Datasheet

Chapter 1 • Navigating the Civil 3D User Interface
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FIGURE 1.6 The ribbon displays the contextual Alignment: Side Road A tab, because
an alignment has been selected in the drawing.
Using the Toolspace
Think of the Toolspace as the Civil 3D command center where all Civil 3D data and
settings are laid out in a nice, orderly arrangement. It has several main functions
that are represented by the different tabs it can contain. Altogether, the Toolspace
can house four tabs: Prospector, Settings, Survey, and Toolbox.
Prospector Tab
Prospector is arguably the most important part of the Civil 3D user interface.
As you build your design, Prospector arranges the different components of your
design in a tree structure (Figure 1.7). Why a tree structure and not just a list of
items? Later in this book, you’ll study how Civil 3D creates relationships between
different parts of your design. In some ways, this tree structure helps represent
some of those relationships as a hierarchy. Another, more practical reason for
a tree structure is that it’s an efficient way to show a long list of items in a rela-
tively small area—the branches of the tree can be collapsed to make room to
expand other branches.
Another way to think about Prospector is that it arranges your design categori-
cally rather than spatially. In other words, in your drawing area, you see road
centerlines crossing through parcels, which cross through contours, which cross
through survey points. Everything is in the right place spatially, but from an
organizational standpoint, it’s kind of a mess. Prospector sorts out this mess and
puts all the points in one place, all the parcels in one place, and so on. Prospector
also knows exactly where those objects are in the drawing. You can right-click
an object in Prospector and use the Select command or Zoom To command to
locate that object within the drawing.

You can open the
Toolspace by click-
ing the Toolspace
icon on the Home
tab of the ribbon.
Certification
Objective