Knowledge Base–Survey Point Offsets

Here is Autodesk knowledge base post for January. To change the subject, I will be doing a post next week on how to create point offset for survey shots such as power poles. This is an issue I have seen posted in the Autodesk forum and an issue our survey department has been trying to solve. Well I decided to help out today and throw my 2 cents in, since I really don’t try to get myself involved with the survey stuff lol. Anyways, I will do a post Monday or Tuesday on how I got around this problem. Thanks for stopping by.

Missing Linework when Plotting with "Legacy hidden" shade plot mode

2011: Slow xref selection in External References Palette

2011: AutoCAD hangs when using ADDSELECTED command on a leader object

Sheet Set Manager Tips

For those of you having problems with the sheet manager pulling up the wrong sheet set to a drawing that has not been assign to a sheet set, here is a simple fix. I am posting this after reading some posts on the Autodesk discussion group forum.

Helpful Commands

• SSMAUTOOPEN = automatically open sheet set manager
• SSMSHEETSTATUS = refresh status setting
• SSMSTATE = indicts of sheet set manager is open and close
• SSMPOLLTIME = automatic refresh time settings

Creating a Surface From a Shape File Pt. 1

Good evening everyone. Last week I helped one of my fellow co-workers create a C3D surface from shaped files that she received from a GIS company. As most of you know most shape files features already have surface or elevation data assigned to them, so creating a C3D surface from these shape files can be easy. I have a created a short video on how to do this, enjoy., In part 2, I will go more in depth with shape files.

 

Post News & Knowledge Base

Good morning everyone. Sorry I haven’t posting in a while. Anyways I will be posting 3 new post tonight. The first post will be over creating a C3D surface from shape files. The second post will be over coordinate systems. The last post will be over label shortcuts. Hope everyone has a great day today.

Autodesk posted a new knowledge base over AutoCAD hangs when using the ADDSELECTED command. See link below.

KNOWLEDGE BASE

Autodesk Stocks Continue to Rise

I was reading the Autodesk new press tonight and came across some interesting information. In one complete year, Autodesk’s stocks has continued to rise slowly. Could this be sign that our economy is slowly improving and out of the red? See link before for more information. I would like to know yalls thoughts.

Autodesk Stocks

Press Room News

Company Name Change

I just found out this morning that Avatech Solutions/ Imaginit Technologies has changed their name to Randi Worldwide, Both companies had just recently merged. Randi Worldwide will still be the largest Autodesk Authorized Training Center partner in North America. See links below for more information.

     

Imaginit

Avatech

Press Release

Undocking the Ribbon

Good evening everyone. Tonight I was playing around with the ribbon in 2011 and discovered something very interesting. I’m sure some of you know this already but it seems you can undock the ribbon and use it as regular tool palette. This will come in handy for those of you that do not like the ribbon and want your old 2009 toolbars. I have posted a short video on how to undock the ribbon. Enjoy.

Corridoring a Roundabout Pt 2

Ok so I finally got some free time to post part 2. Sorry it took so long. Ok, like I said before what I am doing is just giving everyone ideas on how to corridor a roundabout.
The fist step we want to do is create a dynamic feature so that our curb return will tie down to at the intersection edge of pavement. You do this by going into your corridor pull-down, and then select utilities. Then select “create grading featureline from corridor”.

Select the left edge of pavement for the left lane of our roundabout. The create featureline from corridor dialog box will appear. If you know your main road profile is not changing and your left lane roundabout is not change you do not have to check the dynamic link option.

The next step for part 2 is to create a null  assembly. In addition, you should also have a curb return radius assembly created.

Next we want to use the intersection feature where my secondary road meets the centerline of our left lane of our roundabout. As you can see below I used my null assembly for most of my intersection sections.

Now go into your corridor properties./ Parameters tab/. Locate your 2 curb returns and select Targets. Make sure that you set the curb return frequencies to 5 or less.

What we want to do here is to set the target alignment and profile for our curb return.  Set your object target to featureline at the top. Then choose the “select from drawing option”. Select the featureline that we just created at our intersection. Do this also for your elevation targets also,by using the same featureline.


Now hit apply then ok. Your intersection should look somewhat like this below.



I will post a video tomorrow on step by step on how to do this. The next part we will work on is the surface grading and editing. If you have any questions .

Corridoring a Roundabout Pt 2

Ok so I finally got some free time to post part 2. Sorry it took so long. Ok, like I said before what I am doing is just giving everyone ideas on how to corridor a roundabout.

The fist step we want to do is create a dynamic feature so that our curb return will tie down to at the intersection edge of pavement. You do this by going into your corridor pull-down, and then select utilities. Then select “create grading featureline from corridor”.

Select the left edge of pavement for the left lane of our roundabout. The create featureline from corridor dialog box will appear. If you know your main road profile is not changing and your left lane roundabout is not change you do not have to check the dynamic link option.

The next step for part 2 is to create a null  assembly. In addition, you should also have a curb return radius assembly created.

Next we want to use the intersection feature where my secondary road meets the centerline of our left lane of our roundabout. As you can see below I used my null assembly for most of my intersection sections.

Now go into your corridor properties./ Parameters tab/. Locate your 2 curb returns and select Targets. Make sure that you set the curb return frequencies to 5 or less.

What we want to do here is to set the target alignment and profile for our curb return.  Set your object target to featureline at the top. Then choose the “select from drawing option”. Select the featureline that we just created at our intersection. Do this also for your elevation targets also,by using the same featureline.

Now hit apply then ok. Your intersection should look somewhat like this below.

I will post a video tomorrow on step by step on how to do this. The next part we will work on is the surface grading and editing. If you have any questions .

Tip of the Day

Hi everyone. Sorry I wasn’t about to post more this weekend. I ended up having a great  New Years weekend. Anyway for the past few weeks I have been having out of memory issues with one of the subdivisions drawing that I have been working on. My drawing kept crashing when I tried to rebuilding my corridors. It got to a point I was not able to rebuild my corridor or surfaces. So last week I figured out how to get around this issue. I have provided the problem and solution below.
Work Computer Info:
2.6 ghz , 3.5 gb memory, windows xp, C3D 2011 (32 bit), 3 GB Switch,
Drawing info:
2 miles of street corridors, 3 intersections, 3 cul-de-sacs, and 2 roundabouts
14 mb drawing, 6 profiles, 4 surfaces (100 acres)
Problem: Computer runs out of memory and crashes. I get the “Civil 3d out of memory” message when I try to rebuild my corridor or surfaces. Drawing has no errors. All automatic rebuild for corridors and surfaces has been turned off.
Solution: I finally decided to make all surfaces as No Display, froze the corridor layer. At this point all I can see was my profiles and alignments. I rebuilt my corridor with no problems. Then I rebuilt my surfaces.
Now with he 64 bit C3D 2011 version, I wouldn’t” had this problem, but not every company has the budget for upgrades, which is perfectly understandable with todays economy. Anyways, I hope this will help others that have faced this same issue. Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to make comments, request, or click on the options (interesting, cool, funny) below this post.