Datasheet

The inTerface

and their functionality has been universally enabled for Civil 3D 2012. Let’s take a closer look at

those icons:

Item Preview Toggle Turns on and off the display of the Toolspace item preview within

Prospector. These previews can be helpful when you’re navigating drawings in projects (you

can select one to check out) or when you’re attempting to locate a parcel on the basis of its

visual shape. In general, however, you can turn off this toggle—it’s purely a user preference.

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

we’ll discuss 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 this icon.

Have You Looked in the Help File Lately?

The AutoCAD Civil 3D development team in Manchester, New Hampshire, has worked hard to

make the Help ﬁles in Civil 3D top-notch and user friendly. The help ﬁles should be your ﬁrst line

of support!

Open Drawings

This branch of Prospector contains the drawings currently open in Civil 3D. Each drawing is

subdivided into groups by major object type, such as points, point groups, surfaces, and so

forth. These object groups then allow you to view all the objects in the collection. Some of these

groups are empty until objects are created. You can learn details about an individual object by

expanding the tree and selecting an object.

Within each drawing, the breakdown is similar. If a collection isn’t empty, a plus sign appears

next to it, as in a typical Windows Explorer interface. Selecting any of these top-level collection

names displays a list of members in the preview area. Right-clicking the collection name allows

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

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