Datasheet

8 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.
One common question that surrounds the Object Layers tab is the check box at lower left:
Immediate and Independent Layer On/Off Control of Display Components. What the heck does
that mean? Relax — it’s not as complicated as it sounds.
Many objects in Civil 3D are built from underlying components. Take an alignment, for
example. It’s built from tangents, curves, spirals, extension lines, and so on. Each of these
components can be assigned its own layer — in other words, the lines could be assigned to
the LINES layer, curves to the CURVES layer, and so on. When this check box is selected, the
component’s layer exerts some control. In the example given, if the alignment is assigned to
the ALIGN layer and the box is selected, turning off (not freezing) the LINES layer will make the
line components of that alignment disappear. Deselect this control, and the LINES layer’s status
won’t have any effect on the visibility of the alignment line components.
Finally, it’s important to note that this layer control determines the object’s parent layer at
creation. Civil 3D objects can be moved to other layers at any time. Changing this setting doesn’t
change any objects already in place in the drawing.
Abbreviations Tab
One could work for years without noticing the Abbreviations tab. The options on this tab allow
you to set the abbreviations Civil 3D uses when labeling items as part of its automated routines.
The prebuilt settings are based on user feedback, and many of them are the same as the settings
from Land Desktop, the last-generation civil engineering product from Autodesk.
Changing an abbreviation is as simple as clicking in the Value field and typing a new one.
Notice that the Alignment Geometry Point Entity Data section has a larger set of values and some
formulas attached. These are more representative of other label styles, and we’ll visit the label
editor a little later in this chapter.
There’s Always More to Learn
Until December 2006, James was still advising users to add ‘‘t.’’ to their labels to get ‘‘Rt.’’ or ‘‘Lt.’’ in
the final label. He’d forgotten that the abbreviations being used were set here! By changing the Left
and Right abbreviation from ‘‘L’’ and ‘‘R’’ to ‘‘Lt.’’ and ‘‘Rt.’’, respectively, you can skip that step in
the label setup. Sometimes there are just too many options to remember them all!
Ambient Settings Tab
The Ambient Settings tab can be daunting at first. The term ambient means ‘‘surround’’ or ‘‘sur-
rounding,’’ and these settings control many of the math, labeling, and display features, as well as
the user interaction surrounding the use of Civil 3D. Being familiar with the way this tab works
will help you further down the line, because almost every other setting dialog in the program
works like the one shown in Figure 1.6.