What
I
Don’t
AutoCAD
by: Christopher Fugitt
Civil 3D All Versions
Know
I ➲
f you aren’t taking the time to figure out what you don’t know, you may not being doing yourself any favors. I’m often amazed at what people don’t know about the programs they use nearly every day. In my case, it is AutoCAD® Civil 3D®. I realize there is a large chunk of Civil 3D that I don’t know. Granted, much of what I don’t know is functionality that I have not needed to use. For instance, I don’t regularly interact with a survey crew that effectively utilizes field codes. If you asked me how a surveyor is supposed to create codes I’d have to look in Help. But the important thing to know is that the survey database exists. If you know it exists then you can look for resources to learn the feature.
RESOURCES Maybe you’re just starting out and need some resources to find the “know” so you no longer don’t know. The first place I look is in Help. It’s that frustrating button next to the Esc key. If you’ve disabled the F1 key, type HELP at the command line and do a search of Help. Unfortunately, I usually don’t get exactly what I’m looking for when I do a search. When that happens I go to the Internet and search there, which usually brings me to the name of the command I’m seeking. Then I go back and look in the program’s Help for the command. In my first three-day Civil 3D course I learned a bunch, but probably the best bit of information I got was to hit the F1 key every day and read about a different command. Okay, so I didn’t do it every day, but I did it often enough to learn numerous things I didn’t know.
16 www.augi.com
March 2011