C3D 2011 CROP SURFACE

The crop surface feature will come in handy when you have a small project site and you are using USGS contours or aerial contour that covers hundreds of acres. The crop surface feature will allow you to cut area of surface that you need for your project without affect the original surface or source surface. I’m sure some of you are asking why not use boundary and data reference the surface out. Well to answer that question, as far as I know you can not make revision or changes to the data reference surface once you insert it into your drawing. With the crop surface feature you will be able to add points, breaklines, contours…etc. Anyways, this feature would have definitely helped me in my subdivision design I was working on which had 500 acre surface. I have provided a short video below  on how to use the crop surface feature. Remember if you make changes to the original surface and want those changes to reflect to the copied surface, simply select rebuild snapshot then rebuild surface on the copied surface.

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C3D 2011 Other New Features Pt 2

Tonight I played around a little more with C3D 2011 and discovered more new features that I want to share with you.

1. Crop Surface has been added into the Surface ribbon. This feature allows you to crop an area of surface and export into another drawing or a new drawing. This will come in hand why you have an over USGS surface cover several hundred acres and you only need a small portion of the surface for your site. One rule of thumb, if you make changes to the source drawing be sure to save the current drawing before you rebuild the surface which you just created.

 

2. Create Best Fit Profile has been added to the Create Design ribbon under the Home contextual tab. This feature helps  guide you in you design for the best possible and logical path through a series of surfaces profiles and featurelines and other AutoCAD entities.

  

 

3. Application Status Bar has a new look with some new features. First, quick access to your hardware acceleration feature. The 3d orbit, pan, show motion and steering wheel have been removed and added to a floating toolbar on the right side if your screen. A quick to your data shortcut reference has been added. Last but not least, the  Autodesk TrustedDWG link was added which can be used with your TrueView software. 

 

4. Two new features were added to the Ground Data Ribbon. You can now use the minimum distance between surfaces feature. In addition, the resolve crossing breakline feature. This feature will help when you have several breaklines in a EG or PG surface.

 

5. Stage Storage feature has been added to the Design ribbon under the Analyze contextual tab. In 2010 this feature was only available to subscription owners as a download.

CD3 2011 Other New Features

I’m sure a lot of you with subscriptions have download the new Civil 3D 2011 and have started playing with new features. I have provided a list of other smaller new features that have also been added. Make the jump to check out some gems.

Reverse Storm Profiles

As we all know, when you design storm the alignment always starts downstream because the storm pipes and structures are built from downstream up. Some times you have situation where your storm alignment on plan view  goes from right to left but you profile that's on the same sheet goes from left to right. Some engineers prefer that storm alignment most flow in the same direction. In addition, in some city, they require that your north arrow always point up and right. The best way to handle this to just reverse your profile direction. For those of you that don't know how to set this up, I have provided a short video below.

C3D 2010 & 2011 Multiple Profile Views

Tonight I will show you how easy it is to create multiple profiles views for your street plan and profiles. After you have profiled you road and designed you PG now you are ready to create profile sections for your profile sheets. I have provided a short video presentation on how easy it can been. Enjoy.

Civil 3D Knowledge Base

Several new knowledge base post have been posted this week mostly related Civil 3D 2011. See link below for more information.

C3D Knowledge Base

2011 Toolspace Tabs

Have you ever opened up your civil 3D and turned on your Toolspace and noticed their were some tabs missing Well there is a simple fix for this. On your ribbon Home tab this is Toolspace icon on the far  left. Next to the tool space icon is the features for toolbox, prospector, survey, and settings tabs. You can simply click on each to turn them on. In addition, you also have the tool palette and properties options. See video below.