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. Toolspace Toolspace is one of the unique Civil 3D palette sets. Toolspace can have as many as four tabs to manage user data.
Windows on the Model Master and Active Drawing Views If you can’t see the Projects or Drawing Templates branch in Figure 1.1, look at the top of the Prospector pane. There is a drop-down menu for operating in Active Drawing View or Master View mode. Selecting Active Drawing View displays only the active drawing and Data Shortcuts. Master View mode, however, displays the Projects, the Drawing Templates, and the Data Shortcuts, as well as the branches of all drawings that are currently open.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D you to select various commands that apply to all the members of that collection. For example, right-clicking the Point Groups collection brings up the menu shown in Figure 1.2. Figure 1.2 Context-sensitive menus in Prospector 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.
Windows on the Model Drawing Templates The Drawing Templates branch is added more as a convenience than anything else. You can still create new drawings via the standard File New option, but by using the Drawing Templates branch, you can do the same thing without leaving Prospector. The Drawing Templates branch searches the file path specified in your AutoCAD Options dialog and displays a list of all the .dwt files it finds.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Drawing Settings Starting at the drawing level, Civil 3D has a number of settings that you must understand before you can use the program efficiently. Civil 3D understands that the end goal of most users is to prepare construction documents on paper. To that end, most labeling and display settings are displayed in inches for imperial users and millimeters for metric users instead of nominal units like many other AutoCAD objects.
Windows on the Model earlier, but using a real coordinate system is easy! For example, setting up a drawing for a the Dallas, Texas, area, you’d follow this procedure: 1. Select USA, Texas from the Categories drop-down menu on the Units and Zone tab. 2. Select NAD83 Texas State Planes, North Central Zone, US Foot from the Available Coordinate Systems drop-down menu. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of available coordinate systems.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 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 deal with daily. The layers listed in this dialog by default reflect a modified AIA CAD Layer Guideline as part of the National CAD Standard (NCS).
Windows on the Model 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.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Figure 1.6 The Ambient Settings tab with the General branch expanded After you have expanded the branches, right-click in the middle of the displayed options and select Copy to Clipboard. Then paste the settings to Excel for review, as you did with the Object Layers tab. Sharing the Workload The Print and Conquer approach makes it easy to distribute multiple copies to surveyors, land planners, engineers, and so on and let them fill in the changes.
Windows on the Model | Show Event Viewer Event Viewer is Civil 3D’s main feedback mechanism, especially when things go wrong. It can get annoying, however, and it takes up valuable screen real estate (especially if you’re stuck with one monitor!), so many people turn it off. We recommend leaving it on and pushing it to the side if needed.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D The Override column shows whether the current setting is overriding something higher up. Because you’re at the Drawing Settings level, these are clear. However, the Child Override column displays a down arrow, indicating that one of the objects in the drawing has overridden this setting. After a little investigation through the objects, you’ll find the override is in the Edit Feature Settings of the Profile View as shown in Figure 1.8. Figure 1.
Windows on the Model | Multipurpose Styles These styles are used in many objects to control the display of component objects. The Marker Styles and Link Styles collections are typically used in cross-section views, whereas the Feature Line Styles collection is used in grading and other commands. Figure 1.9 shows the full collection of multipurpose styles and some of the marker styles that ship with the product. Figure 1.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 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 1.11 Surface command settings in Toolspace Survey The Survey palette is displayed optionally and controls the use of the survey, equipment, and figure prefix databases. Survey is an essential part of land-development projects.
Windows on the Model 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. Many firms find that adding in-house customizations to the Toolbox gives them better results and is more easily managed at a central level than by customizing via the AutoCAD custom user interface (CUI) and workspace functionality.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 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.
Windows on the Model | 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.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 6. Select the Avery Drive alignment, right-click, and choose the Select option on the menu. Notice the change in the Ribbon. 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 1. 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. Figure 1.15 The Label Style Composer 2. On the Information tab, change the style name to something appropriate. For this example, use JW-EG. 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.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D inserted on the layer that is set here. This means a change to the specified layer can control or change the appearance of the components if you like. Orientation Reference sets an object to act as the up direction in terms of readability. Civil 3D understands viewpoint rotation and offers the option to rotate or flip labels to keep them plan-readable.
It’s All About Style | Figure 1.17 Options for the label components A Full Three-Dimensional Label Preview? This preview defaults to a 3D Orbit control. Don’t ask why; we’re as confused as you are. Inevitably, you’ll rotate the view out of a plan-top view, making the plan harder to understand. When this happens, right-click and select Preset Views Ø Top to reorient yourself, or use the Viewcube function to pull to the top. Again, pause and review some of the other options on this tab.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D The Component Draw Order button lets you shuffle components up and down within the label. This feature is especially important when you’re using masks or borders as part of the label. You can work your way down the component properties and adjust them as needed for a label: Name is self-explanatory. It’s the name used in the Component drop-down menu and when selecting other components.
It’s All About Style | Figure 1.19 Reference text object selection 8. Click the Contents Value cell, and then click the ellipsis button that appears to the right to open the Text Component Editor. 9. Click in the preview window of the Text Component Editor. This is a simple text editor, and you can type anything you’d like in a label. You can also insert object information from Civil 3D objects, as you’ll do now. 10. Highlight and delete the text in the preview window. 11.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 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. You can click OK to exit, but you might want to leave the label open as we discuss the Dragged State and Summary tabs next. Figure 1.
It’s All About Style | Type allows you to select a rectangle, a rounded rectangle (slot), or a circle border. Background Mask lets you determine whether linework and text behind this component are masked. This can be handy for construction notes in place of the usual wipeout tools. Gap determines the offset from the component bounding box to the outer points on the border. Setting this to half of the text size usually creates a visually pleasing border.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D The purpose of this exercise wasn’t to build a Surface Spot Elevation label style; it was to familiarize you with the common elements of creating a label: the Label Style Composer and the Text Component Editor. However, you can try out the new label to check your work! 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.
The Bottom Line | Object styles are a major component of efficient Civil 3D object modeling. Objects appear differently in varying plans. Having a full set of object styles to handle all of these uses can help make plan production as painless as possible. A good way to start creating object styles is to pull out a set of existing plans that accurately represent your firm’s standards.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Modify the display of Civil 3D tooltips The interactive display of object tooltips makes it easy to keep your focus on the drawing instead of an inquiry or report tools. When too many objects fill up a drawing, it can be information overload, so Civil 3D gives you granular control over the heads-up display tooltips. Master It Within the same Sample Site drawing, turn off the tooltips for the Avery Drive alignment.
