Archive for October, 2006

Since we had such a great turnout at the Burmingham AUGI CAD Camp, we decided to do an encore of sorts!

Come join the ALACAD team in Nashville, TN for another AUGI CAD Camp! Registration isn’t open just yet, but will be as soon as we finalize the plans. Check back here for more information as it becomes available.

I know, I have an AU paper to write, but geesh, this is important. We are collecting deposits now for a first group 11:30 tee-off on Monday, November 27th in Vegas. We still have slots available! If you’d like to play (and they can hold your bags at the course, so just come straight from the airport!) e-mail me today. See here for more details!

I know that I promised a comprehensive comparison of the Carlson Civil Suite and Civil 3D a few weeks ago. OK, it was around 4 weeks ago. Due to some technical difficulties (not related to the program itself - rather licensing issues), I had put that project on hold. Well, the issues have been resolved, and I’m in full review mode. In order to be as unbiased as possible, I’m going to work through one project with both pieces of software, pointing out pros and cons of each. I’m going to attempt to be as open-minded as possible, but someone has mentioned that it would be hard to do on this website. If I get out of line with the bias, someone give me a nudge back in the right direction.

Now, let the games begin…

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Every time I teach a Basic Civil 3D class, I get the comment “So these corridors are great?  But how do I do an intersection? or a cul de sac?”

Putting together an intersection is really pretty simple, but without a little imagination and a kick in the right direction, it can be hard to figure out your first time.

 

 

 

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There have been many discussions about whether a user would want to manage points via description keys or by the new functionality with point groups in Civil 3D. There are reasons for both, but I’m thinking that through much research (and discussion with others, most importantly Anthony Governanti) I’ve finally got a best-practices of sort down in my head. Believe it or not, it utilizes a combination from both mindsets to work.

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Since we have to shut Vault down to back it up and script the backup process at the command line, (don’t get me started on how dumb this is,) it’s usually done late at night. But I don’t want to sit there at 2 AM waiting for Vault to complete it’s cycle and read the log. Now I don’t have to! Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it was the redeye this AM, but this caught me by surprise.  I mean I know about the “Replace Z Value With Current Elevation” Button, but I just never thought that moving a Civil 3D Point to the endpoint of a line would change its elevation.

I know I can’t be the only person out there who didn’t realize I could be changing the elevation of points (potentially points that were brought in from an outside surveyor or otherwise)

 

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Well, ICE is over - successfully, I might add (so no shame from Anthony’s blog…) Manchester was beautiful, but a bit chilly for my Alabama blood. This was my first time in Manchester, and I’m really impressed. It’s quite beautiful–but then again, I haven’t been here with a lot of snow on the ground yet.
Many of you have heard myself and others talk about ICE. But you may be asking, “Why are they talking about that cold stuff that he likes in his Scotch?” Well, faithful readers, like everything else we do in the acronym-laden world of Autodesk software, ICE stands for something - Implementation Certified Expert. What’s that all about?
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A couple of days since we last looked at Vault, but now let’s look at one of the more contentious areas of the workflow I propose: Paving and Corridors. And since I have my laptop back, I can actually use Visio to make pretty pictures. I have this all drawn by hand with arrows and colors, and I can read it, but I doubt anyone else could. Read the rest of this entry »

I normally don’t write “Hey, look what this guy’s posting!” articles, but this one is special, simply because it’s one of the coolest tips that I’ve seen for Civil 3D in a long time, and the whole world needs to know about it. Many people have asked for the old functionality of being able to list cut/fill values with different colors for cut and fill. We’ve been able to list spot elevations on a grid for a while, and for cut/fill values you would simply list those spots on a volume surface. People complained, though, that there was no visible difference (other than the negative sign) between cut values and fill values. Leave it to the genius that is called Peter Funk to come up with the answer - and thanks a LOT to Anthony Governanti for taking the time to document it on his blog. To see the workflow and set it up for yourself (or to download the template with the styles if you’re too lazy to set it up for yourself), go to Anthony’s Blog on the Civil Community Website.

Thanks, guys! Incredible work there…

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