Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Tables From Survey Blocks

Civil 3D is probably one of few software's that you use for years and never fully learn or use all it’s unique features and commands. I spend countless hours every week training myself and I always learn new things. Like everyone says “ there is always room to grow.” Anyways today I want to teach you how to used the EATTEXT command. Have you ever received a drawing from a surveyor, client, or developer an all the survey shots are blocks points? Lets say you need to create table for all the tree shots? That’s where the EATTEXT command comes in. EATTEXT command basically extract and compiles information and organizes them into a table. This feature can definitely come in handy for landscape architects. See below for step by step procedures to create a table from cogo points.

1. In order to make this simple, it’s best to isolate the blocks you want to create a table from. As you can see below, I isolated my survey block points.

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2. Now type the EATTEXT command. The data extraction dialog wizard will appear. Here, it will ask you if you want to create a new data extraction file or using an existing file. I will select Create a New Data Extraction then hit Next .

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3. The next dialog will ask you if you want to extract objects from the drawing/sheet set or from the current drawing. I’m going to select Select Objects in the Current Drawing option. Then click on the  small selection box to the right. Create a window selection box by holding down your left mouse button, to select the blocks you want to use. Then hit the right mouse button when you are done. The number of selected objects will appear on your command line. Click the Next button.

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4. The next dialog box displays all the object that you selected and it’s relative information. At this point all I want to see is block objects with attributes. Check the Display blocks with attributes only option. For my drawing, I want to check the objects having a display name of SRVPNO# (for survey point). Click the Next button.

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5. The next dialog box displays all the attribute properties that are attached to the block. Because I chose to only use blocks with attributes, I did not have to use the category filter on the right side of the dialog box. If you look below you can see that I have 3 properties: DESC2, ELEV2 and PT#. This is all I want to see on my table. Hit Next.

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6. The next dialog box display a quick preview of what your table will look at. At this point I don’t want to see the Count column and Name column of my blocks so at the bottom left, I will uncheck the Show Count Column and Show Name Column. The table will automatically update and change. The Sort Columns Options allows your to sort the column descending or ascending. You can also simply click the small triangle next to the PT# column name to change it to ascending or descending. Click the Next button.

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7. The next dialog box allows us to create an output data file and a table to insert into our drawing. I’m going to check both for now. Click the small browse button to provide the save location of your output file. The file can be saved as a .csv, .xls, .mdb, or txt file formats. I prefer to us the .csv file format but that’s just me. Hit Next.

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8. This dialog box allows you to edit and change the way the table will display on your drawing. The table editor is pretty self explanatory. Hit Next once you are done.

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9. Finally click Finish to complete the wizard and to insert your table.

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This is how my table ending up looking. The table is like any other C3D table so you can still make changes to how it appears. Well I hope this will help some of you during your design process. Feel free to make comments or suggest. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Autodesk Continues to Grow

Good morning everyone. Man this week is dragging lol. Anyways, I ran into an interesting article this morning from the Autodesk Press Room. I have posted the link below. On a side note, I should be able to add another post today during lunch. Hopefully I can create more post later this week after I finish preparing for my first city user group meeting, finishing the company CAD manual, and added a few more settings/styles to the company template. Smile 

Autodesk's Global Deal

For those of you interested in watching a few 2012 feature videos, I have provided a link below to an Autodesk webpage. Enjoy!

C3D 2012 VIDEOS

Thursday, May 5, 2011

May’s Knowledge Base

Good morning everyone. Here is Autodesk know issue for May. Sorry I have not posted tips and tricks lately. I have been busy getting all the techs/EIT’s/engineers in our company caught up to speed. In addition, I have other C3D side projects I’m working on to make myself more productive and efficient. I’m always trying to found ways to make myself faster and more accurate at what I do. Doing a whole set of subdivision plans (60 sheets) in 4 hrs is good but I want to see if can knock that time down to 2 hrs, which I know I can. I don’t mean just creating the sheets, I mean doing all the water, sewer, storm profiles and street plan/profile sheets and all the lot grading. Anyways have a great day.

 

Known limitations with AutoCAD 2010 products on Windows 7

Register Today (Product Activation Wizard) displays only two radio buttons

2012: Cascading Sequences for Autodesk Products

Monday, May 2, 2011

New Wish List items

Wow what a crazy weekend it was for me. For someone that loves to eat a lot, having to work 13.5 hrs on my feet with just one sandwich and a bag of chips in my stomach was not much fun. My feet, shin and lower back still hurts lol. Anyways, while I was working today and providing tech support for everyone else, some interesting wish list items popped into my head. Here are a few.

  • Autodesk needs to create a feature that automatic creates water lower in water profiles. It’s such a tedious task creating several null structures for utility lowering crossing per city standard. If there was feature where you can set the distance & angle off my utility line I want to cross under, it would save so much time.
  • I want Autodesk to create a feature where I can select a pipe network and just plug in a slope and it would create a constant slope for the whole pipe network in the profile.
  • a feature what would convert objects such as lines, 3d polylines and polylines in meters to feet with just one click and retain that unit.
  • one table for line and arcs
  • pipe network offsets

Anyways feel free to add more if you like.