If you have been tuning in to these weekly posts then last week you would have taken the survey to determine whether your CAD standards are solid enough to proceed with a full-on Civil 3D implementation.  If you scored low and have work to do…what’s next?

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No, I am not going to talk about Civil 3d object styles or James’ House of Styles.  I want to ask about the other styles - the base AutoCAD style - Named Plot Styles.  How many people are remaining in a pen-color-based (CTB) AutoCAD world?

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Every open a Civil 3d drawing and begin creating an object and notice that the layer that you need to place an object like a FG surface is missing?  What tools do you have?  Check out a little tip after the jump.

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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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I normally don’t write “Hey, look what this guy’s posting!” articles, but this one is special, simply because it’s one of the coolest tips that I’ve seen for Civil 3D in a long time, and the whole world needs to know about it. Many people have asked for the old functionality of being able to list cut/fill values with different colors for cut and fill. We’ve been able to list spot elevations on a grid for a while, and for cut/fill values you would simply list those spots on a volume surface. People complained, though, that there was no visible difference (other than the negative sign) between cut values and fill values. Leave it to the genius that is called Peter Funk to come up with the answer - and thanks a LOT to Anthony Governanti for taking the time to document it on his blog. To see the workflow and set it up for yourself (or to download the template with the styles if you’re too lazy to set it up for yourself), go to Anthony’s Blog on the Civil Community Website.

Thanks, guys! Incredible work there…

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Your Pipe Network quick tip for the day. Using the default Part Catalog in C3D, the built-in material in the Ductile Iron Pipe Part Family is actually listed as Reinforced Concrete. This will show its head when you go to label a pipe with the material as part of the label. Be sure to modify this before adding sizes or you will have to modify each pipe after the fact.

This one came up again today for me so I thought I might share. It has been discussed a couple of times on the groups awhile ago. Those of you who are looking to have your station character fall on the alignment and have the text perpendicular to the alignment like LDT used to do here is a style to get you started. As James said in his styles post I think I build this one everytime I teach a class as well.

Login to get the dwg here.

Update: I have been informed Dana did a how to on this, so if you would like more than just the end result, check here.

It’s been documented in the groups a couple of times, but I build this style everytime I go to training. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, you all know that you can change the styles of objects and labels. However, let’s say that you create this new surface style that you have named “Our Company Contour Standard” that you want to have applied to every style that you create. How do you do this? Do you just pick it each time you create your surface? What if you could have it as the default style? Well, good news, because you definitely can do this.

Once again tonight, we’re working on the Settings tab of our Toolspace. Note that this technique will work on almost any type of Civil 3D object, but we’re going to use Surfaces for this example. Go to Surface and expand the tree there. At the very bottom of that group, you’ll see an item called Commands. Expand this - this is where we’re going to edit the command that we use to create our surface. In case you’re lost, here it it:

Now, we’re going to edit the CreateSurface command. Right click on that command, and select Edit Command Settings. Now, a very familiar box pops up (especially if you worked through the previous tip). The 5th option here in this list is Default Styles. If you expand that tree, you can edit the styles that are applied each and every time you create a surface:

If you’re brave, browse in this window and see what else you can modify - you can select your build options, or the type of surface that you create each time.

As always, Have Fun!

Today’s Dave and Dan Show was all about new production drafting capabilities in Civil 3D 2007. Again, I gotta tell you people, these weekly webcasts are like a gold mine. They’re short, they’re incredibly informative, and best of all, they’re FREE! What more can you ask for.

A new feature in C3D 2007 is dynamic notes. They’re very nice, and I’ve got some samples to show. What’s even nicer is the inclusion of REFERNCE TEXT - yes, I can create any style note that references object data. For example:

Here’s a spot elevation:

What’s so special about it? A few things make this note stand out - first of all, notice the background mask on it. (note: ok, so you can’t see my background contours so well in this image. Trust me, there’s contours there, and they’re masked!) Yes, I can mask the contours with my label now. And once I insert one label, all I have to do is copy it and place new ones anywhere I want to. And what happens if I move it? The elevation updates, of course! Sweet!

Here’s a general note:

Again, note the background mask (which can be turned off if you want it to. And changing the text contained in the note is as simple as right clicking on the note, and clicking “Edit Lable Text” This allows a note, or “dumb text” to have the automatic resizing effects that other labels do when you change your viewport scale.

The last label that we’re going to look at is a label that contains reference text. This is where new labels really shine. Let’s say that I want to label the intersection of two alignments. I’ve created a note style that references the station of each alignment and the alignment name. Here’s a sample:

The good news is that they aren’t that hard to set up, providing you have a pretty good grasp of label style creation. Email me if you’d like more information on creating these new label styles.

Have fun!