Spot Elev Rounded to 0.05-feet

A question came up today from our Pittsburg branch:

“How can I make Civil 3D round spot elevations to the nearest five-hundredths of a foot (0.05’)?”

I knew creating an EXPRESSION was the answer but I just didn’t know how to accomplish this task.  So after putting my noodle on the solution over the afternoon – from time-to-time when I needed a break from real work – I came up with the final expression around dinner.

Learn more after the jump…

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C3D Objects – Layer Isolate vs. Object Isolate

The post Using ‘Select Similar’ over Layer Isolate outlined an alternative to the Layer Isolate command for selecting Civil 3D objects.  It also discussed how the isolate layer button does not exactly work as desired for Civil 3D objects at first glance.

2009.06.29-LayIsolate Button2

That post talks about using ‘Select Similar’ but there are other options as well to get the desired results.  It just involves working a little differently to get the job done.  The alternatives are:

  1. Setting Layer Isolate (LAYISO) to lock layers instead of turning them off.
  2. Using the ‘Object Isolate’ command.

Lets review…

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Give your mouse some energy.

This is one of those “I never realized” or more like a “duh” moment that I just experienced and thought I’d share since it’s a quick informational post.  I promise my next post will be more insightful to those that will be thinking to themselves “duh”, Jonathan’s an idiot, (which of course is well deserved at this moment).  But maybe, just maybe, someone will check their batteries to their optical mouse, before they call their CAD Manager or IT Administrator and harass them about why their Civil 3D is hesitating.  Yep, that’s it.  For a few weeks now, I’ve been noticing much slower zooms using my mouse wheel along with delays in double clicking to edit something.  I just figured since I’m working on some big data sets with aerial images that my computer is slowing down.  Well, today my mouse completely died on me.  I put a new battery in and Voila!  No hesitation in any clicks or mouse movements within Civil 3D.

 

Using ‘Select Similar’ over Layer Isolate

2009.03.09-Select Similar Pull-down

Select Similar” is one of the most useful selection tools in Civil 3D.  If you are not using it on a daily basis you are really missing out.  Since all Civil 3D labels are objects, not just Mtext or Dtext, they react to ‘Select Similar’ in a very useful way.

For instance:

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Take Charge of Your C3D Rollout

As of today we are up to 303 Civil 3D projects in Vault, company wide, and we just passed our one-year hallmark of our Civil 3D rollout.2009.12.16-Vault count

 

 

1. How many projects does your company have in Civil 3D?

 

2. How many years (or months) has your company been using Civil 3D on real world projects?

 

 

Leave a comment below…

If you are floundering with your rollout, here are a couple of key things we did that I think really helped.

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