Archive for June, 2006

This one is both undocumented and unsupported, so don’t ask me any details.

A user on the Civil 3D newsgroup wanted to know how to find object layers easily. Dan Philbrick (of the Friday Dan & Dave show fame…) mentioned a command called AecInspect. This gives object information, as well as object layer information. It won’t get subcomponents, but could prove to be quite useful from time to time.

Here’s a sample result of a report on a surface that I have:

Have fun!

OK, so in case you hadn’t put two and two together, Engineered Efficiency, Inc has been working with John Postlewait at George Butler Associates on their C3D implementation. They’ve been pushing the software harder than 90% of the folks out there, and have tested Vault in the real world.

In spite of John’s occasional rant in the NG, he is still pushing forward, and continues in his efforts to make Vault work in his environment. Yesterday, he shared a great little batch file with me, and I’ve gotten his permission to share it with you:

@ECHO OFF

START /W IISRESET /STOP

“C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Data Management Server 5\Vault Manager\Connectivity.VaultManager.exe” -Opurge -NVault -KEEPVERS1 -EXCLCMT”Save” -VUadministrator -VP -S

IISRESET /START

That’s the magic vault purge script that will keep your server clean. That’s it. Copy and paste that into Notepad, and save as Vaultpurge.bat. Watch for word wrap! There’s one line from the “C:\…” all the way to the “-S” Be aware that this is working on the default install, with a single vault. You could add multiple program calls to have it purge multiple vaults. This script will purge all but one version from your Vault. You can modify it as needed.

Use Windows Task Manager to run it late at night. Notice that it is shutting down the Vault with the IISRESET /STOP portion. If you can, run this on Sunday around 3:00 AM so that nobody gets caught in the shutdown.

Vault is NOT the end of the world folks, and is the only way to fly in C3D 2007. The effort of getting Vault in place is well worth the benefits that come with 2007. Don’t let the fear-mongers and uninformed let you deter from investigating what can be a great solution for your firm…

One last thing: Adesk released a Service Pack. Go read the other blogs for details (and cookies), I’m not going to waste your time or mine posting the same stuff as ten other sources. Inconsistency is key!

Hey, I know I’m a day late. Gimme a break, I was on the road yesterday.

Service Pack 1 for Civil 3D 2007 has been released. It’s installed here, and I’ve noticed a little difference. From my perspective, grading is slightly faster, but still broken. I can crash it almost at will. Maybe one day…. *sigh*

From the readme:

This Service Pack resolves the following issues:

General

Memory usage has been improved when performing the following functions: labeling, masking of pipe objects, regenerating drawings, and plotting.

Using the Alignment Grid View on multiple drawings no longer causes the program to close unexpectedly.

Label text masking now plots as expected when using named plot styles.

The text height on an xref label now scales as expected in a paper space viewport.

An issue with zooming to a surface or to an assembly has been resolved.

When you open a drawing that has been migrated from Autodesk Civil 3D 2006 to

Autodesk Civil 3D 2007, the Display tab of the Profile Style dialog box now displays the 3D Chain component type in the Component Display list.

An issue with drawings not showing existing ground profiles due to alignments containing problematic geometry has been resolved.

Alignments

Clicking on a parcel area label now responds as expected.

Tangents displayed in a horizontal geometry profile band are now correctly represented (displayed and annotated) as tangents instead of curves.

When two or more station equations are added to an alignment, the profile view data band now reflects accurate station values.

Corridor

Slope values for the following subassemblies now migrate correctly: LinkOffsetAndSlope, LinkSlopeAndVerticalDeflection, LinkSlopeToElevation, LinkSlopeTo Surface, LinkWidthAndSlope.

When creating cul-de-sacs that are modeled with the corridor object, the offset from the arc now computes correctly when the offset point is located at exact center of the arc.

Accessing the Subassembly Properties dialog box no longer causes the program to become unresponsive.

Civil 3D 2006 drawings containing subassemblies with slope values now open successfully.

Grading

Transitions using relative elevation criteria are now created correctly. Previously, the projections were sometimes created with incorrect distances.

Several issues that prevented drawings containing problematic grading geometry from opening have been resolved.

A performance issue with grading into a surface has been resolved. For example, grading a pond into a surface now completes in a more acceptable amount of time.

Pasting a grading surface into a corridor surface then saving now responds as expected.

An issue with opening a drawing containing grading feature lines, after closing another drawing, has been resolved.

Pipes

An issue with pipes in a Profile View when connected structures are displayed as a solid has been resolved. Note that in the Structure Style dialog box, the “Enable part masking” check box is now hidden when the structure is being displayed as a solid. It is recommended that you use the Display as boundary option in the Profile tab of the Structure Style dialg box. The performance of this option is significantly faster than when the Display as solid option is used. Note that the Display as boundary option is the default for new styles, but existing styles from Autodesk Civil3D 2006 are set to Display as solid.

An issue with structures displaying as blocks in Profile Views has been resolved.

Masking now works as expected.

Points

Points modified in the Prospector tree and drawn by point groups other than the All Points point group now update appropriately.

An issue with using the Point Editor to change point styles, point label styles, or point layers has been resolved. The Point Editor now responds appropriately when you change these items.

An issue with opening a new drawing using a 2006 drawing template has been resolved. Drawings that have an external data reference in the point settings can now be updated successfully.

Quantity Takeoff Reports

Calculating volumes when more than one material is a structure type now works correctly.

Incremental volume values for materials in the Select Materials reports are now reported correctly.

Fill factors are now applied correctly for structure type materials and material areas.

Switching the type for a material in the Material List tab of the Sample Line Group Properties dialog box now works as expected.

The program responds as expected when deleting shapes from materials and adding shapes to materials in the Material List tab of the Sample Line Group Properties dialog box.

Volume tables now display accurate values for structure type materials, and also react dynamically when editing volume related information.

The list of available corridor shapes now displays accurately in the Select Corridor Shape list in the Quantity Takeoff Criteria dialog box.

Survey

Modifying and updating multiple dependent Survey Networks now produces accurate results.

When inserting figures into a drawing with different zones, the program no longer closes unexpectedly.

When creating a figure from 3D objects in the drawing, vertex elevations displayed during an inverse or mapcheck now display accurately.

When using the Export to Field Book command, figures that are created from objects containing non-tangent curves using the Create From Object command, now export and re-import correctly.

The Traverse Analysis command now finds the closing side under the following circumstances:

A closed loop traverse is run where the starting station’s coordinates are known and a reference direction and observations to the final station are taken. The traverse proceeds to the last station where closing observations are taken to the first station. For a four-sided traverse, the definition is as follows:

Initial station = 1
Initial backsight = 4
Stations = 2-4
Final foresight = 1

An issue with saving changes made to Equipment items in the Survey Toolspace Item View has been resolved.

Icons displayed in the Survey Points collection now accurately represent the current state of items in the Control Points collection.

The Survey tab now opens as expected in Toolspace when you use a survey command.

Issues with zooming or panning to an object from the Prospector or Survey tab when a UCS is in use in the drawing have been resolved.

This Service Pack also includes resolution for the following AutoCAD issue:

Saving or autosaving a drawing file results in a fatal error followed by the CER dialog. This issue occurs randomly.

Have fun!

OK, this is a breaking exclusive…you won’t find this anywhere else. This is actual video of a typical Civil 3D user.

Sorry, I’ve got to break up the learning with a little humor from time to time….which is why I always say:

Have Fun!

Just in case you’d thought I’d forgotten…here’s your teaser for the week. (Click on it for the full size version!)

We’re almost done with this program, and should have testing versions available soon.

This program is the only one I know of that will take NATIVE C3D surface data, a stream CL alignment, a series of polyline cross sections and generate a HEC-RAS .geo file.

One use, it’s paid for. I wrote this for my own production use, and EE is refining it for your use. Come back soon for the full announcement!

Oh, and I’ve been in Dallas, Tulsa, Plano, and Birmingham this week, so forgive my low NG post count! Hey, at least I’m consistent on the blog front…inconsistent as ever.

I’ve been proven wrong twice today…

I was contacted yesterday by a user, Keith Kempker, about whether Land Desktop could be run in MDI mode (Multiple Document Interface). Well, no, it never has been able to, why now? Well, it seems as if there is a option on the System tab of Options in Land Desktop that allows you to run in SDI mode or MDI. I dismissed it as being something in there as a holdover from AutoCAD, but no, it works. I got a report back from him today that said he did, in fact, have multiple drawings and multiple projects open at once. I verified this with James Wedding, who was sitting next to me at the time.

My question was “HOW?” His answer - “Magic”

Anyway, here’s a screen shot so you’ll know where to find it:

Have Fun!

If you’re on any AutoCAD 2007-based product, you’ve likely seen the new External Refereneces window. In previous versions, we had one window for XREFS (referenced DWG files) and one window for Image references (raster images). With the inclusion of DWF references (yes, we can now reference a DWF file into our drawing - too cool!), Autodesk decided to merge all these managers into one relatively simple window to manage ALL references. If you’re not on 2007, here’s a preview of what that window looks like:

Now, not everyone likes this new window. I spoke with a long-time AutoCAD user yesterday, Keith Kempker about this very thing. He was irate (yeah, that’s the nice way to put it) that Autodesk took away his Image Manager window. He was so irate, in fact, that he went off in search of his missing Image Manager window. Luckily for him, he found it on the AUGI Forums with the help of Tim Creary (I promised to give credit for this nice discovery.)

In short, to get back your old Image Manager window, simply type CLASSICIMAGE at the command line - this brings back our old familiar interface:

Have fun!

This past weekend, I received an email from a person who has worked on creating and developing a pretty nice raster-to-vector conversion program. This program is called MagicTracer.

I haven’t done much testing on it, but what I’ve seen is very impressive. The install went smoothly, and was very straightforward. Since I haven’t purchased the program, I can run it in a demo mode - this allows for 35 program uses, at a maximum of 12 hours per use (if I read it correctly). The interface is also pretty straightforward, and offers some very in-depth features. The program opens various raster image formats, although one negative that I saw was no Adobe PDF support. I get a LOT of drawings in PDF format that need to be converted to a vector format, so I’m wondering if this is something that could be added at a later time.

Just to have something to do with it, I opened a topographic survey in Civil 3D 2007. I isolated the surface layer and then used SnagIt to do a screen capture of the surface and saved it as a TIFF file. Then, I created a new project in MagicTracer and opened the image file that I had created. Using the Vector menu “Vector Convert” command gave me a TON of options, some of which I had no idea what to do with. The first thing I did was turn on “Enable Real-Time Preview” so that I could see what I was doing. After changing a few options, I came up with a very reasonable conversion that wasn’t too “out there”. Smoothing was something that I didn’t even attempt at this point.

I also saw some very nice Raster editing functions in another menu, as well as image enhancements. At first glance, this seems to be a VERY powerful program. Even better is the price - at $49.95, this offers some nice raster conversion tools that you can’t find in many other places. Try it out - I think you’ll like it.

Blogger sometimes has issues with some of my images. I’ve spent the better part of the last hour trying to fix the last post. As a result, some of the images look TERRIBLE when viewed on this website. To see the full size image, simply click on that image, and it will display full-size.

Have to be careful with my template layout - it can get pushed down the page VERY easily.

And now, to try to put the hair that I just pulled out back in….

What a catchy title

OK, many people have asked about balancing proposed surfaces in Civil 3D. So far, I’ve found how to do this, but I’ve had mixed results actually doing it. In other words, it crashes. A lot. I’m hoping this is fixed in the upcoming service pack.

So let’s look at what I’ve got - I have a 6 lot subdivision with an existing surface in it. I’ve imported some 2D polylines in that represent building pad locations. I’ve converted those polylines to feature lines, assigned elevations from my surface, and elevated the feature lines to the building pad elevation. I’ve also graded these building pads to the outside. One issue that I ran into when doing this is the face that create grading infill doesn’t seem to work correctly. I’ve worked around this (somewhat) by grading to the inside at a very small relative elevation and very steep slope. 0.05′ at a 1:1 slope filled in the inside of my grading quite nicely. This gives me a complete surface to balance. So here comes the fun - you can see where we’re starting:

Before we start, let’s do a quick check of the volumes here. To do this, go to Surfaces>Utilities>Volumes. Select your base surface (EG here) and your comparison surface, and it will do a quick check of the volumes for you:

OK, to get started, let’s go to our Grading menu. Next, select Grading Utilities, and then Grading Volume Tools.

This will bring up the following window/toolbar:

The first thing we need to do is select the grading group that we’re trying to balance. Note that this will only work if you already have a grading group defined and graded.

Now, we have two different ways that we can balance our volumes - we can input a value and raise/lower the surface manually, or we can automatically balance the surface. Here’s a screen shot showing how to raise/lower the surface manually:

The other way is to automatically balance the surface. This will bring up indow that asks for the required volume - set it to 0 and it should balance the volumes:

Please remember that grading, whereas more stable than 2006, is still buggy. I have issues with it every day. This may work for you, it may not. As with almost everything in Civil 3D, please save your drawing before performing any functions that require intense calculations (and boy, does this one require intense calculation).

Have fun!