I’ve spent countless hours looking deeper into Civil 3D. Once I committed to it, I took a deep dive into the software—far deeper then I probably should have gone. But in that deep dive I discovered some time-saving commands I otherwise wouldn’t have found. I went as far as to collect all the possible commands in AutoCAD and Civil 3D and searched for hidden gems in the program. And I found them—such as the AEC Modify tools for trimming and extending objects. I “showed up” and had a greater understanding of the tool I was using. Often, we learn more from other people’s issues. Taking the time to read and respond to others’ problems in discussion groups can lead to further understanding of a program. By reading, thinking, and responding to the issues we can have a deeper understanding of what is possible with the software. This process of helping others has the benefit of providing solutions we may need in the future.
CUSTOMIZATION I’m a bit amazed by how many Civil 3D users don’t show up when it comes to customizing the program. This apparent lack of interest surprises me, especially because many of the users are engineers, who are the problem solvers of the world. There is a problem they are facing and the solution appears to be to ignore the problem instead of coming up with a solution. It is easier to not show up than to come up with a programmatic solution to the problem. There are third-party providers who have created plug-ins to Civil 3D to help automate the process. I’ve created a few of them myself, in fact. Based on the number of reviews on the Autodesk Exchange site it doesn’t appear many people are using them. Additionally, due to the relatively small numbers of potential customers the price point of the software can be higher than what a user might expect. After all they may be accustomed to purchasing apps from iTunes where the cost is usually low due to the larger number of potential customers. Selling to a million customers at $1 an app may be more profitable than selling an app to 100,000 customers.
One recent programming project I finished was for labeling a station value for a point in no man’s land for an alignment PI. The no man’s land is the area behind a PI where a mathematical solution for stationing doesn’t exist. Stationing is measured perpendicular November 2012
to the alignment. If a perpendicular point doesn’t exist then there isn’t a solution to the problem. In order to solve this common problem I created a routine that calculates the station ahead and station back relative to the known station values perpendicular to the alignment. This is a time-saving feature if one is required to label those points in this manner. Otherwise, it can be a tedious process to label those points. Customization doesn’t deal only with programming, but with custom subassemblies. The recent addition of Subassembly Composer makes it relatively easy to come up with a solution to corridor-based modeling problems. If you haven’t shown up to that portion of the program I encourage you to do so. With Subassembly Composer it is easy to create curb and gutter subassemblies that match your local jurisdiction’s requirements. One benefit I’ve seen is putting all the different types of curb and gutters into one subassembly. This way I don’t have to manage a whole bunch of subassemblies. I just choose the curb type I need from a drop down list.
PRODUCT FOCUS
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013
COLLABORATION Collaboration could change drastically in the future. The change has already started with Autodesk’s recent emphasis on the cloud. Currently I’m not “showing up” to the collaboration tools. Nobody I’m working with is pushing to use these new collaboration tools. Mainly it’s because the companies I work with haven’t kept up with the technologies. They are using older technologies such as Land Desktop, which doesn’t have the built-in functions to interact with the cloud. Unfortunately, there is a big hurdle to using the cloud. The hurdle is developing a workflow and understanding between parties on how collaboration is to be used. We are used to living on an island until the submittals are due. Then there is a mad rush to assemble and combine the information into one design. Historically, we’ve had only one or two updates from our collaborators for a submittal. With constant updates, how do we handle the in-process changes? Civil 3D isn’t quite ready for these kinds of changes, so it will take more thinking on how they should be done.
Christopher Fugitt has spent his years in the real world collecting certifications and letters behind his name. Currently he works for his company, Civil Reminders, performing civil engineering and programming for a diverse list of customers. In addition, he contributes to the Sincpac, a thirdparty add-on to AutoCAD Civil 3D by Quux Software. www.augiworld.com
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