One of the things I wanted to show my GIS class the other day was building a Civil 3D surface from a DEM file. There are a few ways to use DEMs in Civil 3D. In addition to building surfaces, you can also use the Map FDO to bring in the DEM and do some neat hillshading and styling. I’ll do that sometime soon.

I’ve created another short video, and this time I narrated it! The video shows the Mastering Civil 3D Chapter 5 page 123 exercise on creating a surface from a DEM.

Find the video after the jump- and let me know how you like this format. (*** if you can’t get the video to play, I might have reached my jing bandwidth limit. I am working on an easy way to get video out to the masses so stay tuned!***)

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The other day I taught a short (ahem, too short!) class at the DE GIS conference. One of the things that we talked about was building a Civil 3D Surface from LIDAR contours. If a picture is worth 1000 words, a film is worth 1,000,000, so I made a short video using jing.

Read on to see the video and learn more. (*** if you can’t get the video to play, I might have reached my jing bandwidth limit. I am working on an easy way to get video out to the masses so stay tuned!***)

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I was testing something for Dana today and ran into an unexpected event with Civil 3D 2009, and thought that I should let users know about it so they won’t be surprised. I have confirmed that it is a known issue, but definitely not a show stopper.

Follow the link to find out more. Read the rest of this entry »

With Civil 3D 2009, there are a lot of small things that make me happy. There are quite a few tweaks to styles dialogs, user options and command prompts that don’t seem like much but really make a difference.

Read on to see one I am working with today…

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To better serve our clients, the team at Engineered Efficiency is always investigating new solutions to make your life easier. Sometimes this means that we will find a piece of software that we recommend to users. Other times, we come across something so great that we don’t just recommend it to our users, we supply it to them.

What if I were to tell the surveyors out there that there was data collection software that got rid of the whole “how do I code” discussion once and for all? What if field coding beyond descriptions were a thing of the past? What if you could export a FBK file directly out of your data collector? Would you want to know more? If you’re intrigued, click the link to find out what all the fuss is about. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings from my new position at Engineered Efficiency!  I’m glad the folks here have let me join the party and I hope you’ll find my posts to be up to par with the high quality of past EE posts.

On to the subject at hand…

As you probably know, the ability to assign elevations from a surface to a feature line has been in Civil 3D for some time.  A big wish list item of mine has always been for that to be a dynamic relationship.  In other words, once the feature line gets its elevations from a surface, it would be nice if it would update those elevations to match any changes to the surface.  Well in Civil 3D 2009 ?!?!…..

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There are some really cool tools to label surface labels.  Nearly every government entity that I have to submit too asks for slope calculations for driveways, sidewalks etc.  I hate having to find my excel spreadsheet and pulling the design data off the plans with my scale (where did I put that?) or laying awake at night questioning if I updated or sent my calculation sheets to the review agency…

Jump with me to see a couple of tips…

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Engineered Efficiency is continuing to grow to serve you better! Eric Chappell has joined EE as a Implementation Consultant and we couldn’t be more pleased with the latest addition to the EE staff.

Eric comes to EE with nearly 18 years experience in the Civil/Survey industry (and the gray hair to prove it).  Beginning as a Surveyor at the H. F. Lenz Company in Johnstown, PA, Eric worked in the field and soon entered the world of CAD as a Survey technician.  During a 10-year period with H.F. Lenz, Eric acquired a Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, Passed the EIT exam,  and was supervising all CAD personnel in the Civil Engineering Dept. at H.F. Lenz.

For the next 5 years, Eric served as Applications Engineer, Project Manager, and Team Lead at Avatech Solutions.  During that time he worked with hundreds of firms and organizations, helping them get the most out of Civil 3D (and Land Desktop for some time).  He also authored 6 training manuals for Land Desktop and Civil 3D that would be used to train CAD users across the country.

Then, it was off to Timmons Group, a 300+ employee Civil/Survey firm located in Richmond, VA where Eric has served as CAD Manager for the past 3 years.  During that time, Eric helped Timmons group implement company-wide CAD standards, establish an award-winning training and certification program, and begin the journey into the world of Civil 3D.

Eric has also been a highly-rated speaker at AU for the last 4 years with his specialty being Grading and CAD Management; has contributed to several Autodesk Official Training Courseware titles; and has been a regular participant in the Autodesk Civil 3D Gunslinger program.

We’re excited to have Eric on board along with all the experience that he brings.

Please be sure to drop him a comment to welcome him aboard!

Mark

There are heaps of nifty new feature line tools in Civil 3D 2009 that will make your grading life a whole lot more fun. One of my favorites is using a feature line as a corridor target. Think of all of the times you would love to grap elevations to drive your model but it seems redundant to make another alignment and a profile, especially when you already have a feature line drawn.

Read on…

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All right, I promise to shut up about Data Shortcuts for awhile after this.

First, what has changed with Data Shortcuts in Civil3D 2009? How do you work with them now? How will it affect your work flow and/or directory structure?

Let’s take a look after the jump

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