C3D 2011 Requirements

i have provide some  helpful information for C3D 2011 below. I would also like to add that the stage storage features has been incorporated into the ribbon. In addition, the ability to import and export Hec-Ras data has also been added to the ribbon. I think some techs and engineers will love that.

SUPPORTED OPERATING SYSTESM

1. Windows 7 Professional 32 bit & 64 bit
2. Windows 7 Ultimate 32 & 64 bit
3. Windows 7 Home Ed. 64 bit
4. Windows Vista Enterprise (SP2)
5. Windows Vista Business (SP2)
6. Windows Vista Ultimate (SP2)
7. Windows Vista Business 64-bit (SP2)
8. Windows Enterprise 63-bit (SP2)
9. Windows Ultimate 64-bit (SP2)
10. Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit (SP2)

MEMORY

4 GB Minimum (8 GB recommended)

HARD DISK

7 GB disk space with 2 GB free after installation

CPU TYPE

AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Xenon with Intel EM64Tsupport, Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support.

DISPLAY RESOLUTION

1,280 x 1,024 true color video display  adapter 128  MB or higher (Personally I would have nothing lower than 512 MB for better performance)

Pixel Shader  3.0 or greater

Direct3D-capable workstation-class graphic card

1,600 x 1,200 or greater recommended

multiple monitor are supported

OTHER

For those that don’t know if your home PC or workstation  at work meets all the requirements for windows 7, I have provided a link below for the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor program.

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

The link below is for Windows XP mode which allows you to have Windows 7 benefits and still running older Windows XP programs.

Windows XP Mode

QUESTIONS:

1. Can some user run C3D 2011 32-bit on Windows XP and some users run C3D 2011-64 bit on Windows 7-bit on the same network?   Yes.
2. Can I run C3D 2011 64-it with only 4 GB of RAM? Yes
3. Can I use Microsoft Office 2003 & 2007 in Windows 7? YES. You must do a clean install if you are going from 32bit to 64 bit,

Parcel Segment Label Orientation

Have you ever had a parcel segment where the callout was correct but the text orientation was in the wrong direction? Here is one way to fix that problem. See video below. On a quick note, it’s usually best to convert lines to parcels than to use polylines.

Civil 3D 2010 And PDF Part II

Tonight I learned about some interesting features with PDF files in C3D 2010. As we all know creating PDF files of our drawings,exhibits and plans sheets has become one of the best and fastest way to exchange  data information between client, developers, architects, and engineers. C3D 2010 comes with a new PDF print driver, which comes with the new release of the underlying AutoCAD software. One of the most unique feature is the inclusion of layers in the PDF output for control of visibility. What this means that some of the C3D objects are carried over into the PDF file as layers which allows the user to turn off and on in the PDF reader. I have provide a short video demonstration below of how it work. Enjoy.

 

Civil 3D 2011 is Basically Here!!!

With the blessing from Autodesk we can now talk about some of the new features coming in C3D 2011. I have provide a short list of some of the areas with new features that  have been added. I think everyone will love how incredibly stable C3D is with Windows 7- 64 bit operating system. You will definitely see a huge increase in performance.The question is will most firms spends thousands to upgrade all of their workstations to run the new 64 bit C3D 2011? Anyways, in the next few weeks I will be doing post about C3D 2011.

1. New Alignment Features
2. New Corridor Features
3. New Label Features
4. New Pipe Network Features 
5. New Point Cloud Features
6. New Quantity Takeoff Features
7. New Section Features
8. New Superelevation Features
9. New Surface Features

Civil 3D 2010 And PDF Files

Hi everyone. Tonight I want to go over PDF files and some of the new features. Creating PDF files of our exhibits and plan sheets has because one of the best and fastest ways to exchange data information. Tonight I will go over a quick way to insert PDF files into C3D and also make adjustments to the image. I have attached a short video demonstration below for your viewing. Enjoy

Civil 3D Knowledge Base

Several new knowledge base issues for Civil 3D have been posted this month. Click on the links below for further information.
Cascading Sequence for 2010 products
Deployment failure of Civil 3D 2010 with the pre-requisites
NWC/NWD or NWNAVIGATOR Command Not Working
Blocks for the Roundabout tools Are Missing
Fatal Errors in AutoCAD Using the Nvidia Performance Driver
Activation Error on Computers with Serial ATA Hard Disk Controllers
Customization File Load Failed Error
CreateFile Failed With Error 3

Hydraulic Grade Line Label

So tonight I created a profile band label style that would display the hydraulic grade line jumps at structures. This band style would work great after you ran hydraulic calculations in hydroflow storm sewer extension and had imported the stm file back into the drawing. All your pipe and structure will now have hydraulic data. In addition, you would be able to display your hydraulic grade line in your profile. I first attempted to created a pipe label style to display the HGL but there was one flaw. When the pipe goes from full flow slope to partial flow, there was no way the pipe label could pull that data because the pipe property does not have that kind of data. So then I decided to created a profile band label. In order for this to work right I had to recreate my HGL line on the profile. See procedures and images below.
1. First I created a HGL profile by layout. I traced over the current HGL that is displayed by the pipe style.

2. Then I went into my profile properties and created HGL band style from my pipe data band set. Be sure that your band set is pulling from the correct profile data and data source. I also positioned my labels so they would display just above my pipe invert callouts.

3. Then I went into the pipe style composer and created a label that would display the grade line up.

 
 
4. Then I went back into my band style and edited my structure label style composer to display my grade line up. It was a little tricky getting both labels to line up next to each other.

5. Finally, I turned off my hydraulic grade line display in my pipe properties because I wanted to use the HGL profile that I created.

I know 2 other ways to label your HGL but I thought I would show yall this one first. Anyways, if you have a different way of doing this, please feel free to make some comments.

March Madness!!!!

GO NOTRE DAME!!! AND GO LONGHORNS!!!
Though I’m not much of a college basketball fan, I do at least enjoy watching the March madness tournament.

Simplified Upgrade Pricing Begins March 16, 2010

Beginning March 16, 2010, new upgrade pricing lets you upgrade from any of the three previous releases at 50% of the full price of a new license. Click on lick below for more information.
Autodesk

Static Null Structure Descriptions

Yes you heard me, static null structure description!!!. One of the most annoying things about null structures when designing a storm system are the description resetting if you make any changes to the connected pipes inverts or within the structure properties. I would always find myself having to go back thru each null structure to make sure it did not reset.  For the longest time I looked high and low to see if anyone had found a way to fix this or work around this issue. Well tonight I just started playing around with my storm drawing and discovered how to keep my description from resetting while I was making changes to the slope and inverts of my pipe. Man if I can only get a $1 for every person that is about to read this post lol.
Steps.

1. open up your base utility drawing or you base drawing that has your pipes and structures.
2. open the quick properties and go into the customize or settings
3. turn on slope and starting and ending invert elevations for pipes and hit apply
4. select a null structure and when the quick properties pops up select description option
5. a small pop window will appear. Type your description here.
6. Now when you need to make changes to the slope or inverts, do them thru the quick properties because if you go thru the structure or even pipe properties the null description will reset. On top of that, if you even select the Connected Pipes tab in the structure properties your description will reset immediately.

I hope yall have enjoyed this post and start using the quick properties more. :) I have not tried this in 2009 so please let me know how it does.
 
 

Civil 3D Guru’s Across America

I would like to know where everyone is from. State your name, title, years in the field, city and state. Lets see which state has all the C3D guru’s.

Extracting Line work from Shape Files Drawings

Good morning everyone . So today I learned how to extract line work from a drawing created by shape files. To do this test I downloaded the Town of Flowermound parcel and street shp files.

OPTION 1.

• First switch your workspace to tool based geospatial
• click on your mapconnect icon on the left.
• select “Add SHP Connection” then select the folder icon on the right
• browse to your parcel folder then hit ok
• Name your Connection name as Parcel then click on the connect button
• Mark sure the parcel coordinate system is check and click Add to Map
• Repeat the same steps for the street shape files
• Now can either go to your file pull down menu and select export then Current Map as DWG
• Or you can go to your Output tab and select the same export option
• Once you select the save button it may take you from 3-10 minutes depending on your computer capabilities. It may seem locked up but just be patient.
• Once saved, open the drawing and select one of the parcels and streets. The street line work are polylines but the parcels areas are just hatched areas.
• now select all the parcels areas you want to create a boundary. (you can not use the window selection option ,you will have to click on each parcel hatch. the selection is cumulative though.)
• now right click and select generate boundary. The boundary created will be a AEC polygon. If you explode the boundary the parcel will become a referenced block. If you explode it again it will become just lines
• And that’s basically it. Now you email the drawing to any client or engineer
• One thing I did notice was my original file was 677 kb with the shp files but my new drawing was about 10 mb. Just something to think about.

 

OPTION 2

• First select your Feature Edit tab
• select the street and parcels that you want to extract then select the “extract feature from geometry icon”
• your parcels and line work will change colors (maybe white)
• now just simply explode those hatched parcel areas and a polyline will be created for you.
• you can now disconnect the shape files and save the drawing or copy and paste the new line work into a new drawing.
• That is it :)

Drainage Areas

Tonight I was thinking of a way to increase productivity when creating drainage area maps. Drainage area maps are pretty simple to produce. The plan is basically contours, drainage areas, flow arrows and a drainage table. Using parcels can be a great way to create drainage areas.  So I decided to create a simple parcel style that would automatically display the drainage area ID,  acreage and runoff Q. This label style would save me time from creating small blocks or text to identify drainage areas.

The first step is to create two simple expressions under my Parcel/label styles/area. My first expression was for my pre-development areas (existing drainage area map). I used a runoff coefficient of 0.30 and the Town of Flowermound 100 year rainfall intensity of 8.82. Then  I created a post-development expression (proposed drainage areas) with a runoff coefficient of 0.90 and rainfall intensity of 8.82.

Next I created two new label style under Parcel Label Styles/Area Style called DA-PRE and DA-POST. In my new label styles I added the new expression that we just created into the proper label styles. Then I turned on the boundary option in the styles and used a circle. And that’s basically it. See my images below for examples. Hopefully this will give your more ideas with using expressions. Later