AutoCAD Civil 3D
Civil 3D 2012 Life’s a Beach
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t’s time to usher in the New Year. I, for one, am glad to see 2011 go—even after a short, four months. In this “New Year,” the developers of AutoCAD® Civil® 3D have ushered in numerous feature improvements. Following the trend of last year, the areas of improvement pertain mainly to the transportation features of the product. Corridor Modeling, Sections, and Alignments have seen improvements in how they work to provide an easier way to interact with the objects.
Corridor Modeling Improvements
Corridor modeling improvements provide an automatic way of setting viewports to facilitate editing of the corridor model. While many users may have set their viewports to show plan, profile, and section, there were probably just as many who edited corridor sections utilizing solely the sec-
product focus
by: Christopher Fugitt
tion view. By setting the new Apply Viewport Configuration to “On,” users are provided with a Plan View, Profile View, and Section View automatically. The resulting views provide an easy way to make changes and then see the model update. A small inclusion in this improvement is a Corridor Station Slider. The slider provides a visual method to select a corridor section in plan view and move it to the section view you want to see. This is a usability feature I look forward to using in production. Along with the slider is a major improvement in the Station Tracker. In the past, performance of this tool was lacking. It provided intermittent visibility as it moved across the profile, corridor, or section. I’m glad to report the performance of the tool now works seamlessly compared to the 2010 and 2011 versions of Civil 3D. Another nice touch I’m looking forward to is the ability to change the target of a subassembly directly from the Corridor Section Editor. A grip shows up at the subassembly attachment point with an ability to utilize an available target. The grip provides a way to select a new target or open the Subassembly Parameter = Editor. I envision this feature coming in handy along with the Apply Viewport Configuration.
Corridor Section Editor
Apply Viewport Configuration April 2011
A final corridor improvement I’ll brief ly mention is the ability to show multiple baseline corridors in the corridor section editor and sections. Previously, if you had multiple baselines
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