This book is a great way to expand your understanding of Civil 3D and will help you gain the most out of the software." ?From the Foreword by Daniel Philbrick, Autodesk Software Development Manager

Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010

James Wedding, P.E.

Scott McEachron

Design and Collaborate

on Large-Scale Civil

Engineering Projects

Master the Latest Civil 3D

Techniques and Improve

Your Productivity

Design Your Way from Field to Finish with This Expert Guide to Civil 3D

Understand concepts, create perfect designs, and manage every stage of your projects with this complete guide to Autodesk's powerful civil engineering software. Authored by experts with close ties to Autodesk and the Civil 3D community, this book offers an in-depth, tutorial-based approach that is grounded in real-world examples so that you can get the most out of Civil 3D.

This new edition is fully updated for all of Civil 3D 2010's new features, including new dynamic tools for intersections and a ribbon tool that streamlines the process of creating, editing, and annotating models. With pages of advanced techniques, expert tips, and practical workarounds, this book focuses squarely on how to use Civil 3D in a production environment and offers valuable insights you won't find anywhere else.

Coverage includes: *

Digging deeper into Civil 3D tools to get more from the program *

Working field to finish with in-depth information on field surveying *

Using new intersection tools to shorten the design of complex corridors *

Managing project environments with Autodesk® Vault or Data Shortcuts *

Designing models from drafts to done with new Civil 3D ribbon tool *

Creating construction documents in a flash with the Plan Production tool *

Building project visualizations that don't break the bank or the schedule

Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Understanding Civil 3D's controls and operation is critical to mastering it. With its dizzying array of options and settings, getting Civil 3D to look and feel comfortable can take some effort. Learning how to use its numerous dialogs and tool palettes, as well as the Ribbon, is critical to driving Civil 3D and getting feedback about your design. This chapter explores the look and feel of Civil 3D as a CAD program, the unique components that make up the Civil 3D interface, and the creation of a working environment that matches the way you design.

By the end of this chapter, you'll learn to:

* Find any Civil 3D object with just a few clicks

* Modify the drawing scale and default object layers

* Modify the display of Civil 3D tooltips

* Add a new tool to the Toolbox

* Create a basic label style

* Create a new object style

* Navigate the Ribbon's contextual tabs

Windows on the Model

The most obvious change to the Civil 3D interface over its predecessors is the context-sensitive Ribbon. Many of Civil 3D's design tools can now be accessed via the Ribbon. A facelift to the Toolspace and enhancements to the general look and feel of the Civil 3D workspace combine to make this release easier to navigate than any of its predecessors. Figure 1.1 shows the Civil 3D palette sets along with the AutoCAD Tool Palettes and context-sensitive Ribbon displayed in a typical environment.

Toolspace

Toolspace is one of the unique Civil 3D palette sets. Toolspace can have as many as four tabs to manage user data. These tabs are as follows:

* Prospector

* Settings

* Survey

* Toolbox

Using a Microsoft Windows Explorer-like interface within each, these tabs drive a large portion of the user control and data management of Civil 3D.

Prospector

Prospector is the main window into the Civil 3D object model. This palette or tab is where you go mining for data; it also shows points, alignments, parcels, corridors, and other objects as one concise, expandable list. In addition, in a project environment, this window is where you control access to your project data, create references to shared project data, and observe the check-in and check-out status of a drawing. Finally, you can also use Prospector to create a new drawing from the templates defined in the Drawing Template File Location branch in your AutoCAD Options dialog. Prospector has the following branches:

* Open Drawings

* Projects (only if the Vault client is installed)

* Data Shortcuts

* Drawing Templates

Master and Active Drawing Views

If you can't see the Projects or Drawing Templates branch in Figure 1.1, look at the top of the Prospector pane. There is a drop-down menu for operating in Active Drawing View or Master View mode. Selecting Active Drawing View displays only the active drawing and Data Shortcuts. Master View mode, however, displays the Projects, the Drawing Templates, and the Data Shortcuts, as well as the branches of all drawings that are currently open.

In addition to the branches, Prospector has a series of icons across the top that toggle various settings on and off. Some of the Civil 3D icons from previous versions have been removed, and their functionality has been universally enabled for Civil 3D 2010. Those icons are noted here.

Item Preview Toggle Turns on and off the display of the Toolspace item preview within Prospector. These previews can be helpful when you're navigating drawings in projects (you can select one to check out) or when you're attempting to locate a parcel on the basis of its visual shape. In general, however, you can turn off this toggle - it's purely a user preference.

Preview Area Display Toggle When Toolspace is undocked, this button moves the Preview Area from the right of the tree view to beneath the tree view area.

Panorama Display Toggle Turns on and off the display of the Panorama window (which is discussed in a bit). To be honest, there doesn't seem to be a point to this button, but it's here nonetheless.

Help This should be obvious, but it's amazing how many people overlook it.

Have You Looked in the Help File Lately'

The AutoCAD Civil 3D development team in Manchester, New Hampshire, has worked hard to make the Help files in Civil 3D top notch and user friendly. The Help files should be your first line of support!

Open Drawings

This branch of Prospector contains the drawings currently open in Civil 3D. Each drawing is subdivided into groups by major object type, such as points, point groups, surfaces, and so forth. These object groups then allow you to view all the objects in the collection. Some of these groups are empty until objects are created. You can learn details about an individual object by expanding the tree and selecting an object.

Within each drawing, the breakdown is similar. If a collection isn't empty, a plus sign appears next to it, as in a typical Windows Explorer interface. Selecting any of these top-level collection names displays a list of members in the preview area. Right-clicking the collection name allows you to select various commands that apply to all the members of that collection. For example, right-clicking the Point Groups collection brings up the menu shown in Figure 1.2.

In addition, right-clicking the individual object in the list view offers many commands unique to Civil 3D: Zoom to Object and Pan to Object are typically included. By using these commands, you can find any parcel, point, cross section, or other Civil 3D object in your drawing almost instantly.

Many longtime users of AutoCAD have resisted right-clicking menus for their daily tasks since AutoCAD 14. In other AutoCAD products this may be possible, but in Civil 3D you'll miss half the commands! This book focuses on the specific options and commands for each object type during discussions of the particular objects.

Projects

The Projects branch of Prospector is the starting point for real team collaboration. This branch allows you to sign in and out of Vault, review what projects are available, manage the projects you sort through for information, check out drawings for editing, and review the status of drawings as well as that of individual project-based objects.

Data Shortcuts

Simply put, a data shortcut identifies the path to a specific object, in a specific drawing. Many users have found data shortcuts to be ideal in terms of project collaboration for two reasons: flexibility and simplicity.

Drawing Templates

The Drawing Templates branch is added more as a convenience than anything else. You can still create new drawings via the standard File -> New option, but by using the Drawing Templates branch, you can do the same thing without leaving Prospector. The Drawing Templates branch searches the file path specified in your AutoCAD Options dialog and displays a list of all the .dwt files it finds. You can customize this path to point to a server or other folder, but by default it's a local user-settings path. Right-clicking the name of a template presents you with the options shown in Figure 1.3.

Civil 3D is built on both AutoCAD and AutoCAD Map, so Civil 3D 2010 comes with a variety of templates. However, most users will want to select one of the top few, which start with _Autodesk Civil 3D and then have some descriptive text. These templates have been built on the basis of customer feedback to provide Civil 3D with a varying collection of object styles. These templates give you a good starting point for creating a template that meets your needs or the needs of your firm.

Settings

The Settings tab of Toolspace is the proverbial rabbit hole. Here you can adjust how Civil 3D objects look and how the Civil 3D commands work. You use this tab to control styles, labels, and command settings for each component of Civil 3D. This book starts by looking at the top level of drawing settings and a few command settings to get you familiar, and then covers the specifics for each object's styles and settings in their respective chapters.

Drawing Settings

Starting at the drawing level, Civil 3D has a number of settings that you must understand before you can use the program efficiently. Civil 3D understands that the end goal of most users is to prepare construction documents on paper. To that end, most labeling and display settings are displayed in inches for imperial users and millimeters for metric users instead of nominal units like many other AutoCAD objects. Because much of this is based on an assumed working scale, let's look at how to change that setting, along with some other drawing options:

1. Open the file Sample Site.dwg from the installed tutorial drawings.

2. Switch to the Settings tab.

3. Right-click the filename, and select Edit Drawing Settings to display the dialog shown in Figure 1.4.

Each tab in this dialog controls a different aspect of the drawing. Most of the time, you'll pick up the Object Layers, Abbreviations, and Ambient Settings from a companywide template. But the drawing scale and coordinate information change for every job, so you'll visit the Units and Zone and the Transformation tabs frequently.

Units and Zone Tab

The Units and Zone tab lets you specify metric or imperial units for your drawing. You can also specify the conversion factor between systems. In addition, you can control the assumed plotting scale of the drawing. The drawing units typically come from a template, but the options for scaling blocks and setting AutoCAD variables depend on your working environment. Many engineers continue to work in an arbitrary coordinate system using the settings as shown earlier, but using a real coordinate system is easy! For example, setting up a drawing for a the Dallas, Texas, area, you'd follow this procedure:

1. Select USA, Texas from the Categories drop-down menu on the Units and Zone tab.

2. Select NAD83 Texas State Planes, North Central Zone, US Foot from the Available Coordinate Systems drop-down menu.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of available coordinate systems. These are established by international agreement; because Civil 3D is a worldwide product, almost any recognized surveying coordinate system can be found in the options. Once your coordinate system has been established, you can change it on the Transformation tab if desired.

This tab also includes the options Scale Objects Inserted from Other Drawings and Set AutoCAD Variables to Match. In Figure 1.4, both are unchecked to move forward. The scaling option has been problematic in the past because many firms work with drawings that have no units assigned and therefore scale incorrectly; but you can experiment with this setting as you'd like. The Set AutoCAD Variables to Match option attempts to set the AutoCAD variables AUNITS, DIMUNITS, INSUNITS, and MEASUREMENT to the values placed in this dialog. You can learn about the nature of these variables via the Help system. Because of some inconsistencies between coordinate-based systems and the AutoCAD engine, sometimes these variables must be approximated. Again, you won't typically set this flag to True; you should experiment in your own office to see if it can help you.

Transformation Tab

With a base coordinate system selected, you can now do any further refinement you'd like using the Transformation tab. The coordinate systems on the Units and Zone tab can be refined to meet local ordinances, tie in with historical data, complete a grid to ground transformation, or account for minor changes in coordinate system methodology. These changes can include the following:

Apply Sea Level Scale Factor - Takes into account the mean elevation of the site and the spheroid radius that is currently being applied as a function of the selected zone ellipsoid.

Grid Scale Factor - Based on a 1:1 value, a user-defined uniform scale factor, a reference point scaling, or a prismoidal transformation in which every point in the grid is adjusted by a unique amount.

Reference Point - Can be used to set a singular point in the drawing field via pick or via point number, local northing and easting, or grid northing and easting values.

Rotation Point - Can be used to set the reference point for rotation via the same methods as the Reference Point.

Specify Grid Rotation Angle - Enter an amount or set a line to North by picking an angle or deflection in the drawing. You can use this same method to set the azimuth if desired.

Most engineering firms work on either a defined coordinate system or an arbitrary system, so none of these changes are necessary. Given that, this tab will be your only method of achieving the necessary transformation for certain surveying and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based, and Land Surveying-based tasks.

Object Layers Tab

Setting object layers to your company standard is a major part of creating the feel you're after when using Civil 3D in your office. The nearly 50 objects described here make up the entirety of the Civil 3D modeling components and the objects you and other users will deal with daily.

The layers listed in this dialog by default reflect a modified AIA CAD Layer Guideline as part of the National CAD Standard (NCS). This layering standard is built into many places in Civil 3D's templates and is becoming more widely adopted in the land-development industry. In addition to being fairly comprehensive and well known among engineering firms, the NCS has the benefit of being the roadmap for the future in terms of out-of-the-box content from Autodesk. Adopting this standard means you'll have fewer things to change with every release of the software. Nevertheless, it is important that every user know how to modify these defaults.

One common issue with the shipping templates is that the templates assume road design is the primary use of alignments. Use the following procedure to change the Alignment setting to the NCS for laying out a sanitary sewer:

1. Click the Layer column in the Alignment row, as shown in Figure 1.5.

2. In the Layer Selection dialog list, select C-SSWR-CNTR and click OK.

One Object at a Time

Note that this procedure only changes the Alignment object. If you want to change the standard of all the objects, you need to adjust the Alignment Labeling, Alignment Table, Profile, Profile View, Profile View Labeling, and so on. To do this, it's a good idea to right-click in the grid view and select Copy All. You can then paste the contents of this matrix into Microsoft Excel for easy formatting and reviewing.

One common question that surrounds the Object Layers tab is the check box at lower left: Immediate and Independent Layer On/Off Control of Display Components. What the heck does that mean' Relax - it's not as complicated as it sounds.

Many objects in Civil 3D are built from underlying components. Take an alignment, for example. It's built from tangents, curves, spirals, extension lines, and so on. Each of these components can be assigned its own layer - in other words, the lines could be assigned to the LINES layer, curves to the CURVES layer, and so on. When this check box is selected, the component's layer exerts some control. In the example given, if the alignment is assigned to the ALIGN layer and the box is selected, turning off (not freezing) the LINES layer will make the line components of that alignment disappear. Deselect this control, and the LINES layer's status won't have any effect on the visibility of the alignment line components.

Finally, it's important to note that this layer control determines the object's parent layer at creation. Civil 3D objects can be moved to other layers at any time. Changing this setting doesn't change any objects already in place in the drawing.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 by James Wedding Scott McEachron Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission.
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