You’ve created an alignment from a polyline, but upon inspection, there are no PI’s (line extensions) at any of the curves.  Why?  And, how can can I get ‘em?  Read on…

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Displaying Lat/Long in Decimal Minutes

We recently had a client request that we display the Latitude and Longitude of Cogo Points formatted as degrees and decimal minutes.  This format seems to have become a standard display format of many hand-held GPS units.  Unfortunately, Civil 3D does not contain a built-in option for formatting Latitude and Longitude in decimal minutes.  No problem, I thought…  I’ll simply use some expressions.  But it turned out to be a much more difficult task than I expected…  Read on for the details.

 

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Intersection w/ FLs and Supers to Change X-slope

For those of us still using Civil 3D 2009 or less:


There are lots of times when grading an intersection of two roads with steep slopes that you need to adjust a lane cross slope to make the intersection drain properly.  Lets review how to grade an intersection using Featurelines (FL) – the fastest way if you don’t need to run pavement quantities off the Corridor model, until you upgrade to Civil 3D 2010, 2011, etc… - and also lets look at a fast way to adjust road cross slopes using Superelevation points.

The first step is to extend the Corridor Model up to the curb radii.  Unless the roads are coming together at exactly 90-degree angles you will need to add a region to the corridor model and create an assembly that is only the right – or left – lane (see image below).

2009.11.23-Starting point

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Hiding Surfaces the Quick and Dirty Way

Sometimes you don’t to show existing ground beneath proposed grade. While a hide boundary is a relatively simple thing if you’re working in the original file, you can’t modify a data reference. And could pull out a mask, but that can get a bit convoluted if you’re trying to punch a whole that’s not a nice simply rectangle. So what’s a linework-obsessive Civil 3D user to do? Well, this one reaches in to the old bag of tricks that don’t always work nicely, but work when you need them. See my solution after the jump.

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Command Line Monkey

There are days that I just recall the oddest things.  Today is one of them.  While I like the ribbon and all, there are a few commands that aren’t on it, like the FIND command.  ( to Find and Replace… type _FIND at the command line)

If you have a vague idea of the command, start typing that command in, and press the TAB key until you locate the command you are looking for.

Tab

For example,  you seem frustrated with crashing, and would like some training. 

at the command line,

CommandAI

Press the TAB key until you arrive at:

Command: AI_TRAINING_SAFE

if that doesn’t help, try stopping at:

Command: AI_PRODUCT_SUPPORT

If you are really frustrated stop at:

Command: ai_send_feedback

or as I did in the image, typed as to find ASSOCIATESHORTCUTPROJECT.

Happy keyboarding!

Note to you Civil 3ders – the Civil commands typically start with AECC.

 
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