From the Ground Up

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posted 09/26/07 by Jack Strongitharm 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

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