take the edge off Civil 3D, created by Sean Twomey from down under has spit out a nifty solution for dealing with large surface data sets. I personally think the whole large dataset issue is over hyped, but I’ll leave that argument for another day.

In the meantime, check out his solution on his blog.

A reader contacted me a few weeks ago looking from a Set Rim Depth Pipe Rule for a structure. I never heard if he got it to work, but this is how I got the custom rule to work. Check the code after the jump.

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The Anonymous author over at civil3dblog.com has posted a routine that will allow you to use Match Props type functionality. Check it out here.

Yes, yet another Civil 3D blog to track. If you haven’t discovered RSS yet, go get IE7 or Outlook 2007 and check out their Feeds functions. I found them pretty good. If you’re on a Mac, Mail supports RSS directly inside, similar to Outlook 2007. Either way, RSS feeds let you subscribe to the growing number of blogs without having to visit every day to see if they’ve posted something.

Have you ever started laying out a pipe network using the cover and slope pipe rule or Pipe Cover and found the pipes down near the zero elevation? Well if your like me you don’t really appreciate having the pipes down at the zero elevation. Here’s a way to change the rule to put the elevation at a place which would be more desirable without having to move the pipes later on.

NOTE: Before you start make sure you save a copy of the C3DPipeRules.dvb to another location to easily go back to the original state.

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Sometimes you just need a good surface to play with. You’re testing out styles, or trying to make some sample data, or just want to have a random collection of data to make someone learn something without thinking about the site underneath. Thanks to some friends in Manchester, now you can have your own little fantasy land. Check it out after the jump.

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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!

When we teach Essentials classes, we show a myriad of methods for creating points on a site. I like to use Random points from Surface a lot, others like to use Points from Object. Eventually, we get around to setting points on all the lot corners so that some surveyor can put them on the ground. If you use the Points from objects and pick the parcels, you wind up with a lot of duplicate points, and you’re back to erasing them by hand. Well, you were until now. Read on for more…

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Engineered Efficiency is pleased to announce the release of version 1.5 of their Civil 3D HEC-RAS Toolset. Based on customer feedback and internal testing this routine is better than ever!

“Love it. Want it. How do I pay for it?”

-Ford Engineering Inc.
 San Antonio, Texas

 

It’s easy! Call EE’s office at 866-760-8724, Extension 26. Marc Meyers will help with your credit card payment.

Issues Resolved Include:

• Cross Sections wider than the sample surface no longer calculate wrong bank stations when used with Bank Plines or Alignments.
• An existing Bank Site no longer causes issues.
• Malformed HEC-RAS Export files with inaccurate section counts no longer cause a crash.

EE’s HEC-RAS tools can cut days off of your floodplain analysis. When combined with the power of Civil 3D, flood depth analysis is a matter of minutes instead of hours. Visit the Engineered Efficiency website to download the latest version of this incredible tool.

The Law of Unintended Consequences holds that almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence.

In attempting to make the EE RAS Tools more bombproof, we are running some behind the scenes data validation. This checks for things like reversed sections, alignment flow direction, crossing bank alignments, etc. In this process, we’re calling a portion of the C3D code that doesn’t exist in 2006, so the program fails to run. We’re working on a solution, but it might mean less data validation. If you’re on 2006, you currently cannot use the tool.

In the interim, you can open your dwg in 2007, export data, and then close the dwg to avoid making a version change. Our apologies for the issue, and we’ll let you know when we have a fix. Thanks!

As Dana continues thrashing a road down the Civil 3D pipes path she managed to find another little gotcha in the export code. The images below should paint the the picture. I am posting an updated version that will deal with this as well.

Download the update here.