Datasheet

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.

Specify Grid Rotation Angle

—you

enter an amount or set a line to North by picking an angle

or deflection in the drawing. This same method can be used to set the azimuth if desired.

Most engineering firms are working on a defined coordinate system or an arbitrary system with

none of these changes necessary. Given that, this tab will be your only method of achieving the nec-

essary transformation for certain surveying and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based tasks.

Object Layers Tab

Setting object layers to your company standard is a major part of creating the feel you’re after when

using Civil 3D in your office. The nearly 50 objects described here make up the entirety of the Civil

3D modeling components and the objects you and other users will be dealing with every day.

The layers listed in this dialog by default reflect a modified National CAD Standard (NCS)

setup. This layering standard is built into many places in Civil 3D’s templates and is becoming

more widely adopted in the land development industry. In addition to being fairly comprehensive

and well known among engineering firms, the NCS has the benefit of being the roadmap for the

future in terms of out-of-the-box content from Autodesk. Adopting this standard means you’ll

have fewer things to change with every release of the software. Nevertheless, every user still needs

know how to modify these defaults.

One common issue with the shipping templates is that the templates assume that road design is

the primary use of alignments. Use the following procedure to change the Alignment setting to the

NCS for laying out a sanitary sewer:

Click on the Layer column in the Alignment row, as shown in Figure 1.6.

In the Layer Selection dialog list, select C-SSWR-CNTR and click OK.

Figure 1.6

Changing the Layer

setting for the Align-

ment object

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