see me around, will be great to meet you all.
I am there from Tuesday afternoon (after my 9 hour flight from Manchester)

I am presenting on Wednesday along with Ian McGregor, Pete Kelsey, Dominick Gallegos and Nick Zeeben (big team) at 3pm on the Vault class CV314-3P and my Visualisation class CV404-4 on Friday at 10am along with 225 of you. No pressure!!

To tie in nicely with my visualisation theme this year, you may remember my post about a third party application called Dynamite VSP and we had a seminar in October in the Netherlands.

They have just released V3.5 of the software which now supports AutoCAD Civil 3D model objects and transfers them straight into 3DS Max. This application on 3DS Max really leverages the AutoCAD Civil 3D dynamic model as it links to the changes and additions in the model.

Therefore model and visualise to a high end standard from the outset rather than last minute.

Dynamite is produced by 3AM Solutions and Bruce Harfield (Director) will be exhibiting at AU, so please go and check it out.

Below are some images and a link to a model that we produced within the 45 minute demo we gave in October, plus render time. We created the road design, surfaces and linework detail for bridges in Civil 3D and linked to Dynamite VSP to add the bridge structures, vehicles, signs and roadmarkings. Finally camera views and enviroments to create the final animations.
The cool thing is, if we changed the design in Civil, like we always do. All you have to do in Dynamite VSP, is reload the file that is linked into the model and all the details are dynamically updated. Sound like a familar concept?

Play the Video

See you in Vegas everyone who is going!

For everyone else have a nice weekend, enjoy your turkey those who are enjoying thanksgiving.

Civil regards

Jack Strongitharm

Help shape the way AutoCAD Civil 3D looks in the future

The Civil 3D Product Design Team is gathering a collection of pictures of Civil 3D in action to broaden our view of our customers’ work environment(s). We are looking for screenshot(s) that best captures your normal application setup, including things like: number and size of monitors, resolutions, chosen workspace, toolbar arrangement, palette setup, drawing real estate, etc. If you have more than one “normal” setup, please send them all. We will use these screenshots to aid our design decisions concerning the user interface of AutoCAD Civil 3D.

As a participant in this Project, we ask you to take a screenshot(s) of your working environment; preferably while you have a project/drawing open. (Note: If the project contains sensitive material, please use a non-sensitive project or scale the model so vulnerable details can’t be seen. Autodesk respects the confidentiality of our customers and will only use your screenshot as a part of our internal design process.)

How to Submit the Screenshot?

Send images to: c3dscreenshot@autodesk.com;
• On the Subject line of your email please specify the following:
• Product, release (e.g. “Civil3D 2008”);
• Number of monitors (e.g. “2 monitors”);
• Your Country/product language (e.g. “Australia/English”);
• (Optional) Your firm’s name (e.g. “Autodesk”)

EXAMPLE:

Here are a couple ways to make a screenshot (the instructions are the same if you are using a single monitor or dual monitors):
• Using Outlook. With the Autodesk application active, hit the Print Screen (PrtSc; Prt Scr) key on your keyboard. Paste the screenshot directly in the message pane of Outlook.
• Using a word processing program or image editor. With the Autodesk application active, hit the Print Screen (PrtSc; Prt Scr) key on your keyboard. Paste the screenshot in an image editing program such as Paint or Photoshop. You can also paste the screenshot directly into Word. Save the file as a BMP, PNG, or if using Word, DOC. Attach to an email and send to: c3dscreenshot@autodesk.com

Thanks for your support!
~ The Civil 3D Product Design & Usability Team

Jack Strongitharm

Help shape the way AutoCAD Civil 3D looks in the future

Changing Styles

Little tip here that you may have missed in 2008 to date.

In the UK and Ireland Country kit I had made some styles to make it easier to understand your design, one being an alignment style that shows the elements in different colours.

However when it comes to plotting a drawing you probably don’t want fancy colours, just a black pen with thickness and a linetype.
For this I have a plotting style, which is also bylayer for xref purposes etc.

So when it comes to plotting your drawing you may have quite a number of objects that you need to change the style and the last thing you want to do is click on each of them to change the style.

Luckily there is a way, like everything!

In the prospector, if you click on the alignment object, the alignments are listed in the table below.

You can select the alignment list by holding the left mouse and windowing them in and the other conventions of holding shift to pick the first and last and or ctrl and picking them individually.

Then right click on the style tab and you will see ‘edit’. Hit that and you will get to choose a style.

Hey presto all changed.

This method applies to all Civil objects, so is a real easy way to get organised.

Jack Strongitharm

The first AUGI UK Conference and Civils 2007 Show UK

Just come back from the first AUGI meeting in the UK which was a real good success.
A good turn out from the Civil users who I think got a lot from the two days.

Thanks to my co presenters, Lucy Kuhns, Carl Alford and Philip Kelly.
I hope to see more of you next year.

This week it is the NCE Civils Show at Earls Court.
We have a little stand at the front door, so please come and say hello.
The show is on until Thursday

‘Civils is the UK’s largest exhibition to encompass the needs of the civil engineering industry while reflecting on opportunities available within the sector. Civils 2007 once again has a great focus on networking, responding to the way this industry likes to do business. ‘

There will be regular presentations from myself and Carl Alford on AutoCAD Civil 3D, Navisworks and customer presentations.

To find out more and register visit
http://www.civils.com/

Jack Strongitharm

Fading Layers

Hello there,
This week I'm traveling in the Baltic countries, up north where the snow actually is on the ground already!
Nice to meet new people (Channel partners mostly) and share ideas and know how etc.
Today's topic is on a subject I know some people have discussed. When you create a set of Cross Sections (Multiple Views)...

...in a separate drawing, using Corridor Xref, the drawing could look a mess in the Model Space. This because you get the whole drawing presented from where you have stored the Corridor. (Section Views at the upper right in picture below)

Of course you put your Sections in a "blank spot", but if someone else Zoom out they will see the whole set with graphics. To make them/you easily understand "Don't touch this - it's not supposed to!" you can do this:

Put the Xref containing the Corridor on a separated Layer. In my example I have created a layer called "_off".
Load the ACAD "Dashboard" using the command "dashboard". This gives you a nice little place on screen where you can add frequently used commands and keep them nearby.

Load the commands for "Layers" by clicking in the Dashboard "menu" at the bottom right.

Now you have the Layer settings (below). Note the small double arrows pointing downwards.

As I mentioned, my Xref with Corridor, is placed on the Layer called "_off".

Now, click this button in the Dashboard for Layers, wait a second and the drag the slider to 90%.

Voila - the Xrefs are almost gone. This way you can't try and edit the Xref by mistake.
Note the small red Sample lines left untouched at the bottom left. (and of course the Cross Sections at the top)

There is also another way to do the same.
Use the command "Layiso" as below:

Command: LAYISO
Current setting: Hide layers, Viewports=Vpfreeze
Select objects on the layer(s) to be isolated or [Settings]: s
Enter setting for layers not isolated [Off/Lock and fade] : l
Enter fade value (0-90) <90>:

Cheers / Ove C

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

Change of terms?

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

Surface breaklines

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

Updated - Elevations on contours

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

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

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

Start as you mean to go on!!

As you may know part my role at Autodesk is to see people like yourself and help you adopt Civil 3D, this is part of the reason why we setup this Blog site, environmentally friendly (less paper to print).
From my travels though I see some small common mistakes in first projects when first getting started.
So this week I have listed a quick check list, just to make sure we are all on the same page.

1. Have you installed the Country kit for your country?

We make these kits for you to get you started from the word go and gets you at least the majority of the drawing requirements you will need. (Go to Country Kit downloads)

2. Start from the template file from the country kit.

For the UK and Ireland you should have a file called _Autodesk Civil 3D 2008 UK_IE Bylayer.dwt

3. If using a 3D drawing

Insert your 3D survey drawing into this file. One thing to check is that you don’t get strange scaling from drawings. If it says ‘Feet’ and you are working in meters it will scale it. To avoid this completely, set the INSUNITS value to 0, then no scaling will take place

4. If you use points

Create the surface directly from the point file rather than importing the points as COGO points, Civil has to keep the point data labels upto date, so will require memory. If you need to see them in a certain way refer to the next step.

5. Once you make a surface from the survey data save the drawing.

Rather than starting a design here create a ‘datashortcut’ to this surface (as described in an earlier post by Ove, Go to Blog). Start a new drawing and create a reference to this surface. This will dramatically reduce the active drawing size. It is just like XREFs, you wouldn’t include all your 2D mapping data would you? This will reduce your active drawing sizes.

6. XREF the survey drawing in as a background

Even better is to create a flattened survey drawing and XREF this one, as the file size will be much smaller and also you will find it easier to work with for AutoCAD tasks (non coplanar etc)

7. Create cross sections outside the main model drawing

This gives you chance to have a different horizontal scale but also will mean that the drawing has to update all the sections at the same time. The sections can be made by a ‘datashortcut’ to the base alignment and then XREF the model drawing into the drawing file that you want the sections drawn. They will always be dynamic. (Refer to my enhanced cross sections document, go to post ). )

8. Name civil objects properly

You have the ability to give good sensible names, so try to name them in a way so it is clear what is what and also just in case you are off ill, someone else can see to it and not have to drag you from your pit watching trash tv.

9. Work with simple surface styles

Do you need to see contours displayed for the background surface at all times. It will increase general speed but also make your display much clearer and easier to work with.

10. If you have lots of regions in corridors, maybe you are not designing most efficiently. Use alignments to control width offsets (you can offset an alignment to give a polylines and then convert to an alignment). Also do not put everything in one corridor, try to break them down into logical sections. Use a large frequency to begin with and refine when you need.

Finally keep reading here as we will always point you in the right direction and post comments and we will always try to answer.

Excuse the lack of piccys this week

Until next time

Jack Strongitharm

Changing widths on sample lines

Hi there.

Summer is over and the Calendar is fully booked. I guess you are aware of that kind of situation...

Today I just wanted to highlight a small "button"might not have been recognized. This is for changing the Sample Lines swat width.

When you're setting up the Sample Lines for your Alignment/Corridor you might (as I normally do) use the "From corridor stations" function. This is great and fast.

When those sample lines are in place you might notice they are far to wide.

Before dismissing the toolbar for sample lines - use this one, "Edit swath widths for group..."

Fast and easy!

You might have seen it before but I wanted to make sure all is aware now!

Have a great weekend! Cheers / Ove

Las Vegas comes to the UK and Birmingham - AUGI UK

Yes Birmingham England!!, less reasons to burn your hard earned cash I guess on the slot machines and tables in Vegas.

This year the AUGI UK has setup a big meeting on the 13th and 14th of November at the The Hilton Birmingham Metropole.

This event is similar to that of AU as it will have classes for all types of industry using Autodesk based products.

For Civil 3D, I am personally presenting two classes

WORKSHOP 6: 14 Nov 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Course Number: S6-3 INFRASTRUCTURE CIVIL 3D
Title: Intersection and Roundabout Design

WORKSHOP 8: 14 Nov 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM
Course Number: S8-3 INFRASTRUCTURE CIVIL 3D
Title: Visualisation Techniques in Civil 3D 2008

Also my colleagues Lucy Kuhns and Pete Kelsey from the US will be presenting.

Also I gave a colleague of mine Joe Wright a little push on this one so please support him as it is very well done on 64bit technology. This one does of course clash with mine, but choose your weapons!

WORKSHOP 8: 14 Nov 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM
Course Number: S8-7 EDUCATION AND CAD MANAGEMENT
Title: Learning Lessons Toward the 64-Bit Revolution

I look forward to seeing you there please use the link below for more information and registration

LandXML version

Hello all!
Some time ago I heard that a customer had faced an issue discovering what happens when you import a LandXML-file from Civil 3D 2008 in to a DWG with version 2007.
If you do this - be aware that the version of LandXML exported from Civil 3D 2008 is "LandXML 1.1". This format is slightly different from earlier "LandXML 1.0". But what really mattered for this customer was that the file includes information that it comes from Civil 3D 2008.

When they imported this LandXML-file to a DWG version 2007 it was converted (locked to) DWG 2008 file format.
Not strange - but please be aware if you in your office are running a project set to use DWG 2007 file format with applications based on 2007. If you import a newer LandXML they will become 2008 DWG's.
Confusing? ;-)

Cheers! / Ove

Crossing Pipes in Profile View

Hi all,
It has been some interesting weeks lately. Lot's of contact with users hearing their experiences with the software and their projects.
It has also been a lot of traveling, which sometimes causes my wife to complain ;-) Last week though I bought a nice box of pink colored, champagne tasting chocolate! Success!! ;-)

Anyway - this weeks tip will be on how to easily present Pipes in a Profile View using a Style Override.
Some people has not discovered the built in functionality in the dialog for Profile View Properties.
If you want to present a Profile where you have some crossing Pipes these can have a style presenting only the Pipe "circle". To assign this style the "easiest" way here's how to do:

Below is an area with a few pipes.

Here's a designed blue line (Alignment) that will get a Profile View where the Pipes are crossing.

When you create a Profile View for the Alignment you get the option to select Pipe Networks to be displayed.
If you here choose the "Select parts from screen" you can pick networks.

The advantage to do it this way instead of just tick mark the boxes in the dialog is that you get the Pipe Network objects visual in detail. Then you can uncheck the Structures and thing you don't want to see in the Profile View.

This gives you a Profile View with "your settings" and in my case the Profile View looks like this. Here's the crossing Pipes drawn with standard Style. This is not what I want.

If we then pick the Profile View and select right click "Profile View Properties" and the tab "Pipe Networks" it looks like this dialog.

The purpose here is to use the function "Style Override" for the Pipes. If we here select "Style Override" the selected style affects these Pipe objects - but only in this Profile View! (You don't want to change your ordinary settings "Properties" for the Pipe Network to have a style "Crossing" because that would affect all Profile Views that presents that Pipe Network)

Now the Profile View looks like this. Crossing Pipes.

Until next week - stay put!

Cheers! / Ove

Enhanced Cross Sections

Ok, I left it a little while until this post, but I am sure you will appreciate what I am delivering this week.

I dropped a couple of themes last time to what I would be covering over the next couple of posts and this week it is 'Enhanced Cross Sections'.
Nick Zeeben on Wicked Cool Stuff Blog (Link to pages) a couple of weeks ago went through some of the basics, but here is it all packed up and ready to go!

For the UK and Ireland and a lot of other countries out there we need more in our cross sections and also in the bands.

The document below is a step by step workflow on how to get setup.
Autodesk Civil 3D 2008 Enhanced Cross Sections.pdf

You will need the UK template file, so either use the Official Country Kit at this location
or if you are not from the UK and Ireland, here is my template.
_Autodesk Civil 3D 2008 UK_IE.dwt

Within the document it tells you which styles you will require, so you can drag them across from this template and into your own. (If you are not sure on how to do this please let me know on the comment log below and I can post that next)

Also required is a toolpallete, this we could not include in the Country Kit this time, but is an essential part of this workflow.
UK_IE Drafting Tools Pallete

Installation instructions are provided in the document.

Have fun.!!!

Thanks to Joerg Pipo and Peter Funk for the original concept and clever stuff!!

Until next time

Jack Strongitharm

Copying an Assembly

Hi everyone,
After a long vacation I'm back again and now I'm really looking forward to create a new presentation for our customers in C3D. I have so many ideas but so little time... ;-) Luckily things are quite fast to create in C3D...
I'm also working on a real project for roundabouts that's quite interesting. Always good to keep up with a proper project - not only demonstrations...

Anyway - after this summer we have now our hands on SP1 for C3D and I guess many of you have installed it.
One thing that I have noticed and heard is the occasional problems with "How to copy an Assembly".

If you have an Assembly on screen (containing parts of several Subassemblys) you might have noticed that these get's "arrayed" or "splitted up" if you copy them using "Copy" command?
The same happens if you drag a complete Assembly from the "Tool palette".

To get this properly done - here's the way to do it:
Save the complete Assembly in the Tool palette (as a Block) and make sure you have NOT marked "Explode" under Properties for that one.

If you explode it once inserted in the drawing it stays just fine.

If you're using "Copy". Make sure you select the Assembly marker when selecting. Not a "Window crossing" etc.

I have heard (but not yet checked) that the SA has to be created after SP1 was installed to behave like this.
I'll check that and get back here with an update.

Hope it helps someone ;-)

Cheers / Ove C

Team Building!

This week we had a gathering of the UK Technical AEs for Civil 3D.
Also with a Go Karting session, my interpretation of Team Building! or just plain old fun.

Paul Lloyd Smith of CADAssist was fastest, but at the cost of fracturing Trevor Claytons rib by bumping him of the track!. Bad lad!
My style was drifting, as my rear assisted in this way.

We had our usual techy brainstorm and looking at how to achieve certain results, Some of which have been already posted on this blog.

However some new things

Widening and layby design, use of offsets and temporary corridor surfaces

Advanced cross section labelling and displays

Adding channel levels to a profile

I will post these ideas here in the coming posts.

Jack Strongitharm

Reusable Surface Levelling and the Big 50

No not age just yet but this is the 50th edition of this blog site!

A big thank you to everyone who has been reading with us since the start of the year and absorbing the information that Ove and myself have been posting.
Also a big thank you to Chris Berends for his initial participation and creation of the concept with me over a glass of red wine !

Here's to the next 50 !! Cheers

As I have shown in earlier posts you can show the areas of cut and fill using a Tin Volume Surface and applying two ranges and specify levels for colour shades.

Using the same technique you can show a range of dig and or fill layers, just levels for depths and fills etc.
So wouldn’t it be nice if you could save those ranges to use again on the next job?

Well now you can!!

A developer in Germany called Udo Huebner has created a LISP routine that does the trick.
To get hold of this use the link below into the Community Site to access the file from the Utilities section of the site.

Download the Utility

To operate the tool use the following commands

TransferElevations, ExportElevations and ImportElevations

Export

Changed the ranges and then import from the file

Result

Text file editing

100mm Layers to the first 1m and then beyond

This will start to make your minds tick, any of you who deal with volumes day to day

Jack Strongitharm

AutoCAD Civil 3D Visualisation and Beyond

This week I have been with a long time developer of 3D Studio this week working on a Visualisation Seminar we are setting up for October in Holland.

(Bruce Harfield (3am Solutions), Peter Ingels (Prodesk) and myself)

Bruce Harfield of 3am Solutions, has an application for 3D Studio called Dynamite VSP, which can dynamically create visualisations to a very high level from 3D model data.

Later this year, Dynamite VSP will support the AutoCAD Civil 3D objects models to be able to create bridges, roadmarkings, object placement and of course the ground and corridor surfaces. However when it comes to a design change all you need to do is a quick export out of Civil and Dynamite can rerun the visualisation settings and positioning which in turn will automatically bring the visualisation upto date.

Recent developments also have brought in true traffic simulations from traffic design models to fill and animate the vehicle objects placed in the scene.

The conference will explore the possibilities of AutoCAD Civil 3D and Dynamite VSP working hand in hand with live demonstration by myself and Bruce using this new link and also presentations from existing users and experts in the field.

To register for the event please click the image below.

If you are unable to attend, 3am Solutions will be exhibiting at AU in Las Vegas this year in November.
Please pay them a visit.

Jack Strongitharm

Service Pack 1 and UK and Ireland Country Kit

This week a good size chunk of the UK went under water with some major flooding.
It has been raining here for about two months solid but rather than the normal rain we normally get it has been heavy short storms.

I guess we will be designing some major drainage defences for the rest of the year.
Please bring back some sun, it is supposed to be summer!!!

As the title of this post suggests Service Pack 1 has been released.

This service pack has sorted a number of minor niggles out which you can read in the readme that is also on the same page.
This pack does not include anything for AutoCAD at this stage.

Download the AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 SP1

Also for everyone in the UK and Ireland, the country kit is now ready and available.
This is an installable that installs to the British version of Civil 3D.

Download the UK and Ireland Country Kit

Included is the main template file, road superelevation standards to DMRB, quantity takeoff styles, reports and the utility to export to Microdrainage 'WinDES' drainage software.
There is also a PDF file that show exactly what is in the template file, so you can see all of the styles before you use them.

Please use this a base for your own company standard.
Everything is 'bylayer' so you can change colour, linetype and on/off in the layer manager.

If you already have your own template file from earlier versions, you can always drag the new feature styles from this one to your own when in Master view in the settings tab.

Please use this kit as it is designed for you and to get to started in Civil 3D straight away.
It is a constantly developing kit (why it is on the web) so look for future updates from this blog!

Jack Strongitharm

Above and below the ground

This week I have been at the Transport 2007 conference in London and met Robert Strongitharm.
Yes, someone with the same surname! Not many of us around you know.
Don’t think we are related in any way.

So as you know probably know, we have pipes in our Civil 3D program.
But most people take these as being just drainage as it says pipes on the menu and buttons etc.
But if you think a little outside the box they can be so much more.

So if you look at the menu you have ‘Create Pipe from Object’, i.e. from a polyline.

Nowadays you can either hire a utility survey company or buy equipment to radar scan the ground.

Such a device

If you create 3D linework from these measured points you have the line and level of the underground utilities.
Then using this tool, create the pipe, cable gas main etc from the line.

When you sample through an alignment you get the option to add the pipe networks.

There you have it. A full understanding of what lies beneath.

Does it clash, require diversion etc. It is one way of ensuring at the very least that your scheme will not have any hidden mysteries when those digging machines get out there and your neck is on the line. Diversions can take months to arrange, let alone divert them.

Lets just move my tram line route away from the pipeline

Now let’s reverse the idea!
Overhead powerlines.
When using plant on site near over head cables, contractors need to ensure safety on site and erect gantries etc to restrict plant usage in these areas.
The pipe models do not necessarily need to be below ground.
Using the same technique I captured these measured cable lines to create cross sections very quickly.

I hope this gives you all some ideas.

Even if you don’t have the 3D data for the utilities, you can always drape the lines from the plans you receive to the ground surface and then sink them using the ‘Feature Line’ level editor to the position that they should be for a least a guide. Better than nothing!

Civil regards

Jack Strongitharm

Hidden gem when selecting Points

Hi
Another day in the rainy city - here's the report from Gothenburg in Sweden.

We got a tips the other day mentioning how to more easily select Points when using "Surface/Edits/Delete Points"
Here's my Surface showing included Points.

Normally when you use this function to Delete points you are prompted to select them one by one on screen. This can be a bit time consuming if you have more than 5-6 points.

What was mentioned to us was that if you at this stage "Select points" type "C" on the Command line you get into the "normal" selection options where you can use "Crossing", "Window", "Fence" etc

Resulting Surface

Thanks for sharing this tips with us.
See you in a few days Cheers / Ove

Visualisation for Engineers

This week I had a request for some AVI's from Civil 3D.
I did not really have much to my kit bag.
The other thing in my mind is that I have been accepted to present a class at this years AU on Visualisation (Friday November 30th)

So maybe time to have a quick look at what I could do. As you have potentially read in this blog I have already written a couple of posts on creation of your design to suit render materials, setting up a camera etc. But to date nothing on the camera fly through.

It is not a big deal at all.

From your model just go to 'View' menu and 'Motion Path Animations'

Select a line you want to run your camera down (it should be a 3D one unless you want to look at nothing) and secondly you can select a point on your model to look at or another path to follow your eye to.

Then, choose the duration of the video on that path and you will see that it will calculate the number of frames you require.

Visual style, to begin with to test how it will look, you can choose a wireframe or realistic visual style. When we create the video, it can take a while if we go with the full render (like an hour). But choosing a CAD visual style it will take upto a minute. This then you can review the output before committing to tieing up your computer for an hour or so.

Choose the video type, WMV works fine for computer video, but if you want to use this video and add titles, put on a DVD etc, choose AVI. AVI is a much bigger file.

Finally resolution/video size. For test again use something small, but to be honest 640x480 is enough anyway for most uses.

Below is some output that I made this week with very little effort from the model I had already made or the Golf course I got from one of our partners in Sweden (Man and Machine, Thomas Nilsson).
Each photo links through to a seperate webpage with a flash video. The video is small in size and time so that they stream to your pc quickly.

My class at AU will go into detail on what we need as an engineer to create good visualisations with of course as little effort as possible. As engineers this is currently the last thing either our mind, or potentially the managers mind due to time and cost restraints. Dont forget though that we are designing a 3D model and just by viewing it in 3D, with a realistic style and a couple of 3D object blocks it can look very real in next to zero time.

This is until perceptions change and that really this is a very important part to any design work as you should experience your design before it is real (it is an Autodesk marketing slogan, but it totally correct). Also it can make the scheme happen as you need to prove to either client, public or planning departments the impact that the design has and on the surrounding area.

Jack Strongitharm

CUI Screen resolutions

Hi
Tip of today will be on using the possibility to change settings on the CUI to easily manage your different screen resolutions.
I do frequently switch between the resolutions 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 and every time I switch I have to move/modify all dialogs on screen in Civil - Toolspace here, Catalogs here, command line at bottom and so on.
Then I noticed that a solution to that is setting up a set of CUI where I can easily switch and all toolbars etc will automatically go to the proper place.

In the screenshot below you can see the toolbar where it says "Civil 3D Complete". Click on the arrow next to it and you'll see all pre-set settings to choose from.

In my case I have created a few called "C3D OC ....." where I have different settings depending on what I want to have available when using different resolutions on my screen.

Use the "Customize..." at the bottom of this drop down list.
After that is done (created your own pre-set of CUI) you might consider changing "Workspace settings" (below)

Here it's a good idea to have "Automatically save workspace changes" turned on. Otherwise the program will not save your changes if you turn on a toolbar etc in your session.

Hope that will help someone saving a couple of seconds now and then... ;-)

Have a nice weekend! // Ove C
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Disclaimer: The opinions and material on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Autodesk’s positions or opinions

Countryficated Profile Views

Hi
Last week I spent in Prague working together with some skilled people to get our Swedish Countrykit finalized.
During the evenings (there's always an evening after work - but it might sometimes be a really short evening...) we spent some time in a nice restaurant. They served really nice meat... Like that! I can definetely recommend Prague for a vacation trip. A lot to see and explore.

This post is a highlight on how really flexible C3D actually is. Yes - I know there are some limitations to it, but in general the program is far more flexible than most others I've seen so far.
Yes - I have not seen all... ;-), but quite a few though.

Please have a look and see how different it can be. This is also a reason why some people might see things in the product and think "Why is this here - we don't use that", or "Why does it work/draw that way?". In some regions it might be useful to have that specific workflow, setting or feature to be able to create what they need. C3D is really a global product.
Below is a bunch of samples showing how different Profile Views looks in different countries. They have all been modified using the local countrykits.

Austria
View image

France
View image

Germany
View image

Italy
View image

Sweden
View image

Switzerland
View image

UK
View image

If you're interested in some of the Profile Views - let us know and we might be able to send you a template with the styles.

Until next week... Have a good summer! Cheers / Ove

UK AutoCAD Civil 3D Stars

So, it seems that I am sat in airports at lot at present (Prague) when doing these blogs.
Time is short and about to move house yet again.

So I would like to highlight the stars of the show so far in the UK and Ireland. I work very closely to our Civil 3D user base and success is priority number one.

These are some guys that have jumped straight onto Civil and have also built their designs, which is the ultimate test for any software to prove itself worthy.

Landscope Engineering- Surveying

Download file
M Design - Housing estates, roads, drainage

Hartlepool Borough Council - Junction redesign and car parks

RES - Wind Farms, access roads

A big thank you to all that have let us write about them to date and also the number of stories that are coming to press very soon.

Until next time

Jack Strongitharm

Drawing Tips - hidden feature

Hello again,

Yesterday we were in the office outside London (Farnborough). In the evening we went to a small place called Fleet. For some reason the weather went "tropic like" when we were going to the hotel and a heavy thunderstorm were coming in. A LOT of rain... We got W-E-T. Actually the streets were flooded. The drainage in that are could really need some upgrade... But the food made us feel much better soon after. And what is some rain? - some people would really love to have more rain...

When we were working on the beta version of C3D 2008 some of us noticed a nice feature when doing design on the Alignment or Profile. That functionality later in the beta period disappered.

This little thing has been presented on Dave and Dans Blog (The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show) earlier and can be found here.

The reason I'm adding it again is that I think a lot of people have not seen it. ;-) ...and hopefully my small images can explain even more what this actually does.

What I mean is the nice little "marker line" that traced your section in the Profile View when you were moving the cursor along the Alignment in Plan view.
That feature setting is still in C3D 2008, but as a "hidden command". It will probably be more developed before it becomes a standard public command. But it IS nice already...
The use of this "feature" is what's displayed in the screenshots below.
First is a shot showing Plan and Profile View.

You can see the cursor in Plan. What is interesting is that the Section is presented as a black line also in the Profile View - simultaniously. This is all in the same View in the drawing.
Command: ShowDrawingTips

Next shot is presenting the other way around, cursor in Profile View also presents a Section line in Plan at the same time!

The last screenshot presents an alternative setting for the command;
Command: ShowDrawingTipsFull
This gives a simultane line in all Views if you move your cursor. In the image below I have three views presenting Section, Plan and Profile. If the cursor is in any view you get a line/marker/leader in all the other views.
I have the cursor in Section view (top left) and the line is following in Plan and Profile View.

View image

To turn the command off; use: Command: HideDrawingTips

Try it out and decide for yourself.

Until next time - have a great one! Cheers! / Ove C

---
Disclaimer: The opinions and material on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Autodesk’s positions or opinions

Sat in Cork Airport - Adding features to your cross sections

So I have a couple of hours to kill in Cork airport after finishing my short tour around Ireland this week.
The Guiness was good by the way in the Gravity Bar in Dublin!

Funny how most pictures of me are with a pint! I dont always drink you know!
(from the left, Brian, Seamus, John and me Jack)

Anyway back to the Civil stuff

So here is a little area in Civil 3D that has been there from the last version (2007) and probably has been missed by most people, including myself to be honest!

Within cross sections you can show where other alignments live on your cross sections. But if you think about it and look at what else is enabled is that you can also drop a block in the cross section/s.

Here is how you do it

1. If you want say a fenceline shown, convert a polyline into an Alignment for your fences

2. Go to a cross section and its properties and go to the Gradient Profile Lines tab.
Here you can see that you can add alignments

This will now draw a vertical line on the section to where those alignments are within your section

3. To be able to drop in a block on the ground you need to create a profile for your fencelines

4. Then go back to your section and properties. Remove the alignments and then readd them and you will find that profiles have been added and also that you can choose a marker

If you have not looked at markers before, they are used through the program for labelling.
The basics are that you can choose a cross, circle etc for a simple symbol but also you can choose to use an AutoCAD block that you can draw yourself

In this case I have drawn a simple fence post and 3 rails

5. Then when you say OK, you will find that your section now has the blocks shown and on the surface

( a bit zoomed in to save your eye sight)

Now, if you want to update these to all your sections, in 2008 you can now change anything about them very quickly.

Go to your sample line groups in the propector and right click into properties

You could easily apply this technique to draw on other features such as lighting posts, walls etc.
Just because it says an alignment does mean that is only what it can do. Think outside the box and how you apply the tools, or just keep watching this blog.

By the way, if you move the alignments for the fences, rebuild the corridor and the fence blocks will move on the sections.

You may notice that my cross sections have good text labels in the bands at the positions I need them at.
My colleague, Joerg Pipo in Germany found a great way to make cross sections better.
So I will try to explain this technique in the coming posts.

Good weekend to you all, time to check in to go home!!

Jack Strongitharm

Using Data Shortcuts

Hi all,
After what I've heard more and more people are getting interested in how to share data. Most of the same people are not really in line with the thought of getting in to the Vault stuff yet (I'll get you there... ;-) )

Here's the short and simple way to handle your shared data through Data shortcuts.

If you have a project drawing like this one, with a road, some surfaces and a pipe network, you might want to reference some of it in to another drawing.

First - go to the menu "General" at the top.
Select "Data Shortcuts" and "Edit Data Shortcuts..." in the menu.

This will bring up the "Data Shortcuts Vista". At the top you'll find some buttons where you can import, export, create, validate etc all shortcuts in the actual drawing.

Below I have created a few Data Shortcuts to my Surfaces, an Alignment and a Pipe Network using the button "Create data shortcut by selection". Pick the object on screen.
This will get you a list/set of Data Shortcuts.

Then use the button "Export data shortcuts to file", or rightclick on data shortcut and select "Export to file..."
When saving the XML-file with information on the data shortcuts, make sure you give it a good name. A suggestion is using something containing a project number, a site name or something to understand.
Then open your new drawing where you want your data.
Open the Data Shortcuts Vista through the General menu.
Use the button "Import data shortcuts from file".
When you have the shortcuts in the Vista window - rightclick on the object you want to reference. Select "Create reference...". (or use the button "Create reference")

Now we have the referenced data in the drawing. Of course you can have what ever style you want on the data - it IS Civil 3D after all... ;-)

Best regards / Ove C

---
Disclaimer: The opinions and material on this Blog are my own and do not necessarily represent Autodesk’s positions or opinions.

Draping photos on buildings

Something a little more AutoCAD based this week.

The other week we had a little extra event in Salzburg where we sent people out with a camera to take pictures of buildings in one of the squares there and to then drape those photos in AutoCAD Civil drawing in about 5 minutes or thereabouts.

We had the square laser-scanned by Leica Geosystems, and aswell as creating a high end model that we used in a presentation along with Civil 3D. They also set up some very simple 3D faces for just the building facades so to simply apply a photo.

From the links below is a pdf file with some very simple instructions on how to do it.
It is not the only way but it is just a simple way I thought of to just put your Civil design into context.
Also below is a Civil 3D 2008 drawing and photographs to try out yourself.

Applying Images to Building 3D Faces.pdf
Building 1 Original.jpg
Saltzburg_Square.dwg
Building1 Fixed.jpg

You realise now, why using AutoCAD in conjunction with Civil Engineering is such as good idea.
Thanks again to Steven Ramsey and Leica Geosystems.

Civil regards
Jack Strongitharm

Regression Analysis

Hi again,
It was a long time ago - sorry ;-)
I've been doing a lot (in my garden...) but finally I have now went through the new feature "Regression Analysis", or at least a bit of it...

Below I'll try to explain how to use it when designing an Alignment.
It's a lot of pictures below, but as they say, a pitures tells more than...

If you for example have a bunch of measured points, like on a centerline, this is a good way to find the most correct approximation of where the line really is.
Here's a set of Points, ordinary ACAD Points.

The new command is found under the menu "Lines/Curves".
I'll start of by creating the line our of the Points.

Select "From AutoCAD points"

When selecting - don't say you have missed the Selection method "WP" for Window Polygon, or "CP" for Crossing Polygon.
They have been here for ages... an excellent way to select the Points. It also gives you an idea of which points that are "in a line" when you draw the Polygon.

When you have done that - hit Enter. Then you'll see a red line presenting the approximation of the Centerline. Also a bunch of black/white crosses presenting which Point that have been used.

In the Panorama window (make sure you have it open) you get all data and also a graph presenting how the line is drawn and how far from each selected Point it is.

Here in the Panorama window you also have the option to mark a specific point (3) where the Line actually have to pass through.

When you select a Point to pass through the grapichs in the drawing presents the new position.

From the Panorama window you can also export the data to an ASCII-file or to Clipboard.

You can also Add or Remove Points from the Analysis.

When you close the Panorama window Vista the Line is drawn as an AutoCAD Line.

Do the same for the rest of the Points.

...and also for the ARC Points...

This gives you an ARC

Open the command "Create Alignment by Layout".
Use the command "Convert AutoCAD Line and Arc" to create the first Subentities of the Alignment. Use "Reverse subentity direction", if necessary, on some of the Subentities.

Now they are almost in place

Finally - add an Curve - done!

I'm pretty sure you find it useful also when doing design in other kind of projects - not only roads. As you saw there are more ways to do this, not only from Points.

Try it out! Cheers! / Ove C

Here are the sample files;
one to start with and one complete

Start:
Download file

Done:
Download file

My little tour of Ireland!

I am on a short tour or Ireland this month

The event is for all local authorities and or companies that work on highways schemes for the local authorities

Topics include:

Road Renewal and Widening
Handling Survey Data
From DOER to Civil 3D
Route Selection
Using Civil 3D for first pass
Drainage Issues
Volume Calculations
Drawing Productivity
Data Management

Technical Question and Answer Session

The locations are, (note the Guiness Hop Store to all non Irish readers!! It tastes so much better in Ireland! GOOD VENUE)

Tuesday, June 12th Dublin Guinness Hop Store

Wednesday, June 13th Galway Quality Hotel, Oranmore

Thursday, June 14th Cork Jury’s Hotel

Register here (so you get food)

http://www.therightangle.ie/events

See you there

Jack Strongitharm

Rabbit Gate and Corridor Hatching

Rabbit Gate????

Mr Dan Philbrick on http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/4/blogpost/5425/ last week mentioned his trip over to Autstria with us and that I would stay into Saturday to go to Kaprun a ski resort with no snow!. I had to go home like most normal people. Anyway we got talking and both Dan and myself have a large collection of animals. I had mentioned that we had just gained a new addition of a Giant Continental Rabbit. He did not belive me, so I got my wife Vicky to send me a picky which he posted. However the picture was from when we got him and was 8 weeks old http://civilcommunity.autodesk.com/files/blog/daveanddan/JackRabbit.html.

So let me show you how big he is now at 14weeks

That is my Labrador (Ollie) behind him that is coming upto 11 years old. I think the rabbit is getting big already!

Back to AutoCAD Civil 3D and of course 2008.

So one of the things that everyone should like that is into corridor design of some kind, is hatching the plan drawing. So I am sure that a lot of users out there have done loads of bpoly commands so to hatch what is asphalt, footpaths, earthworks etc.
We now can hatch automatically from the sub assemblies. Also using the same technique we can add render materials to the corridor without making a single surface.

This all comes from Code Set Styles. Many of you have probably tried to ignore this upto now, but this year it comes into its own and once you have adjusted your existing styles like I have for this years Country Kit (to be released for UK and Ireland from myself by the end of May) you will never have to do it again.

From corridor properties, codes you will have some styles

Note the new areas, Render Materials and Material Area Fill Styles on the panel

Basically it works by applying a render style or material hatch style to the links that already exist in your corridor.
Such as pave, Kerb (curb), footpath (sidewalk), daylight

Then apply the style

2D AutoCAD Hatching, remember contractors still do back and white copying

2D Solid Colour hatching, for presentation purposes etc

And Finally, flip to 3D

Does it get easier or what and you don’t even have to think about it. Spend time on design rather just trying to make it look good!! Of course it is all dynamic.

Until next time

Civil regards
Jack Strongitharm

The Release with an R is here...

Hi all,
It has been some "fully booked weeks" as we have had our launch period for the new 2008 products - that's why I haven't really been posting anything for a while. Sorry about that.

This upcoming year will be really interesting as I see it. AutoCAD Civil 3D has with it's version 2008 now become a much more mature product. In this release the developers has put a lot of effort on performance and stability - everyone have heard this by now. But what about any new cool stuff - features...?
YES - they ARE there. Smaller things has been done everywhere all over the product. And also some major new things as well.
All in all I'd like to say the pieces are now coming together.

The coming weeks me and Jack will deliver several new tips and ideas here - where to find the feature and, of course, where to use it.

To give a small start on this I want to mention two new tools on the Feature Grading toolbar. It's now possible to use "Break" and "Trim" on a Featureline.

I'll be back next week with some more, and more serious, new functionality... ;-)

Cheers / Ove C

Techcamp 2007

This past week myself and Ove have been in Saltzburg in Austria training our partners and of course sharing a drink!

More than 325 partners participated in partner technical training that covered Map 3D 2008, MapGuide Enterprise and Civil 3D 2008!

The event introduced a hands-on approach to training for technical personnel that focused on key feature enhancements, industry workflows and project data management.

Channel partners heard from Frank Ostyn, Director Sales Execution Geospatial, Don Weigal, Director of Business Development Geospatial, and Jim Lynch, Autodesk Vice President of Marketing AEC, who delivered the Autodesk Civil and Geospatial vision and strategy message for FY08.

Ove doing his teacher bit

A job well done!
(Left to right: Jack Strongitharm (ME), Dan Philbrick (Civil 3D Software Development), Tomas Lendvorsky (Emerging Civil AE), Ian McGregor (EMEA Civil 3D Product Manager)

Caption Competition

What is Paul pointing out here to Trevor and Carl (UK guys)
Please supply your comment below (Civil 3D funnies only please!)

Jack Strongitharm

Which DVD is it?

It appears that English versions in Europe have been affected by a shortage of ink.
We seem to not have a label on the DVD to which language they are.

One is Brtish English, i.e. Chainages, levels etc and the other is US English such as Stations and Elevations.

To find out which is which you need to look on the DVD itself, and note in the lower right, above the "DVD" logo, there is a part number.

23705-091462-0010A is British English. After installation, the default desktop icon will read "AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 - British"

23705-051462-0010A is US English. After installation, the default desktop icon will read "AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008"

The next run of DVDs should be corrected but one to watch out for unless you would like to learn another variation of your language.

The official post is at http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=9550615&linkID=9240697

Well time is moving on at a pace with the new release. That is why myself and Ove have not posted much here recently. Also our co blogger Chris Berends has now left Autodesk this week to setup a business with Civil 3D in the Benelux area. So our best is with him to be a great success.

The is the main last crazy week, where we are both in Salzburg in Austria to train our resellers on the new functionality in 2008, whcih to say there was not supposed to be many features was slightly incorrect.
The new stuff is within the enhancements and is exceptional and any current user of Civil 3D will be really impressed.

In the meantime, get to a local seminar if you can to take a look and we will start to flush these improvements out to you here in the coming weeks.

Have a good week

Jack Strongitharm

Under your eyes

This week all the European Autodesk AE's met in Paris to learn the features in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 with Anthony Governanti as his last commitment before his job change.
Take a look at the bunch and by the way I did not get involved on the 1kg steak. Link

Also it was Jim Hughes farewell to the team before he leaves for New Zealand with his family for a new adventure at the end of the month as he is a 'talented migrant' as he was called. Working for New Zealand Roads Authority on new design standards.
It was Jim’s fault that we are all here today. But thanks to him as he has been a great team coordinator for the last three years and we will all miss him as a friend and colleague.

AutoCAD 2008, It is absolutely storming!!

Lots of new additional information to share with you over the next couple of months which will keep us busy on this blog.
I will start to jump in the next up coming posts in time for the boxes hitting your in trays.

So the title today reads under your eyes. As Civil 3D is sat on top of AutoCAD we may often overlook some of the little new features that can make life so easy.

Today is ‘Select Similar’ and ‘Isolate objects’. These great commands have been under your eyes every time you right click your mouse!!

Select similar works by selecting an object, for instance a line, right click and select similar. This will then select all the lines in your drawing. If you select a line and a circle and then use the command it will select the lines and also the circles.
This then moves into Civil 3D objects. For example you want to see the pipes in 3D on their own. Rather than selecting all the pipes and structures manually. Select a pipe and structure and run the command.
Much easier!

Isolate works by what ever you select you can either Isolate that object or hide that object. Bit like layers but much quicker. Then when you are finished you can 'End Isolation' and everything returns.

Give it a go. It just gets better.

Good Easter to all.

Jack Strongitharm

Surface analysis

Hi everyone,
This IS a great week - spring (almost summer) has come to Sweden!
Yesterday we had +19 degrees Celsius (66.2 degree Fahrenheit) and today we're expecting +21 degrees. Yes!!

What I'll post on this week is a fairly simple tips but I know some users have not gotten used to changeing the Styles. That's why I have to write some rows about it. ;-)

If you want to change the analysis style of a Surface you can do like this.
Below is a normal Surface with a contour style.

Hit Properties and select a Style presenting, for example, Color Analysis.

Go to the tab "Analysis" in the same dialog box.

This is where you set the "type" of analys you want to present.
Choose a number for "Ranges" and hit the "arrow".

Double click the color bars under "Scheme: " and select preferred colors. The same for selecting "Range Details" / Elevations. See below.

This will give you a simple map with colored elevations.

Have a great week! Cheers! / Ove C

Visualisation Part 4 – Camera settings and simple lighting

I retained my title as ‘Junction Jack’ last week from the webcast I did last week on Junctions and Roundabouts. Any one that missed it the recording is now available on the website and can be downloaded from www.autodesk.com/civil3dwebcasts

Well it is Friday again and we return to visualisation in Civil 3D.

We left last week with a camera looking at our surface design.
However the background is black, the lighting is dark and there is no shadows.

So this week I will take you through some simple ways to enhance the camera view and get to a good rendered scene.

1. Go to the View menu and named views
2. First of all I recommend that you create a named view of your current view to make it easy to revert back to. To do this click on Model views and click new

View image

Give it a name and click ok and it will create a view with your current settings

View image

3. Click on Camera 1, change the visual style to realistic, then click on background override and select Image or Gradient

View image

4. You can either apply an image or select two colours, i.e. bluey gray colours to create a sky background depending on where the project lives for how sunny and clear the sky is. (normally grey for where I live!)
Download the Sky image to get you started if you wish
Download file

To set up an image, click on image. Then browse to the image and also adjust image and set to stretch to fill the camera background

5. Now if you select Set Current, and then ok, your view will now revert to the camera view

View image

View image

Lighting

1. Go to View menu, render, light and Edit Sun Properties

View image

Turn the Status to on, set the time and date etc to what you wish

2. Next click on Geographic Location on the eye glass icon

View image

Choose your region and city location

3. Next go to View menu, render and advanced settings
Here you can choose your output choice and using the presets will help you get a simple change to suit your needs

4. Complete

The last couple of week’s efforts have given you the basic fundamentals to create surfaces with different rendered materials, lighting and cameras.

In due course I will revisit this area with an update with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 and where we can take this to a much higher level.

Good weekend all

Jack Strongitharm

Editing a segment of an Alignment

Hi again,
This week we noticed that some users might make use of a tips regarding editing a segment of an Alignment.

When you need to change the length of an alignment, that consists of just one tangent, to a specific value you have a few options. Below I'm presenting one way to do it - in a fairly simple way - and the Alignment is still dynamic.

In the example, the line should maintain its direction but the length must be 70 meters.

Use the following steps
1. Select the Alignment

2. Left click the first grip-point

3. Right click the same grip-point

4. Select Scale

5. Type “R” (Reference) on the Command line and hit Enter

6. Left click the first, then the second grip-point (gives the reference length)

7. Now – just type in the length you want on the segment and hit Enter again.

The result is now 70m!

Until next time - have a great week!
Cheers! / Ove C

Visualisation Part 3 - Islands and Cameras

I am back. Just like Ove and Chris the last couple of weeks have been really busy with no desk time.
However I will move us on from my last post about visualisation and surface techniques.

The good thing about the delay is that I can start to incorporate some of the new great enhancements in 2008 in the coming weeks.

We left it last time where we were creating individual surfaces with a combination of boundaries both hidden and outer types.

When you create such a thing like a traffic island or hard standing within a surface we want to cut out the surface below. When you come to render your scene you will otherwise find that you will get some strange results. So cut out the surface is recommended.

1. Add your island to the car park surface, by draping the line first to the surface

View image

2. Again add the island as a hide boundary to remove the triangles inside the island

View image

3. Create the island as a seperate surface and add the outer channel line as an outer boundary

View image

Cameras

1. To create a camera in your scene either type camera or View menu and Create Camera

2. Pick a point in your scene where you want to look from and also then pick where you want to look at

View image

3. Raise the height of the camera, your cursor tooltip will show you the height at the surface, then add a little for either eye level or a raised view. Same applies to the target.
Then change the visual style to realistic. Grip edit the camera to move the preview around

Next time we will setup the camera and look at some simple lighting to make your scene look much better

Please download the example drawing to examine how things are setup to date

Download file

Until next time

Jack Strongitharm

Tunnel - post 3 (last)

Hi all,
Tunneling time again... ;-)

Sorry it has been two weeks since last time. We've had a full calender including an interesting trip to Las Vegas for a week. Travelling that far from Sweden is a 20+ hour trip with two connections.

This will be the last (for now) post on the creation of a tunnel.
I might pick up on this issue later on when I find another way to do it or to point on some advancements etc.
Last post was about how to create the Assembly from a Polyline. Today I'll present what I have done to get it as a Corridor.

Below you can see that I have used only one Region and a 5m c/c (frequency)

For my Corridor and Assembly I have created a new Code set style called "Tunnel1"

Under Corridor properties I have set up the creation of Surfaces using the Links with their codes.
All Surfaces will be rendered with a Render Material Style. In my case limited to Concrete and Asphalt ("Betong" and "asfalt" in swedish, as you see in the picture)

I have attached the Render Material Style to a Material Name from the AutoCAD rendering function. In this case "Betong/concrete" is pointed to "Concrete,Cast-In-Place.Flat.Grey.1" See below.

That material is set up in the Material Editor.

When those Corridor Surfaces are set and are using materials the tunnel will be like this.

Hope this helps or gives ideas.
Have a great week!
Best regards / Ove Cervin

Trimble TPS data import

This week I want to start a discussion about the best way to get your surveyed linework as automatically on your screen importing a Trimble TPS job file

feel free to ad a comment if you know a better/ easier way to do it...

as extra tool i've used TrimbleLinkforAutodeskCivil3D2007.exe (downloadable from or Autodesk/civil or Trimble website... the tool results in a pulldown menu directly in Civil3D

Pull down menu Trimble import job
Because the current version of civil3d CAN’T work with alphanumeric point numbers you have to make a view small pointnumber changes if the surveyor used alphanumeric ones.

View image

in this sample you have to change the name A en B in 99999 and 88888
And change the rest of the alphanumeric numbers automatically by selecting the invalid numbers option

As result you don’t see any alphanumeric numbers

Create a new network using the Trimble UI or select a existing network from the pull down list

While importing all alphanumeric point numbers are converted to numeric point numbers

View image

till now only pointdata is displayed.... what is the best way to draw the linework directly from the job file????

my proposal

All imported Trimble survey Job data can be exported to a .fbk file to ad figure/line work commands

use your text editor to make additional changes like the ditto command as described in previous posts to begin and close a figure and delete all spot level points because you don't need them twice.
save the text file as a .fbk file

re-import the changed fieldbook file.

as a result all surveyed linework is displayed

you can easily combine the inserted fieldbook together with the earlier used job file

View image

again, any better idea how to insert the linework directly from the used job file (points are surveyed with description keys, VEB for begin figure, VE for figure point and VEE for figure end)

more to come....Chris Berends

Tunnel - post 2

Hi again,
Still winter in Sweden - I DO need some warmth really soon... ,-)

Last week I started this Tunnel post serie. Today I'm continuing on how to create a Tunnel Subassembly from Polylines. Hang on!

Below is a "complete" Assembly. This is what we're gonna achieve in this post.
For those of you who look really deep into the screen you might see that the ToolTip in the picture tells " Link #1, with codes, rb- l1 (right_bottom_tunnel_outer) "

I have created this Assembly from a total of eight Subassemblys.
Each one of the Subassemblys are created from their own Polyline (mentioned in last weeks post)
They are all named in a consistent way - good or bad...

If I move the cursor over one of the Links in the Subassembly we get a ToolTip presenting the name of the Link and that it has codes.

To get that far you start with the Polyline, like below.

Make sure that each Polyline has an increasing X-value coordinate for each and every vertex. If neccesary, move a vertex one mm in either way.
Use "Create Subassembly from Polyline" in the menu.

Give the new Subassembly a name that you can recognize later on.
Choose CodeSetStyle and make sure you have "Link creation" set to "Multiple".
I also prefer to "Erase existing entities". Otherwise they frequently get selected by mistake...

After doing that you get this. The ToolTip says there is no codes on the Subassembly yet.

If the curser is moved over a Link or a Point we get the code information (or lack of it - uncoded)

Select the Subassembly part and right click. Choose "Add code".

Enter a code. Make sure you have thought about a really good naming convention before proceeding.
Select the Subassembly Link or Point.

After doing that you can check the ToolTip again over the actual Point/Link. In this case the code is "rb2" (right bottom, point nr 2)
Do the same with ALL Points and Links on that first Subassembly.

Then we must tell where the connection origin is on the Subassembly. That is the point wich gets hooked up to the Assembly.
Select the Subassembly - right click and choose "Modify Origin". Select Origin point.
If neccesary you can create a temporary ACAD Line or Point to be able to select a proper Origin point for the Subassembly.

Under the Corridor menu - create an Assembly. Place it where you want your connection point for Alignment/Profile.

When the Assembly line is in place, the Subassembly is created and has Links and Points with codes - select the Subassembly and right click. "Add to Assembly".

Later on I will post more info on how to proceed on this Tunnel creation.

Have a great week!

Best regards / Ove Cervin

Visualisation Part 2 – Recycling those lines and surfacing

Ok we left with having a surface with a hole.

We then want to start to create surfaces within our site.
By this we can reuse lines as many times as we want.

This part will show how to create surfaces and apply a render material.

1. From the boundary line we have an inside channel line for a car park and also a kerb top. Between the kerb top and the boundary line we want to have a landscape strip with a grass finish.

View image

2. By creating a new surface add the outside boundary line and also the kerb top.

View image

3. We have triangles also inside the kerb top which we need to remove. So by adding the kerb top line again but this time as a boundary with the hide option will remove the triangles and only surface the two lines we want

View image

4. Under the surface properties add a render material such as grass

5. Finish and continue creating surfaces with a individual render material

What we see here is that we can use lines in various surfaces to join surfaces and also clean excess triangles.
Then by adding a simple render material to create the final finish.

Next week we look at creating some islands and other level information

Jack Strongitharm

Tunnel pre-study

Hi again,
Today I'm going to start a series of posts for the upcoming Wednesdays - How to make a study of a tunnel in C3D!

These pictures will get you an idea of what to expect during the coming posts!
The original design of this cross section is grabbed from the project "Citytunneln" in Malmö - Sweden. It's a large tunnel for trains going under the City of Malmö. (Project link)

As a start of this design I re-created the lines in the cross section that I wanted to use as links in the C3D Subassembly. The result of that is the magenta lines below.
After doing that I made sure all "vertical" links were adjusted slightly to not be straight up/down. They are moved some 1 or 2mm (part of an inch) to avoid problems with different Z-values in the same XY- coordinate.
Then I created a Subassembly using the "Create Subassembly from Polyline"-command. (Will present exactly how in next weeks post)

We need an Alignment of course...

We also need a Profile

In the end of this Tunnel-blog series we will have something like this (seen from the tunnel and out). All done in C3D without additional software.

Don't forget to check next weeks progress on this one! ;-)

Until next week - Drive safe!
Cheers! / Ove C

Huge field book creation time saver

Thanks to Lucy Kuhns, Civil and Survey specialist USA, responsible for a survey class at AU 2006.

The language ref command DITTO

How many times do you have an ASCII file with point number, coordinates and description key’s ?

1001000 150481.179 500553.687 50.659 "etw"
1234501 150481.717 500553.092 50.624 " etw "
1234502 150481.657 500555.331 50.570 " etw "
1234503 150482.922 500558.033 50.390 " etw "
1234504 150481.495 500554.836 50.580 " etw "
1001001 150543.456 500656.930 55.383 " etw "
1234505 150541.419 500654.317 55.248 " etw "
1234506 150541.549 500654.390 55.251 " etw "
1234507 150541.596 500654.409 55.265 " etw "
1234508 150534.932 500647.897 54.781 " etw "
.....
.....
How many times have you imported the ASCII file using the points import commands ?

How many times do you need (3d)lines between the surveyed points ?

Off course it is possible to use the transparent command after the 3dpoly command
command:3dpoly
specify start point of polyline:‘pn
>>enter pointnumber: (first point number – last point number)

The 3dpolyline will follow the point numbers range as input, even if one of the numbers in that range is missing

BUT

Using the DITTO command as a toggle
The first instance toggles the command on the second instance off

Just type figure begin and figure name
Ditto command
Ones NE SS
as extra lines in the .txt point file

As the bold text shows in this sample

BEGIN etw
DITTO
NE SS 1001000 150481.179 500553.687 50.659 "etw"
1234501 150481.717 500553.092 50.624 " etw "
1234502 150481.657 500555.331 50.570 " etw "
1234503 150482.922 500558.033 50.390 " etw "
1234504 150481.495 500554.836 50.580 " etw "
1001001 150543.456 500656.930 55.383 " etw "
1234505 150541.419 500654.317 55.248 " etw "
1234506 150541.549 500654.390 55.251 " etw "
1234507 150541.596 500654.409 55.265 " etw "
1234508 150534.932 500647.897 54.781 " etw "
.....
DITTO

Save the ASCII file as .fbk and ready for use

the result is a automatic figure called etw

was survey always as simple as this sample :-)

more to come ...Chris Berends

Visualisation Part 1 - Cutting out holes

To create a visualisation of a new site you will typically have a existing ground surface which requires the old areas to be removed so that the new design fits inside.

Rather than deleting parts of that surface, which may have gradings and corridor targeting it, the best practice is to make a copy first.

1. Create a new surface

2. Under definition - edit – paste add the existing ground.

View image

3. This now replicates the surface

View image

4. You should have a boundary to where the new meets the old and drape to 3D using the featureline toolbar

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5. Add this line as a breakline

6. Add the same line again, but as a boundary with the hide selection

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7. Result one surface with a hole.

View image

The reason behind adding the line as a breakline rather than a non destructive boundary is that you can move the boundary at anytime and update the surfaces. This works very well with golf course bunkers, which reminds me its weekend!!

Jack Strongitharm

Rendering is fun!

Hi all,
This week we've been in Paris, learning some basics around visualization for C3D but adding rendering from what's possible in Autodesk 3DS MAX and Autodesk Maya - without being an expert... ;-)

The reason for doing this is to see all the possibilities that are within the ADSK product family.
I will get back to this issue later on and then I will explain a little more around when and what to use the different methods for. I will also highlight the benefits of MAX and Maya compared to some competitors.

Until then - here's some fun:

Things you don't want to hear during surgery

Oops!
Has anyone seen my watch?
That was some party last night. I can't remember when I've been that drunk.
Damn! Page 47 of the manual is missing!
Well this book doesn't say that ... What edition is your manual?
OK, now take a picture from this angle. This is truly a freak of nature.
Better save that. We'll need it for the autopsy.
Come back with that! Bad Dog!
Wait a minute, if this is his spleen, then what's that?
Hand me that ... uh ... that uh ... thingie.
If I can just remember how they did this on ER last week.
Hey, has anyone ever survived 500 ml of this stuff before?
Damn, there go the lights again ...
Ya know, there's big money in kidneys. Hell, the guy's got two of 'em.
Everybody stand back! I lost my contact lens!
Could you stop that thing from beating; it's throwing my concentration off.
I wish I hadn't forgotten my glasses.
Well folks, this will be an experiment for all of us.
Steril, shcmeril. The floor's clean, right?
What do you mean he wasn't in for a sex change!
What do you mean, he's not insured?
This patient has already had some kids, am I correct?
Nurse, did this patient sign the organ donation card?
Don't worry. I think it is sharp enough.
What do you mean "You want a divorce"!
I don't know what it is, but hurry up and pack it in ice.
Let's hurry, I don't want to miss "Bay Watch".
That laughing gas stuff is pretty cool. Can I have some more of that?
Hey Charlie, unzip the bag on that one, he's still moving.
Did the doctor know he would look like that afterwards?
Of course I've performed this operation before, Nurse!
FIRE! FIRE! Everyone get out!

Cheers! / Ove C

Trimble GPS data import

Hi, this week i'll focus on the gps Trimble data import as we have done during our Northern Europe Survey bootcamp 2nd week of December

as extra tool i've used TrimbleLinkforAutodeskCivil3D2007.exe (downloadable from or Autodesk/civil or Trimble website... the tool results in a pulldown menu directly in Civil3D

Create a new local survey database

Pull down menu Trimble import job

Browse to job location and select ..........(v11.2) job

Because the current version of civil3d CAN’T work with alphanumeric point numbers we have to make a view small changes.

View image

As result you don’t see any alphanumeric numbers

View image

Changed point numbers in the job file

View image

Trimble creates automatically a local survey network.

View image

Or select a network from a existing list called Trimble

Result

View image

Raw GPS data directly imported from a Job file

More to come....Chris Berends

Visualisation Part 1

As you may know AutoCAD 2007 brought many enhancements to the rendering and materials and within Civil 3D we can take full advantage of these.

I was impressed by Anthony Governanti’s efforts with his car park and have taken one of my models that little bit further.

View image

Over the next couple of weeks Blogs from myself I will introduce you to some simple surface techniques to breaking up a model to give rendered materials, cameras and rendering.

The basic cars and trees are already available in Civil 3D under
C:\Program Files\Autodesk Civil 3D 2007\Data\Symbols\Mvblocks

Jack Strongitharm

Sample Line Group Properties

Hi all,
This week I'm actually feeling the spring getting closer to Sweden. It's not pitch black when I go to the office in the morning. It's only really dark ;-)
But that's NOT a problem as I have good headlights on my car - which by the way ofcourse is a V...o, I'm a Swedish citizen!!! (joke - I have another car as well, equally good, and not Swedish...)

As I have noticed a lot of users are struggling to change the apperance of objects on screen, once they have created those, I want to highlight some here.
A lot of objects have Properties with accessible dialogs for change of apperance. This example will be on a set of cross sections.
Below you see some cross sections with a Section View Style and a Section Style.

Here is one of the cross sections a bit larger.

If I have all those in my drawing and suddenly realize I want another Style on them I don't have to erase and re- create them.
Go to the Toolspace and find your Site and corresponding Alignment. In my sample here it's all around "Alignment- 1".
Choose Properties on the Sample Line Group you want to change.

In the following dialog you see there are several tabs at the top.

As I mentioned I wanted to change the Section Style for my cross sections. Pick the tab "Sections". This will list all your sections in the bottom of the view.
If you then click on the header of the column named "Name" the program will sort by name.

This gives you a possibility to mark all Corridor Sections at one time. (Shift-select)
Mine (Swedish - sorry...) are namned "Korridor (1), which is the same as "Corridor (1)"

After selecting those you click on one of the Style names in the column "Style". Mine have the name "Tvärsektion", which is the same as "Cross section".
Clicking that name will bring you the dialog used to select a new Code Set Style for a new apperance of the cross sections.

After that, still in the Sample Line Group Properties dialog, I want to change the Section View Style as well.
Go to the tab "Section Views" and do a similar procedure. Select which section views you want change. Click on one of the names under "Style". Select a new Section view style.

As you can see these two changes gave me a Section style with more Labels and a Section view style with a grid.

Until next time - take care!

// Ove C

fieldbook commands

Today more focus on fieldbook survey commands

As described in the language.ref (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007\enu\Survey) we have 257 command possibilities to use
1,AD,ANG-DIST
……..
……..
257,RADIANS,RADS

As sample a fieldbook file with most used commands

JOB Chris
BEG ELEC begin figure ELEC
NE SS 1 399.84 373.57 19.87 "ELEC Depth 1.40"
NE SS 2 334.94 401.27 17.27 "ELEC Depth 1.40"
C3 straight line from point 1 till point 2, start 3 points curve from point 2 till point 19
NE SS 3 263.51 446.20 15.52 "ELEC Depth 1.40"
NE SS 19 319.19 288.12 19.26 "ELEC Depth 7.40"
NE SS 20 374.55 274.61 20.63 "ELEC Depth 7.40"
NE SS 21 386.74 266.77 21.41 "ELEC Depth 7.40"
END Stop figure ELEC ad point 21
OFFSET ELEC 0.8 complete figure ELEC offset 0.8 (right side seen from the line direction)
OFFSET ELEC -1.8 complete figure ELEC offset -1.8 (left side seen from the line direction)

View image

BEGIN FWS
NE SS 22 391.89 292.21 20.75 "FWS Depth 1.75"
NE SS 23 215.14 260.07 14.25 "FWS Depth 1.40"
CLOSE RECT -4.5 baseline from point 22 till point 23 will be rectangelar offset to the left site (seen from the line direction) and automatically closed till the firts point 22
View image

END stops figure ELEC creation
BEGIN FWS Begin new figure called FWS
recall 23 start new figure with earlier surveyed point 23
MCS multi curve (more than 3 points)
NE SS 24 191.82 219.85 13.77 "FWS Depth 1.80" first fpoint of the multi curve FWS figure
BEGIN SWS begin new figure called SWS
NE SS 25 175.22 237.04 15.78 "SWS Depth 0.65"
NE SS 26 150.82 290.62 14.33 "SWS Depth 0.50"
NE SS 27 116.63 305.15 14.12 "SWS Depth 0.60"
CONT FWS continue figure FWS with previous (MCS) command
NE SS 31 141.60 272.76 13.18 "FWS Depth 2.30" 2nd multi curve point
NE SS 32 183.93 181.19 13.63 "FWS Depth 2.30" 3rd multi curve point
NE SS 33 284.88 172.90 16.95 "FWS Depth 2.30" 4th mult curve point
MCE Multi curve end
BEGIN BT Begin figure called BT
NE SS 1001 255.52 73.41 19.27 "BT Depth 1.0 "
NE SS 1002 254.66 72.00 19.21 "BT Depth 1.0 "
NE SS 1003 253.42 69.90 19.13 "BT Depth 1.0 "
NE SS 1004 252.93 70.11 19.10 "BT Depth 0.9"
CONT FWS continue figure FWS with previous straight line command
NE SS 1005 247.62 73.09 17.97 "FWS Depth 1.00"
MCS multi curve (more than 3 points)
NE SS 1006 242.15 76.24 18.02 "FWS Depth 0.90"
NE SS 1007 238.00 78.59 17.79 "FWS Depth 1.10"
NE SS 1008 233.90 81.05 18.26 "FWS Depth 0.60"
NE SS 1009 230.53 82.99 18.35 "FWS Depth 0.50"
NE SS 1010 227.43 84.45 18.38 "FWS Depth 0.50"
MCE Multi curve end
END stops figure FWS creation
CONT BT continue figure BT with previous straight line command
NE SS 1011 225.14 86.08 19.11 "BT Depth 1.5"
NE SS 1012 223.95 86.99 19.10 "BT Depth 1.6"
NE SS 1013 221.93 87.52 18.76 "BT Depth 1.7"
NE SS 1014 229.54 81.95 18.86 "BT Depth 1.5"
END stops figure BT creation

View image

more to come...Chris Berends

Corridor Labels

Hi again,
As I'm preparing (mentally) to create a series of posts to this blog on how to do a tunnel design in C3D I will need to feed you with some easier tips&trix yet some posts... ;-)

Today I'll show those of you who might be new to the program how to get Labels presented on your Corridor, like elevations etc. There are some ways to do it and here's one.
Below is a Corridor drawn with our Swedish style/template - enjoy ;-)

An easy way to get Corridor Labels is to create COGO Points from the Corridor.

In the following dialog you can select what part of the Corridor you want and also what codes to present as Points.
Put in a name for a new Point Group. All COGO Points will be stored there.

This is the result. A lot of Points with the default Labels.

As the command above created a new Point Group it's really easy to change the style on the Points.
You can also create different Point Groups for different areas of the Corridor and have different Labels on the Point Groups. That way you can have Labels above some Codes and below some Codes.

Now we have a look that is readable - like it or not ;-)
As usual it's easy to adjust the Styles and Labels to whatever you prefer.

As some of you know - those Labels are not updated (Dynamic) with the Corridor. But it's quite fast to erase the set of Points and have them drawn again when the Corridor is changed.

Until next time - take care! I'm enjoying a lot of snow here in Sweden the last couple of days!
Cheers! / Ove

point label styles and prefix figure libary

Today focusing on point label style and prefix figure library

As a sample we work with a field book dataset containing pointnumber,x,y,z data and a raw description key containing object type and depth below surveyed surface point

UNIT METER DMS
HORZ ANGLE RIGHT
PRISM CONSTANT 0
EDM OFFSET 0
CR OFF
ATMOS OFF
COLLIMATION OFF
JOB Chris
BEG ELEC
NE SS 1277 231.53 339.24 15.27 "ELEC Depth 0.60"
NE SS 100 336.21 221.86 19.38 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 1 399.84 373.57 19.87 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 2 334.94 401.27 17.27 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 3 263.51 446.20 15.52 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 4 324.13 375.37 17.77 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 5 359.65 355.86 19.97 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 6 410.16 334.15 22.26 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 7 241.35 378.41 14.69 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 8 215.24 390.36 14.86 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 9 181.85 402.80 14.41 "ELEC Depth 0.50"
NE SS 10 169.93 382.49 14.66 "ELEC Depth 0.40"
NE SS 11 138.37 364.10 14.42 "ELEC Depth 0.40"
NE SS 12 163.83 326.39 14.46 "ELEC Depth 0.40"
NE SS 13 199.69 351.63 14.47 "ELEC Depth 0.40"
NE SS 14 224.08 348.88 15.14 "ELEC Depth 0.40"
NE SS 15 206.44 334.05 14.54 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 16 204.39 305.29 14.63 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 17 248.33 260.51 17.06 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 18 254.22 329.37 16.95 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 19 319.19 288.12 19.26 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 20 374.55 274.61 20.63 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
NE SS 21 386.74 266.77 21.41 "ELEC Depth 0.30"
END
BEGIN FWS
NE SS 22 391.89 292.21 20.75 "FWS Depth 1.75"
NE SS 23 215.14 260.07 14.25 "FWS Depth 1.40"
NE SS 24 191.82 219.85 13.77 "FWS Depth 1.80"
BEGIN SWS
NE SS 25 175.22 237.04 15.78 "SWS Depth 0.65"
NE SS 26 150.82 290.62 14.33 "SWS Depth 0.50"
NE SS 27 116.63 305.15 14.12 "SWS Depth 0.60"
NE SS 28 102.18 288.38 15.34 "SWS Depth 0.65"
NE SS 29 83.36 307.86 14.74 "SWS Depth 0.50"
NE SS 30 102.48 356.70 14.42 "SWS Depth 0.50"
END
CONT FWS
NE SS 31 141.60 272.76 13.18 "FWS Depth 2.30"
NE SS 32 183.93 181.19 13.63 "FWS Depth 2.30"
NE SS 33 284.88 172.90 16.95 "FWS Depth 2.30"
NE SS 34 257.17 97.54 16.75 "FWS Depth 2.25"
NE SS 35 302.86 104.20 20.50 "FWS Depth "
NE SS 1000 258.14 71.93 17.87 "FWS Depth 1.50"

First thing is to setup a point description key set (or extend a existing one) so we can automatically insert different blocks to different surveyed points and make sure we manage the label description the way we like and if necessary scale the blocks accordantly one of the description parameters.
(point description key set saved in the template and managed in the prospector survey tab)

View image

Second thing we need to setup a (or extend a existing one) prefix figure library so we can automatically link the new surveyed figure to a survey figure style. (Prefix Figure library is save outside the drawing as a .fdb file , managed by the survey user settings)

View image

Third thing we need to setup is a survey figure style to draw the line work (figures) on the predefined layers/colours/line width.
(The survey figure style is saved in the drawing file and managed with the prospector settings tab)

View image

As you can see in the different screenshots the surveyed ELEC,FWS and SWS points are displayed according the parameter (points description key) setup

ELEC

View image

FWS

View image

SWS

View image

As we use linework commands in the fieldbook and we’ve set a prefix library as current and surevey linework styles we can draw the surveyed lines in the predefined layer/colours/line width

View image

more to come, Chris Berends

Sight Distance Analysis Part 2

This week I will continue to develop this technique to rather than a pass or fail but to how much the design is failing by or how much clearance there is.

From last week we were left with a feature line that was positioned to check a forward sight and was draped to the surface at each end. Then raised in level to the appropriate heights for standards.

We then will use surfaces to analyse the depths, i.e. cut and fill (sounds familiar, nothing is ever that hard!)

1. Create a grading from the line and offset a short distance such as 1m and at 0 change in level on both sides of the feature line.
Create a surface and style to not display the surface (so your screen does not get cluttered)

View image

2. Create a tin volume surface from the composite model that was created earlier

View image

3. Change the style of this surface to a 2D Solid Banding

4. Then choose the analysis tab of the surface properties and select two ranges

View image

5. Change the ID 1 to a maximum level of 0, and ID 2 minimum level of 0. Change the purple colour if you wish to green.

View image

Now red will signify a clash or fail and green for pass! (This is also how to shade cut and fill as it is the same technique!)

View image

As you can see the design fails on the earthworks as we found before and to any designer this means reduce the amount of cut, increase the horizontal curve or create some widening around the bend.

6. Now we can also find out the actual failure amount by either adjusting the style to a contour style or by turning on the contours on this one and draw a contour line to display the labels

View image

Contour style

View image

Shaded style but with contours

7. Finally you can simply see the depth from the tooltip

View image

As you can see a little out of the box thinking can give you a lot more because Civil 3D is very flexible.

Jack Strongitharm

Object Layers

Hi all,
Today I want to present to you a nice feature that might help you organize your drawing. Or at least the Layers and Objects in it. Actually I learnt this quite recently myself - don't tell anyone...

What I mean is that you have the possibility to choose that C3D creates a specific Layer for each Object you create.
Here I will present how you can put Alignments on different Layers (The same proceedure applies for most other C3D Objects as well)

In the following picture I have an Alignment called "Centerline1" (See ToolTip and Toolspace in picture). As it is selected on screen you see that it is put on a Layer called "ALIGNMENTS".

If you go to the Settings tab in the Toolspace, rightclick on the Drawing name, you can select "Edit Drawing Settings".

You will find a Dialog with some tabs - select the one called "Object Layers".
For the row "Alignments" the default Layer for creation is set to "ALIGNMENTS". (See picture below)

If you change the column "Modifier" to use a "Suffix" and in the "Value" column you enter a space and then an * you will have your Alignments created on their own Layers.

As you can see below the next created Alignment called "Centerline2" got created on the Layer "ALIGNMENTS Centerline2" (See Layer Toolbar in picture)

As you will see this might be useful to separate different Surface TIN's etc.
This shows yet another way of the flexibility in Civil 3D.

See you soon again // Ove C

fieldbook formats and label description key set

Fieldbook formats

.fbk is the default internal file format for raw survey data. we can use 2 different dataformats as raw data

1: Raw data based on horizontal angle, vertical angle ,vertical distance and description code

JOB (start header)
UNITS METER DMS
TEMP 15.0 C
PRESS 1000.0 MBAR
ATMOS ON
CR ON (end header)
NEZ 21000 307279.704 301705.953 314.799 "CONTROL" (cmdhelp.ref/ NEZ (point) [North] [East] (elev) (descript))
STN 21000 0.000 "CONTROL"
ZD VD 2 46.325996 59.634 -5.371 (cmdhelp.ref/ ZD [VD] (point) [azimuth] [distance] [vert distance] (descript))
ZD VD 3 86.561764 71.631 3.345
ZD VD 4 62.422796 86.618 -0.349
STN 3 (station number)
AZ 3 2 0.0000 (cmdhelp.ref/ AZ [point 1] [point 2] [azimuth])
BS 2 322.4719 (cmdhelp.ref/ BS [point] (orientation))
PRISM 1.363
F1 VA 2 322.4719 47.509 100.3931 ""
PRISM 2.000
BEGIN FL
F1 VA 10000 117.1816 8.742 81.2807 "FL" (cmdhelp.ref / F1/F2 [VA] (point) [angle] [distance] [vert angle] (descript))
F1 VA 10001 92.3533 10.003 89.5111 "FL"
F1 VA 10002 83.1019 11.541 96.4908 "FL"
BEGIN BKT (begin figure BKT)
F1 VA 10003 99.2819 7.634 88.3602 "BKT"
F1 VA 10004 79.3624 4.430 89.2145 "BKT" (straight line from 10003 -10004)
C3
F1 VA 10005 351.2621 6.644 101.0929 "BKT" (start 3 point curve)
F1 VA 10006 339.1342 9.853 101.1236 "BKT"
F1 VA 10007 314.1635 10.928 98.2542 "BKT" (last curve point)
F1 VA 10008 305.5510 12.102 97.3135 "BKT" (straight line from 10007-10008)
MCS
F1 VA 10009 316.4125 15.860 99.3755 "BKT" (start multi curve)
F1 VA 10010 329.4226 20.312 102.0915 "BKT"
F1 VA 10011 327.1403 25.092 101.3553 "BKT"
F1 VA 10012 325.5315 31.432 101.0847 "BKT"
F1 VA 10013 327.4305 37.985 101.1256 "BKT" (last point multi curve)
MCE
F1 VA 10014 328.4602 46.211 101.0120 "BKT"
END (end figure BKT)
F1 VA 10015 333.3447 29.797 104.0954 "SPOT" ( create spot point)
F1 VA 10016 335.2045 25.175 105.0050 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10017 337.5754 20.125 104.4122 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10018 330.0334 15.576 104.0144 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10019 320.2449 14.279 102.0026 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10020 351.0158 11.315 105.3449 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10021 3.1946 11.083 110.0029 "SPOT"
F1 VA 10022 18.2237 10.193 112.0508 "SPOT"
PRISM 1.800 (cmdhelp.ref/PRISM [height])
CONT FL (continue FL from the last surveyed point 10002)
…….
…….
…….

2: Raw data based on nording, easting, elevation and description code

UNIT METER DMS (start header)
HORZ ANGLE RIGHT
PRISM CONSTANT 0
EDM OFFSET 0
CR OFF
ATMOS OFF
COLLIMATION OFF
JOB Day1 (end header)
NE SS 1 346101.5705 417557.6161 119.8920 stn8 (cmdhelp.ref /NE SS (point) [North] [East] (elev) (descript))
NE SS 2 345917.7197 417444.8098 122.0350 stn6
NE SS 3 345749.8118 417248.8810 121.0600 stn4
BEGIN bob (start figure bob)
NE SS 4 345854.2218 417210.2085 116.5590 bob (only straight lines from point 4-12)
NE SS 5 345853.4216 417206.2570 116.3640 bob
NE SS 6 345846.6071 417199.2594 116.2860 bob
NE SS 7 345840.8412 417194.6803 116.0980 bob
NE SS 8 345836.0342 417192.7604 116.0740 bob
NE SS 9 345832.5840 417191.8065 116.2500 bob
NE SS 10 345820.5225 417185.9122 116.4060 bob
NE SS 11 345813.1636 417182.7679 116.4760 bob
NE SS 12 345811.5910 417180.0727 116.5560 bob
END (end figure bob)
NE SS 13 345808.9496 417178.1754 116.7230 bob (create point bob)
NE SS 14 345803.1798 417180.3094 117.5670 bob
NE SS 15 345799.6180 417182.3898 117.2530 bob
NE SS 16 345792.5485 417188.2123 116.6870 bob
NE SS 17 345790.5815 417190.3507 116.8270 bob
…….
…….

If you don’t use any figure command the software recognizes the surveyed point as a point,
If you use only the figure start command all the surveyed points are recognized as straight lines till the figure end command.

Trimble can save the raw data directly into .fbk file format from the datalogger
Leica can save the raw data directly into .fbk format form Leica Geo office as desktop solution
Stringer connect can convert from a variety of raw data formats into .fbk as a desktop solution
Carlson connect can convert form a variety of raw data formats info .fbk as a pulldown menu in Civil3D

Point label description key set

When you import the .fbk file in your survey database Civil3d recognizes the survey points as cogopoints. The representation of the cogopoints are manageable in the description key set
Just a little knowledge update

We can use the key set as a hard coded point label

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The label manageable by the point label style gives always the value set by the description key format tab
The point graphical representation is manageable by the point style

Or as flexible coded point label

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The label manageable by the point label style gives always the value set by the description key format tab
$* is the complete raw description key, $1 the first part of the description key, $2 the second… the rest of the $ options is findable in the well documented help file.
The flexible coded point label makes it possible to fulfil any customer point label demand

more to come.... Chris Berends

Sight Distance Analysis

Ok, Civil 3D currently does not have a button to check this part of Civil design (it is still only three years old), but it does not mean that you cannot check sight distance.

The procedure outlined in the next two week’s Friday Blogs outlines a simple idea to check visibility now.

Your model will contain a existing ground surface and also will require a surface to the top of your road if you are looking at road design. (Its not all about roads, such as can I see that Wind turbine from my house!)

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With the road design though you typically check from the drivers eye (excuse the left hand drive for all non UK, Irish, other left hand drivers!). So we can export a feature line from our corridor.

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Offset that line to the distance from the carriageway edge, such as 1.5m or to your country standards

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Draw line to distance required. Then rotate it to touch your sight line offset line you created

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Create a new surface, then paste surface EG and then Road Top, to create one combined final surface. (A great technique!!)

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Turn surface style off for clarity, (use a style with all turned off)

Create a new site and call it ‘Sight Lines’ or what you want
Note: This step overcomes the relationship between crossing alignments and feature lines.

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Convert line to a feature line, then drape to the surface, but uncheck ‘insert intermediate gradient break points’

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Using the feature line level editor, raise the points above the surface to the required heights, such as 1.05m and 0.26m at the target.

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At this point you can view the sight line in a quick profile

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As you can see this fails in a big way. (I made sure it failed of course!)

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You can then grip edit your sight line in plan to the next position, re-drape to the surface and raise the end levels and check the Quick profile.

Next Friday, I will show how to create depth/ isopachyte contours along this line to map out how far out or clear your design is.

Jack Strongitharm

ToolTip TIP

This post will be a shorter one, more like a tips&trix ;-)

Many users new to C3D might not have noticed the possibility to reduce the amount of information in the ToolTip presented on the cursor when hoovering over objects in the drawing.
See these sample pics with four close Alignments over a Surface...

...and a Sewer Pipe Network

When you have objects created, or when you create them, you have the possibility to turn the ToolTip off.
Select your object (ex Alignment name or Pipe Network) in the Toolspace.
Rightclick and use Properties.

At the bottom of the Information Tab you have the Setting for ToolTip.
It's the same way to change the Setting for most other kind of objects.

Hope it helps someone! ;-)
Cheers / Ove C

survey basics

As the title of the blog site is fromthegroundup we start from scratch.

5 important survey topics:

1: Cmdhelp.ref (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007\enu\Survey) gives you a very good overview of all different RAW surveyed data types all recognized as .fbk

2: As we use fbk as survey file format we can use different commands for start, end, curves, offset for your surveyed line work.
Language.ref (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007\enu\Survey) gives you a very good impression what commands you can use.
By default to start line work we can use
13,BEG,BEGIN,BEGINS if you want to use your own command…. Like Chris to start your linework….. ad ,Chris just after BEGINS in the language.ref… save the file and restart civil3d.
so it is possible to ad your own coding list to Civil3D survey

3: Prospector/survey tab has a user settings icon

Or use the survey pulldown menu

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4: Prospector/survey right click on the survey database and create a new local survey database
Right click on the local survey database and open it
Right click on the local database and select edit survey database settings or use the survey pulldown menu

You can manage settings like units
View image

5: Prospector/survey right click on the Figure Prefix database and create a new Figure Prefix database
The database is stored, in the user settings defined path, as a .fdb file… so you can change the file content very easily using Microsoft Access.
View image

more to come..Chris Berends

3DDWF IT

Have you tried exporting to a 3D DWF?
This functionality is amazing and its use it not fully understood.
It gives you the ability to create a true 3D model from your Civil 3D design with rendered materials and then freely navigate the model using your mouse.
Creating videos are possible through Civil 3D but are a fixed view.
So why not export your model and then use them to present your work in a 3D way rather than just those 2D drawings.
We are in a digital age after all.

Site model of a concept of a new stadium
Download file

Download file

What Lies Beneath, many cables and pipes!!
Note you can also make surfaces transparent from within the DWF to see objects that are underneath.

You can easily use this functionality in design meetings, planning permission and public exhibitions as they dont necessarily see what an engineer might see.

To create one from Civil 3D

Set your start view and also the visual style to realistic

File->Export->Export to other formats

Give it a name and select 3DDWF as the file type.

Jack Strongitharm

What BLOG stands for

I was pointed out what BLOG stood for by a colleague

Big Lads with Orange Garments

Thanks Neil as always!!

Back to the serious stuff tomorrow

Jack Strongitharm

Volume Surface

This - my first post to a Blog, will be about a topic I find really nice - Surfaces and Labels. This will show what's part of the really nice and easy to use functions in Civil 3D.

If you're a user sitting with C3D you know that it's easy to design a new proposed surface and compare it to an existing surface - then you get the volumes.
I know that some of you might not have adopted C3D yet but still claims to be able to create surfaces and calculate volumes - Let's compare!

Today I'll point out how easy it is to create a drawing presenting the compared surfaces using a Volume TIN Surface.

Let's say we start our stopwatch after completing a first draft for the design of the proposed surface.

0 seconds:
Two surfaces (see Tool Tip)

10 seconds:
A new TIN Volume Surface Created, now presented with a Style showing a selection of coloured bands. These display the cut/fill areas.

30 seconds:
A set of Surface Labels applied to the new Surface presenting the difference in heights.

Now to the really nice part ;-)
Change the proposed Surface and apply some new heights to it.
How long does it take to update the Volumes, and the display of the new updated Volume Surface, with all it's Labels?
You probably guessed it by now... It doesn't take any time (almost).
This change of some specific heights, and a complete update of the Surfaces and Labels, took about 30 seconds.
Fast and easy!

Now to the question for those of you who aren't using C3D today:
How much time do you need in your existing application to do the same?
Welcome to the dynamic world of C3D!

Cheers! / Ove Cervin

Survey

Have you ever tried to use the survey functionality in Civil3D
From now on I would like to give you guidelines how to use Survey functionality to increase your design efficiency as much as possible

The survey tab is available in the workspace to modify all survey aspects.

Till now civil3d survey uses the internal fieldbook file format as file standard. As the .fbk file format ascii oriented you easily modify the file content using any text editor.

BUT

we have a dynamic Trimble-link and Leica-exchange menu available in the current release to exchange the survey data directly.

OR

Use external converters to get external data formats directly into our field book file format….with or without direct line work creation

more details to come....Chris Berends

Welcome to our new Civil 3D blog from across the pond

This is the first Autodesk based Civil 3D Blog site outside of the US.

To introduce ourselves we are Application Engineers for Civil 3D for Autodesk across UK, Ireland, Benelux and the Nordic Countries for Autodesk.

I myself, Jack Strongitharm look after UK and Ireland have been working for Autodesk for 2 years as an Application Engineer for Civil 3D.

I am responsible for the UK and Ireland Country Kit and educating new users on how to use Civil 3D in their projects.
My real enginnering experience comes from road and site design from a small footpath improvement to working on £100 million road scheme.
From the design of the scheme, tender and supervision on site. This also includes paying the final bill !!

I am also known as ‘Junction Jack’ from my efforts to tell the world how to model junctions and roundabouts in Civil 3D.
Anyway that is a done deal and can be found at www.autodesk.co.uk/civil3D-downloads

Chris Berends looks after the Benelux area.

He is our Surveying guru. His experience comes from being a surveyor in the field combined with a Civil AND GIS study.
Chris has been at Autodesk for 7 years and has a great understanding of Geospatial industry and how to apply that knowledge.

Ove Cervin looks after the Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, and also the Baltic countries which are Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Ove’s experience comes from airport design, site modelling and earthwork design.

Our aim with this Blog is to explore how Civil 3D can make design a pleasure and to look outside the box as you will find that Civil 3D is very bendy and can be applied in so many different ways.
Excuse the photos with the hats!

We hope you find this blog useful.

Jack Strongitharm, Chris Berends and Ove Cervin