I’m working on that Master Planned Community again. This time, my colleague Brian and I are designing some green Best Management Practices for a townhouse/condo courtyard.
This is just a quick tip that is useful in a variety of circumstances. Whenever you need a cumulative area of something, create hatches. Then, pick each of the hatches. The property window will give you the cumulative area.
There are quite a few ways to tackle the study of “areas”. I like parcels and catchment objects for many things, but sometimes you just want a quick benchmark. If your hatch is associated with its boundary, this area will be dynamic if you adjust the boundary.
What are some of your best workflows for figuring out different cover types for stormwater management analysis?
I’ve been posting on and off about Infrastructure Modeler. I have gotten quite a few comments asking how to import 3D content into the program. Where do you find buildings? Street furniture? Playground equipment? Houses? Dog dishes? Dinosaurs eating people?
I’ve tried keeping a master list of Civil 3D related bloggers and tweeters with limited success. New blogs and twitter accounts appear daily and contact information changes rapidly.
I’m taking a new approach. I’ve created a Google Spreadsheet were you can add yourself.
Adding yourself to this list will help me follow your blog/twitter account, invite you to special events where possible, and link to your brilliant insights.
Civil 3D (and related) Social Media Users(Ed. Note 11-9-11: I’ve locked down the spreadsheet for now. Terrific success! I will post links shortly and reopen the spreadsheet periodically for updates.)
Anyone who blogs or tweets about Civil 3D, Map 3D, Infrastructure Modeler, civil engineering, surveying, urban planning, stormwater management or anything related is welcome to add themselves to the list. You don’t have to talk about software.
Our Master Planned Community continues to evolve. One thing that Arnab and I have been working on (well, let’s be honest, Arnab does the work and I mostly just talk) is an neighborhood of medium density residential.
Something that has been very valuable in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler has been the ability to try different road cross sections and see how they “feel”. What does our streetscape look like? What is the scale of a two land road versus a four lane road? Does it seem like a human would be comfortable crossing the street? What happens to the intersection?
While we aren’t at the point of doing a true traffic analysis just yet (we are doing one, though, and I will share the information once we are finished), this exercise made me think of the Road Diet video from Streetfilms. From the accompanying blog post “What’s a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, “A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road.”
I can drag and drop different road styles from the built-in catalog and see what happens when I make my four lane road with treed boulevard into…
A two lane road.
And now what if I make both intersecting roads four lanes?
What a powerful way to visually work through your options to check for how it feels and how it scales. You can sit down with the stakeholders and try things out, then do your more detailed designs, analysis and eventually design on the winning combination.
There have been a few comments on previous posts about the building models. In today’s example, the building models are adapted from something in the Revit Architecture tutorials. You could use many formats of 3D models of houses or buildings that are similar to what might be on your site. If you don’t have access to a good match, or you simply aren’t ready for that level of detail, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler has some tools to help you sketch in buildings of the right size to act as conceptual placeholders.
Here is an example in the northern portion of the community where I might want to try out a building footprint.
If you’d like to get some more ideas of how to use Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, you should check out the classes at Autodesk University this month. Don’t forget that most Autodesk University lectures are recorded and will be available online after the event.
GS4570 Be a Hit: Work on your A.I.M. with Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012 Lynda Sharkey Virtual November 29, 2011
CI4018 AIM at Perfection: Create Conceptual Designs Faster with Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012 Scott Kent Lecture December 01, 2011 1:00PM
CI5669-L Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler (AIM) for Success Keith Warren Hands-On Lab December 01, 2011 5:00PM
GS4396 Geometry On Demand: Tap into the Power of 2.5D Data with Autodesk® LandXplorer®, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, and Autodesk 3ds Max® Dan Campbell Lecture November 29, 2011 10:00AM
GS4630-L Infrastructure Conceptual Design with the New Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012 Christopher Andrews Hands-On Lab November 30, 2011 10:00AM
These recorded classes are also a great way for anyone to study Autodesk products and prepare for certification. If you won’t be at Autodesk University, you can take the certification exam at your local certification center. Learn more about certification centers here.
CI3863 Incredible AutoCAD® Civil 3D® Users: Prove Your Credibility with Civil 3D Certification, Part 1 Michelle Rasmussen View the class
CI3865 Incredible AutoCAD® Civil 3D® Users: Prove your Credibility with Civil 3D Certification, Part 2 Michelle Rasmussen View the class
I watched the Civil 3D class, and it gives a nice overview of the tools highlighted in the certification exam, as well as giving you some tips on taking the exam itself. Michelle talks about marking questions, time management during the exam and how to efficiently answer certain types of questions.
Take advantage of the online resources, but if you are a book person like myself, you might want to order copies of two of my favorite Civil 3D texts:
I almost can’t believe it, but I am actually nearly finished writing my handout. Prospector has been helping. He likes grading.
There is a bit I’d like to add, though. I need some ideas on what you would like to see. Even if you won’t be at Autodesk University, please comment below. The class will be recorded and available at AU Online after the event. Also, I will blog anything as much as I can over the next few months.
The main goals of the class is to give attendees a look at how surfaces come together and how grading objects and feature lines work so that they can build their best, most flexible, most efficient surface models. Here is the information from the class page:
Class Description
This class will teach you the details on how AutoCAD® Civil 3D® builds surfaces from point clouds, points, contours, feature lines, grading objects, and more. We will start with the basics of Delaunay triangulation, precision, and accuracy and then build on those skills to see how they apply to Civil 3D surface creation. You will learn how to build more effective surfaces and how to handle large surfaces and other tricky situations. The under-the-hood knowledge gained from this class will help you in every aspect of surface creation. Whether you are working conceptually from Google Earth™, importing survey data or designing the details, this knowledge will make your surface building experience much more productive.
Key Learning
Create surfaces that reflect existing conditions and your design intent
Create a surface from triangulation
Manage large amounts of surface data
Build surfaces from a variety of data types
Here is how you can help. In the comments below, give me some ideas of interesting design scenarios, lingering questions, techniques you’ve played with, etc. that would be good fodder for some of my practical workflows in the second half of the class.
Look forward to seeing what we can come up with together!
Dave Simeone is totally mad at me. This is a picture of Dave when he is really angry.
It seems that I have been too busy trying to get a jump on my AU packing to notice that several of his tools were released last week. Look, Dave, it’s hard work cramming two monitors, a set of hot rollers and six pairs of nearly identical black boots into a suitcase! This could take weeks.
The Bridge Modeler for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 technology preview focuses on 2 workflows:
Purpose-built workflow for modeling bridge road, barriers, piers, abutments, and bearings for bridge types including:
Concrete Box Girder
Concrete Slab
Concrete Slab with Girders
Ability to extract strings along a bridge and create Civil 3D alignments which can be then used to display key bridge elements onto Civil 3D profiles.
Those of you who have been using the 2011 version of the Bridge Modeler for AutoCAD Civil 3D technology preview will find the following improvements:
Support for Civil 3D 2012
Variable height girders (steel girder type)
Independent control over girder type by span
Independent control over girder spacing, symmetry, number, etc. by bridge span
Ability to create Civil 3D alignments and profiles from bridge strings (e.g., lowest girder per span, top/bottom of barrier, etc.)
Resolution of miscellaneous stability issues
Dave also posted two overview videos about the Bridge Modeler on youtube. if you can’t access youtube, I’ve posted the links to a direct download below.
Please find Dave at Autodesk University this month and tell him that I’m really not such a bad egg. He is leading three unconferences, which are a unique chance to interact with Autodesk leaders in a small group setting.
CI6740-U Rail Track Design Using Autodesk Civil Solutions Dave Simeone Unconference December 01, 2011 10:00AM
CI6741-U Bridge Modeling Workflow Steering Committee Dave Simeone Unconference December 01, 2011 3:00PM
CI8900-U Virtual Construction for Civil Infrastructure Projects Dave Simeone Unconference November 30, 2011 8:00AM
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