67403.book Page 1 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM Chapter 1 AL Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D MA TE RI Just as with any piece of software, understanding Civil 3D’s controls and operation is critical to its mastery. With a dizzying array of options and settings, getting Civil 3D to just look and feel comfortable can take some effort. A whole new host of dialogs and tool palettes are critical to driving Civil 3D and getting feedback about your design.
67403.book Page 2 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 2 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.1 Civil 3D 2008 in a typical environment Confused Yet? Bothered by the naming convention yet? After discussion with the Civil 3D team in Manchester, New Hampshire, we think we have it right. Toolspace and Panorama are palette sets, acting as containers for the palettes they contain. Examples of palettes are Event Viewer, Settings, Elevation Editor, and so on.
67403.book Page 3 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Prospector Prospector is the main window into the Civil 3D object model. This palette or tab is where you “go mining” for data and also shows points, alignments, parcels, corridors, and other objects as one concise, expandable list. In addition, in a project environment this window is where you will control access to your project data, create references to shared project data, and observe the check-in/ check-out status of a drawing.
67403.book Page 4 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 4 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Have You Looked in the Help File? Lately? In the past, the included Help files were notoriously bad. Since Civil 3D’s creation, the team in Manchester, New Hampshire, has worked hard to make the Help files in Civil 3D top notch and user friendly. The Help files should be your first line of support! Open Drawings This branch of Prospector contains the drawings currently open in Civil 3D.
67403.book Page 5 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL In addition, right-clicking on the individual object in the list view offers two more commands unique to Civil 3D: Zoom To Object and Pan To Object. By using these commands, you can find any parcel, point, cross section, or other Civil 3D object in your drawing nearly instantly. Many longtime users of AutoCAD have resisted right-clicking menus for their daily tasks.
7403.book Page 6 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 6 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Civil 3D is built on both AutoCAD and Map, so Civil 3D 2008 comes with a variety of templates. However, most users will want to select one of the top few, which start with _Autodesk Civil 3D and then have some descriptive text. These templates have been built on the basis of customer feedback to provide Civil 3D with a varying collection of object styles.
67403.book Page 7 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Figure 1.5 Drawing Settings dialog Units And Zone Tab The Units And Zone tab lets you specify metric or imperial units, as well as control the assumed plotting scale of the drawing. The drawing units typically come from a template, but the options for scaling blocks and setting AutoCAD variables depend on your working environment.
67403.book Page 8 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 8 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Reference Point, which can be used to set a singular point in the drawing field via pick or via point number, local northing and easting, or grid northing and easting values. Rotation Point, which can be used to set the reference point for rotation via the same methods as the Reference Point.
67403.book Page 9 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL One Object at a Time Note that this has only changed the Alignment object itself. If you wanted to change the standard of all the objects, you would need to adjust the Alignment Labeling, Alignment Table, Profile, Profile View, Profile View Labeling, and so on. To do this, it’s a good idea to right-click in the grid view and select Copy All.
67403.book Page 10 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 10 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D There are a couple of ways to approach this tab: ◆ Top to bottom—Expand one branch, handle the settings in that branch, then close it and move to the next. ◆ Print and conquer—Expand all the branches using the Expand All Categories button found on the lower right .
67403.book Page 11 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL that Civil 3D command, you won’t have to make the same changes. Since it’s frustrating to do work over because you forgot to change one out of the five things that needed changing, this setting is invaluable. Show Event Viewer Event Viewer is Civil 3D’s main feedback mechanism, especially when things go wrong.
67403.book Page 12 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 12 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D The Override column shows if the current setting is overriding something higher up. Since we are at the Drawing Settings level, these are all clear. However, the Child Override column has a down arrow symbol, indicating that one of the objects in the drawing has overridden this setting.
67403.book Page 13 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Figure 1.10 General Multipurpose Styles and some Marker Styles Label Styles The Label Styles collection was a new addition with the 2007 release of the product and a much-requested change at that. These labels allow Civil 3D users to place general text notes or label single entities outside the parcel network while still taking advantage of the Civil 3D flexibility and scaling properties.
67403.book Page 14 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 14 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.12 Surface command settings in Toolspace Toolbox The Toolbox was added in Civil 3D 2007 as a launching point for add-ons and reporting functions. You access and add it to Toolspace by selecting General Toolbox. Toolbox out of the box contains reports created by Autodesk, but the functionality can be expanded to include your own macros or reports.
67403.book Page 15 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM WINDOWS ON THE MODEL A Toolbox Built Just For You The Toolbox content and the Report Settings can be edited by selecting the desired tool, right-clicking, and then executing. Don’t limit yourself to the default reports that ship in the Toolbox, though.
67403.book Page 16 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 16 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D 8. Change the Description to Runs Autodesk’s sample Pipe Export VBA Macro. 9. Working down through the properties in the preview area, select VBA in the dropdown menu in the Execute Type field. 10. Click in the Execute File field and then click the More button to browse. 11. Browse to C:\Program Files\Autocad Civil 3D 2008\Sample\Civil 3D API\VBA\Pipe\ and select the file Pipe Sample Application.dvb.
67403.book Page 17 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE Running Out of Screen Real Estate? It’s a good idea to turn on Panorama using this technique, then drag it to the side so that you’ll always see any new information.
67403.book Page 18 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 18 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D First, right-click the Spot Elevation folder and select New in the pop-up menu to open the Label Style Composer, as shown in Figure 1.15. On the Information tab, change the name to something appropriate. In this case, we’ll use JW-EG. Figure 1.15 Label Style Composer Who Built That Style? It’s a good idea to always put something in the style name to indicate it wasn’t one in the box.
67403.book Page 19 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE Forced Insertion makes more sense in other objects and will be explored further. This feature essentially allows you to dictate the insertion point of a label on the basis of the object being labeled. Plan Readable text maintains the up direction in spite of view rotation. This tends to be the “Ooooh, nice” feature that sets users to smiling. Rotating a hundred labels is a tedious, thankless task, and this handles it with one click.
67403.book Page 20 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 20 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.17 Options for the label components To the right-hand side is a preview of the label you are creating or editing. This view can be panned or zoomed as needed to give you a better feel for the label style’s appearance as you make changes. A Full Three-Dimensional Label Preview? This preview defaults to a 3D orbit control. Don’t ask us why; we honestly are as confused as you are.
67403.book Page 21 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE Let’s work our way down the component properties and adjust them as needed for our label: Name is self-explanatory. It is the name used in the Component dropdown menu and when selecting other components. When building complicated labels, a little name description goes a long way. Visibility set to true means that this component will show on screen.
67403.book Page 22 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 22 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.19 Setting label precision How Many Dialogs Is That? You can now see why many Civil 3D instructors refer to label creation as heading down the rabbit hole. We’re a couple of dialogs deep in just making the simplest of label styles, with one static text component.
67403.book Page 23 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE After working through all of the options for the default label placement, you need to work through the options that come into play when a label is dragged. Switch to the Dragged State tab. When a label is dragged in Civil 3D, it typically will create a leader and text will rearrange. The settings that control these two actions are on this tab. Unique options are explained here: Arrow Head Style and Size control the tip of the leader.
67403.book Page 24 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 24 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Object Styles Beyond the styles used to label objects, Civil 3D also depends on styles to control the display of the native objects, including points, surface, alignments, and so on. Just as in label styles, certain components of the object styles are common to almost all of the objects, so let’s create a new alignment style to introduce these common elements. 1.
67403.book Page 25 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM THE UNDERLYING ENGINE The Underlying Engine Civil 3D is part of a larger product family from Autodesk. During its earliest creation, various features and functions from other products were recognized as important to the civil engineering community. These include the obvious things like the entire suite of AutoCAD drafting, design, modeling, and rendering tools and then to some more esoteric options like Map’s GIS capabilities.
67403.book Page 26 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM 26 CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Table 1.
67403.book Page 27 Friday, August 31, 2007 2:12 PM THE BOTTOM LINE Add a new tool to the Toolbox. The Toolbox provides a convenient way to access macros and reports. Many third-party developers are exploiting this convenient interface as an easier way to add functionality without disturbing users’ workspaces. Master It Add the Import From Excel macro from C:\Program Files\Autocad Civil 3D 2008\Sample\Civil 3D API\VBA\Pipe\ and select Pipe Sample Application.dvb. Create a basic label style.
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