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 »

We’ve all been working hard here at Engineered Efficiency to bring you useful content related to Civil 3D, including the recent launch of our new service offerings, EE CivilAccess and EE GuidedAccess which both include unlimited instructor-led, hands-on training and the EE ProPack add-on. However, someone who’s been in the industry a very long time and whom I greatly respect suggested I tackle a different bunch of postings: civil engineering basics. I thought it was a great idea and decided to turn this into a regular series of Engineering 101 postings. If you didn’t study civil engineering in school, or if you did, maybe your emphasis was in another engineering discipline (Ceramic Engineering, anyone?), or maybe you just want to brush up on some engineering principals that underlie the use of Civil 3D, this series of posts is for you.

This first in the series covers the basics of calculating runoff using one of the most popular methods, the Rational Method. Maybe you know it better as Q = ciA. Read more after the jump.

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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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A few questions have come up this week in the NG regarding alignment components, and I received an e-mail asking about a drawing mentioned in the Mastering Civil 3D book, so I thought I’d save some searching and make it available here. Thanks to Karen Dowling in Manchester for sharing this drawing with me and letting me share it with you.

Download the Alignment playground drawing after the jump.

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Lately, I’ve been seeing quite a few questions on the Civil 3D discussion group regarding volumes and quantities. Volumes can be pretty straightforward, but individual material quantities can be a bit more in-depth. Following the link will hopefully illustrate this process a bit better.

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I am working on a series of posts to follow up on my AU Class. During the class, I made heavy use of Map 3D Tools (Civil 3D is built on Map 3D). Since Map 3D tools are often new to Civil 3D users, I’d like to take the time to get you “caught up”.

One of the first tasks you will probably run into as a civil firm is importing publicly available GIS data such as ESRI shapefiles (.shp), ArcInfo Exports (.e00) or similar.

In this post, I will explain how to import the file as AutoCAD entities. If you are interested in learning an alternative way to use this data through something called the FDO, read this article I wrote last year: Can You Do That In CAD?

Read more about importing shapefiles into your drawing after the jump:

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Have you been as lucky as I have to have a drawing that is unable to be opened?  or Can you open the drawing only to have in unable to plot?

Audit not fix your error? Read on to learn a new old trick.

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Back in the day, I wrote a post about how to copy information from Prospector to Excel called If It Quacks Like a Duck, and a follow up post with some ideas about how to exploit this technique.

Here is something so simple that I just discovered tonight while double checking some documentation I wrote recently.

Read more after the jump.

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When people first start using C3D, they’re tempted to draw polylines, then convert them to alignments. Many long time users suggest this is a bad idea because you lose some of the intelligence of the alignment layout tools (i.e. Extension lines, floating curves, etc.) Read the rest of this entry »

I really hate to do two fundamental posts back to back, but this was a request from one of my clients this morning. If I’m going to take the time to document something for one person, then I make the assumption that there may be someone else out there who would like the information as well, so I put it here. Quite honestly, it’s also a library that I create for myself as well - I can come back to one of my solutions and point it out for another customer later if needed.

So, today I am going to show a very broad overview of description keys. I’ll save any really in-depth discussion for a future post. To find out what that intimidating looking panorama is asking for, follow the link.   (note - for some reason, inline images and Windows Live Writer do not seem to agree completely with our layout…if you have your window maximized as you’re reading this, you may see some strange formatting issues.    Actually, you may see some strange formatting issues even if you don’t have a maximized window.   I apologize - I’ve spent about an hour trying to edit this to make it look acceptable.)

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