Chapter 1 AL Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D MA TE RI Understanding Civil 3D’s controls and operation is critical to mastering it. With its dizzying array of options and settings, getting Civil 3D to look and feel comfortable can take some effort. Learning how to use its numerous dialogs and tool palettes, as well as the Ribbon, is critical to driving Civil 3D and getting feedback about your design.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.1 Civil 3D in a typical environment. Toolspace is docked on the left, and Panorama and Tool Palettes float over the drawing window. The Ribbon is at the top of the workspace Using a Microsoft Windows Explorer–like interface within each, these tabs drive a large portion of the user control and data management of Civil 3D. Prospector Prospector is the main window into the Civil 3D object model.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Preview Area Display Toggle When Toolspace is undocked, this button moves the Preview Area from the right of the tree view to beneath the tree view area. Panorama Display Toggle Turns on and off the display of the Panorama window (which is discussed in a bit). To be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a point to this button, but it’s here nonetheless. Help This should be obvious, but it’s amazing how many people overlook it.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D In addition, right-clicking the individual object in the list view offers many commands unique to Civil 3D: Zoom to Object and Pan to Object are typically included. By using these commands, you can find any parcel, point, cross section, or other Civil 3D object in your drawing almost instantly. Many longtime users of AutoCAD have resisted right-clicking menus for their daily tasks since AutoCAD 14.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Civil 3D is built on both AutoCAD and AutoCAD Map, so Civil 3D 2010 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. These templates give you a good starting point for creating a template that meets your needs or the needs of your firm.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Each tab in this dialog controls a different aspect of the drawing. Most of the time, you’ll pick up the Object Layers, Abbreviations, and Ambient Settings from a companywide template. But the drawing scale and coordinate information change for every job, so you’ll visit the Units and Zone and the Transformation tabs frequently. Units and Zone Tab The Units and Zone tab lets you specify metric or imperial units for your drawing.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Specify Grid Rotation Angle — Enter an amount or set a line to North by picking an angle or deflection in the drawing. You can use this same method to set the azimuth if desired. Most engineering firms work on either a defined coordinate system or an arbitrary system, so none of these changes are necessary.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D One Object at a Time Note that this procedure only changes the Alignment object. If you want to change the standard of all the objects, you 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. You can then paste the contents of this matrix into Microsoft Excel for easy formatting and reviewing.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Figure 1.6 The Ambient Settings tab with the General branch expanded You can approach this tab in the following ways: ◆ Top to bottom — Expand one branch, handle the settings in that branch, and then close it and move to the next. ◆ Print and conquer — Expand all the branches using the Expand All Categories button found at lower right. After you have expanded the branches, right-click in the middle of the displayed options and select Copy to Clipboard.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Set AutoCAD Units This displays whether or not Civil 3D should attempt to match AutoCAD drawing units, as specified on the Units and Zone tab. Save Command Changes to Settings This setting is incredibly powerful but a secret to almost everyone. By setting it to Yes, your changes to commands will be remembered from use to use.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Figure 1.7 The Child Override indicator in the Elevation values Figure 1.8 The Profile Elevation Settings and the Override indicator But what if you don’t want to allow those changes? Each Settings dialog includes one more column: Lock. At any level, you can lock a setting, graying it out for lower levels. This can be handy for keeping users from changing settings at the lower level that perhaps should be changed at a drawing level, such as sign or rounding methods.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Object Settings If you click the Expand button next to the drawing name, you see the full array of objects that Civil 3D uses to build its design model. Each of these has special features unique to the object being described, but there are some common features as well. Additionally, the General collection contains settings and styles that are applied to various objects across the entire product.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL Because building label styles is a critical part of producing plans with Civil 3D, a later section of this chapter looks at how to build a new basic label and some of the common components that appear in every label style throughout the product. Commands Almost every branch in the Settings tree contains a Commands folder. Expanding this folder, as shown in Figure 1.11, shows you the typical long, unspaced command names that refer to the parent object. Figure 1.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D A Toolbox Built Just for You You can edit the Toolbox content and the Report Settings by selecting the desired tool, right-clicking, and then executing. Don’t limit yourself to the default reports that ship in the Toolbox, though.
WINDOWS ON THE MODEL 6. Right-click the VBA category, and select New Tool. 7. Expand the VBA category to view the new tool, and then click the name to edit it in the preview area. Change its name to Pipe Sample. 8. Change the Description to Sample VBA. 9. Working down through the properties in the preview area, select VBA in the drop-down menu in the Execute Type field. 10. Click in the Execute File field, and then click the More button. 11.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Running Out of Screen Real Estate? It’s a good idea to turn on Panorama using this technique and then drag it to the side so you always see any new information. Although it’s possible to turn it off, doing so isn’t recommended — you won’t know when Civil 3D is trying to tell you something! Place Panorama on your second monitor (now you see why you need to have a second monitor, don’t you?), and you’ll always be up to date with your Civil 3D model.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE 7. Select the down arrow next to the Modify panel. Using the pin at the bottom-left corner of the panel, pin the panel open. 8. Select the Properties command in the General Tools panel to open the AutoCAD Properties palette. Notice that the Modify panel remains opened and pinned. It’s All About Style Before you get into the program itself, it’s important to understand one bit of vocabulary and how it relates to Civil 3D: style.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.15 The 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 in the box. Putting your initials or firm name at the beginning of the style is one way to make it easy to differentiate your styles from the prebuilt ones. Here, JW stands for James Wedding (EG stands for Existing Ground). 3. Switch to the General tab.
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 makes users smile. Rotating 100 labels is a tedious, thankless task, and this option handles it with one click.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.17 Options for the label components Again, pause and review some of the other options on this tab. Labels are made of individual components. A component can be text, a block, or a line, and the top row of buttons controls the selection, creation, and deletion of these components: The Component drop-down menu activates which component is being modified in the options below. These components are listed in the order in which they were created.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE Visibility set to True means this component shows on screen. Invisible components can be invaluable when you’re creating complicated labels, as you’ll see in later chapters. Anchor Component and Anchor Point are straightforward, but many users have issues when first using these options. Every component of the label has an anchor component, anchor point, and attachment. The Anchor Component is how you tell Civil 3D where you want to hang the label component.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D Figure 1.19 Reference text object selection 12. Change the precision to one decimal place by clicking in the column next to Precision and selecting 0.1, as shown in Figure 1.20. Figure 1.20 Setting label precision 13. Click the arrow circled in Figure 1.21 to insert your label text and elevation code into the preview area. 14. Click OK to exit this dialog, and you’ll be back at the Label Style Composer. 15. Your label is complete.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE Figure 1.21 Don’t forget the arrow! How Many Dialogs Is That? You can see why many Civil 3D instructors refer to label creation as ‘‘heading down the rabbit hole.’’ You’re a couple of dialogs deep just making the simplest of label styles, with one static text component. It’s easy to get confused, but don’t worry — it becomes second nature! The Text Component Editor is another common dialog that appears in every label-style creation exercise.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D After working through all the options for the default label placement, you need to set 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 creates a leader, and text rearranges. 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.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE components of the object styles are common to almost all objects, so let’s create a new alignment style to introduce these common elements: 1. Expand the Alignment branch on the Settings tab, and then right-click the Alignment Styles folder. Select New, as shown in Figure 1.23. Figure 1.23 Creating a new alignment style via Prospector 2. Type a new name for your style on the Information tab, and enter a description if desired. 3. Switch to the Display tab.
CHAPTER 1 GETTING DIRTY: THE BASICS OF CIVIL 3D 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 included the obvious things such as the entire suite of AutoCAD drafting, design, modeling, and rendering tools as well as more esoteric options such as Map’s GIS capabilities.
THE BOTTOM LINE Create a basic label style. Label styles determine the appearance of Civil 3D annotation. The creation of label styles will constitute a major part of the effort in making the transition to Civil 3D as a primary platform for plan production. Your skills will grow with the job requirements if you start with basic labels and then make more complicated labels as needed.
