Archive for March, 2007

I was working with some folks today who were used to the Land Desktop+Civil Design pipe layout interface that gave you the option for directly typing in a pipe length as you drew pipes in plan.  They like to try to keep their center to center lengths even 8′ intervals.

Click more to find out what worked…

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We’re currently putting together the list of our selected Civil 3D tools for inclusion on our Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 book. If you’re interested in getting your tools into the hands of literally thousands of potential customers, drop me a note at Mastering@civil3d.com.

You must include:

• Complete Name and Version Number
• Software Type (Trial, Demo, Freeware, GNU, Shareware, etc.)
• Contact Information (Company name, address, URL, and contact point.)
• Download URL if available
• Any special needs or limitations (2008 only, etc.)

We’ll be putting our selections together and Wiley Publishing will be in contact to get clearances, etc. Thanks!

I don’t have all the details just yet, but I want you to SAVE THE DATE to come to Philadelphia for a half day AUGI CAD Matinee. 

I’ll be teaching two “AU Type” 70 minute Civil 3D classes.  Once the agenda has been approved and the details ironed out, I will post more information about what I will be teaching and what other great classes will be going on.

Bookmark the AUGI link so you will be ready to sign up when registration opens!

http://www.cadmatinee.com/philadelphia/default.asp

You were here so helpful and handy… Keeping my mind on the game for my points, surfaces, alignments, and profiles…

and then….

 

 

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I am currently documenting some pipes information, and the little golden glifs that show up to mark a pending connection to a Structure or Pipe were driving me nuts.

They are very small by default.  If you have a hard time seeing them on your screen you can make them bigger.  I know this isn’t the most groundbreaking tip I’ve ever posted but it took me a few minutes to find it, so I figured I’d share.

 

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If you haven’t been able to resist the urge to explode Civil 3D objects, or you copied and exploded a surface to extract some contour information, you may not realize that there are monsters lurking in your drawing.

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A few weeks ago, I was asked about some of the LDT 3D polyline tools and their Civil 3D equivalents. 

One question that I didn’t have a good answer for was the 3D polyline transition tool.  When you are actively drawing an LDT 3D polyline, you are given the choice to pick a vertex location and either assign an elevation or transition to the next point.

LDT would figure out the grade between your two known spots and assign an elevation to the middle point based on constant slope between them.  When you are actively drawing a feature line, you don’t get that choice, so for a little while we were stumped on the fastest way to accomplish this task with feature lines.

Until… read more…

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Sometimes if you build a corridor that has a complicated daylight or twisty baseline you wind up with “bowties” or little overlaps in the corridor feature line….

Sometimes you might run your assembly around your edge of pavement instead of down your centerline and have an overlapping centerline feature line…

A Road

You might want to extract a grading feature line or polyline because daylighting can sometimes be tricky around complicated corridors, or maybe you’d like to do some lot grading with grading objects and need that “base” feature line.

Or Sometimes you might want a a feature line but nothing else- such as in a parking lot corridor.

So how would you deal with this?  Press more to find out…

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This is great - James and Dana get to attend seminars in their respective cities, I have to do traveling and present…

Join ALACAD in May for the Autodesk 2008 product line rollout - We’ll be showing you what’s new and improved with all your favorite Autodesk product, including AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008. Here is the schedule:

May 3 - Nashville, TN

May 8 - Jackson, MS

May 9 - Memphis, TN

May 15 - Mobile, AL

May 17 - Birmingham, AL

Click here to register and for more information.

Not enough of you are nerds that hit the Autodesk site regularly so here’s something you might have missed. Starting in April, the full team of evangelists, specialists and generally good people will be on the road for the Autodesk Experience the Possibilities tour. It’s free, and will get you a head start on the 2008 products.

I’ll be at the one in Dallas, wearing the gorgeous EE maroon, come say hello.