Have a blog related to C3D? I’m teaching a class called, “The Best of the Blogs,” at AU. Think your blog has the chops? Then I want to make sure you are in there! Drop me an email, james.wedding@ this domain. See you in Vegas!

Oh, and thanks wordpress for making an iPhone client.

In last week’s post we arrived at the conclusion that a standards committee is a necessary evil. In next week’s post I hope to help you discover that standards committees really don’t have to be evil at all and can actually be quite helpful and essential to the process. For now, though, lets talk about how to build a good committee.

Read the rest of this entry »

The next three EECasts are now open for registration.

Corridors Can Be Pretty Too 
2008-07-23 12-1 EDT

Creating Better Sections: Using Styles to Reduce Tedious Tasks 
2008-07-30 12-1 EDT

Rules of Parcels Explained 
2008-08-06 12-1 EDT

Check out these upcoming free presentations as well as recordings of past session by following this link.

Enjoy!

I frequently receive requests to label coordinates in Civil 3D. This can be done, but only with a point label or with an alignment label. To add in the surface elevation requires reference text. Follow the link to see the style that I created to do this as well as an image of the style.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those who missed Wednesday’s EECast Get Smart: Intelligent Grading with Civil 3D, the recorded version is now available and can be found here.

Thanks to all who attended and thanks in advance to all who view the recording.

In last week’s post we finished up our discussion on company support, top to bottom.  If you’re certain that you have the backing of management, and at least most of your users are on board with the concept of standardizing your company, it’s time to get started building your new company standards.  Before we go on, I just have to emphasize the importance of this one more time.  DO NOT PROCEED without this support.  It will be an exercise in futility.  If you spend months building company standards only to have a PM dismiss them for personal preference, then it was all in vain.

So you’re at a crossroads.  It’s time to start compiling and building and refining your company standards and you have two choices.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my first post in this new Engineering 101 series, I talked about determining runoff rates (Q) using the Rational Method. That post ended like any good summer blockbuster, leaving open the possibility for a sequel. We’ll, unlike the years you spent waiting for the new Batman sequel, this next post in Rational Method Saga arrives only a couple weeks after the first post (sorry, I was our of town last week!). Read the rest of this entry »

I accidentally plugged in the coffee pot as our web team was rebooting the database server and sort of fried a few things. So, you’re gonna need to reset your password, OK? Your username is now the e-mail address you used to sign up. Your old username WILL NOT work.

Actually, we’re in the process of tying together the main EE site (www.eng-eff.com) and civil3d.com to common user databases. In the process we had to reset user accounts and permissions so we can avoid duplicates, spam accounts, etc. All (and I mean all, including you admins and authors,) user accounts have been reset to a username matching your e-mail address. This means you’ll need to reset your password to go along with it.

Click here to visit the Member Services page and reset your password. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we hope you’ll take it as a minor hiccup to gaining access the best free C3D information on the net.

Thanks for being part of the group, and for bearing with this change.

Just a friendly reminder to join us for the encore presentation of Get Smart: Intelligent Grading with Civil 3D.  You can register here.  Hope to see you all at 12:00 EST!

Well grading has been the hot topic for me with all the buzz from last week’s EECast (encore this week, by the way) so I thought it fitting to share some more grading thoughts.

After spending some quality grading time in the ‘09 release I’ve come to know and love several new feature line commands, and in fact wonder what I ever did without them.  Read more after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »