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AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013
by: Christopher Fugitt
Supporting Roles ➲A
s I go through the requirements for putting together a grading plan, it becomes clear that many tasks required to put together a plan set are missing from Autodesk® Civil 3D®. This is where thirdparty applications help to fill in the gaps. This article will cover some of the third-party applications that are available for use with AutoCAD Civil 3D.
SincPac The tools contained within SincPac from Quux Software are focused primarily on survey-related commands. The product contains three modules Drafting, Points, and Power. There are more than 100 commands combined with all the modules—too many to cover in the limited space in this article. One command I find useful is the PGAddRemovePoints. This command facilitates the organization of point groups by making it easy to add and remove points from point groups without going through multiple dialog boxes for each point group. In the Drafting module there is the ParcelOffset command. This command, the first one I learned in the product, draws parcel lines 32
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Figure 1: SincPac
offset from the sides of the actual parcel lines. These lines typically represent the buildable area of the parcel. This command alone saved me eight to ten hours of offsetting and trimming polylines for a large subdivision project. June 2013