BIM on the Rocks

Applying Description Keys on Right-Click

This week I am in our Novi office learning more about Vault and getting started understanding more about Civil Engineering data management and workflow needs. The group is mixed between data management specialists (like Brian Schanen) and Civil 3D folks.We’ve spent a lot of time getting to know each other and learning to speak each other’s languages.

Yesterday, Jerry Bartels gave a demonstration he has used to explain Vault to Civil Engineers.

During the talk, I noticed something I had never seen before. In 2010, Civil 3D added the option of selecting points and Applying Description Keys using the right-click menu. This is why I love seeing other people demonstrate the product- you can always find something you missed.

Civil 3D and the Catchment Area Tool

I was working on something today that brought up a question about the Catchment Area tool. The developer was kind enough to give me some insight into what is happening under the hood. (Thanks Chris M.!)

The catchment area tool asks you to pick a point on the surface, then it figures out which triangles slope down toward that point. The point must have at least pair of triangles that share an edge where the edge slopes towards your point. A "downhill channel" so to speak. Once it encounters triangles that no longer slope towards your selected point, the catchment tool stops.

I created an exaggerated example to help explain what this means. Here is the perfect drainage basin.

Everything slopes downward to the exaggerated "pond" in the middle.

Using the catchment area tool, I select the bottom of the pond. The tool returns, predictably, the entire surface as my catchment area.

Now, let's say I add a nearly negligible downward slope to the side of this drainage basin.

If I were doing a hydrologic analysis of this basin and manually drawing my subcatchment areas, I would still make the boundary the entire surface area, because though the water would theoretically stall here for a second, the general trend is still downward to the pond.

When I run the catchment tool, however, it sees a series of triangles that slope away from my selected point, and stops there.

This is something I want to talk about more so that I can show you the best way to leverage this tool when you are working through preparing your pre and post development stormwater management plans. I have a very simplified site that we'll use to illustrate the examples.

Civil 3D 2010 HEC-RAS, Stage Storage and More at the Subscription Center

I just installed a few of the updated subscription extensions today.

The first one is an LDT Style Converter that will rake through your old Land Desktop projects and convert anything it can into a Civil 3D style. For example, if you set it up so that your contours always come in Land Desktop at a certain interval on a certain layer, it will find that information and use it to help create a style. Once I get a good example cooked up, I will post more.

The other three were available for 2009 as well. The HEC-RAS Import/Export, the Stage-Storage and the GENIO Import/Export Extensions are all now updated for Civil 3D 2010.

 

You can download these tools from the Subscription Center under Product Downloads. If you don't know your subscription login, or you aren't sure if you are on subscription, check with your CAD manager. If you've seen the Civil 3D 2010 boxes arrive in your office, you are probably on subscription. When I worked for a reseller, I was often surprised by how often the subscription paperwork winds up getting stuffed in the accountant's drawer along with invoices and such. Be proactive and get your firm taking advantage of all of the tools and support you've paid for!

 http://subscription.autodesk.com

Civil 3D 2010: More Flexible Labeling

One small thing that is new with Civil 3D 2010 is that you can add more vertices to label leaders.

Select any label in dragged state and get a little "+" sign.

 

Add as many vertices as you need to jog around those tight labeling nooks and crannies.

 

Civil 3D 2010 Object Projection to Profile and Section

A week or so ago, I posted a video about the new parcel enhancements for Civil 3D 2010. Tonight, I was working on some material for object projection and thought I would share. Scott has already written a little bit about object projection, and the guys over at Being Civil have a post explaining how to project a multiview block to a profile view.

For the documentation I am working on tonight, I wanted to find a few practical ideas that we could put into action right away. Sure, it could be handy to project the locations of trees, light posts and hydrants on to profile and section views, but what else? What could change the way we work?

How about projecting a feature line on to profile view, and being able to grip edit the elevations? Maybe for some conceptual grading, creating corridor targets, or small commercial site work?

Or maybe a marker from plan noting the intersection of two alignments (or sidewalks or culverts or anything else) that corresponds to a marker and label in profile?

 

Take these ideas and run with them. I'd love to hear what else you come up with.

Here is the video where I show how to do these two scenarios.

Civil 3D 2010 Parcel Creation Enhancements

I might still get around to posting a whetstone thing today, but I am not feeling very inspired. I guess that is the point of the whetstone, right? To inspire and renew. Right now, a pot of coffee seems to be in order.

I am working on some training and documentation material for Civil 3D 2010 today, and I usually record myself an AVI of whatever I am about to write. This makes it easier to back up, move forward and document every step.

Since I had the video made, I figured I would take a few minutes to narrate it, too. And then I thought, well, I might as well put it on youtube!

There are some really nice new things for parcels, such as the ability to use a setback (like a building restriction line) as your frontage guide. Also, you can preview the parcels before they are drawn, and make real-time changes to the settings to see the results. There is a lot more- check out the video.

 

I am very happy to see these enhancements- remember how much we all worked to come up with alternative workflows?

Handle the Bag: Civil 3D Parcels around cul-de-sacs (July 2006)

Civil 3D 2010: Profile Hatch

I am working on a 30 minute overview demo for some events next week, and I was thinking that I need to record it (helps me practice) and post it up on youtube. Look for that later tonight or tomorrow depending on how long it takes me to get through Target with Panorama and Prospector.

Also- Jerry and Lucy are doing a webcast tomorrow on the Civil 3D 2010 User Interface. Sign up for all of the upcoming webcasts while you are there.

One small thing that is new in Civil 3D 2010 that I really adore is profile hatch. How many times have you needed to show an area of cut or fill, or perhaps you wanted to hatch the space under the groundwater elevation, or show geological subsurfaces?

There is a new tab in Profile View properties that allows you to select profiles and create hatches between them. The tool uses shape styles- the same ones for assemblies and corridors- to control the color and fill.

The result is a dynamic hatched area that can bring some visual impact to your profile views.

I need to also wrap up our series on geological subsurfaces. If I go through many more "Parts", Mr. Zeeben will start picking on me. (Using Geological Data for Rock Quantities: Part XXIV)

Civil 3D 2010: Bring it on!

Today is the beginning of the official launch. Civil 3D 2010 will be available to download from the subscription center in a few weeks, and will ship shortly thereafter. I'll let you know specifics once I hear the final dates.

I would write this big, long blog post about all of the awesome stuff coming in detail, but truth be told, I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I've spent a bunch of time over the past week writing some AU-style papers for a user event where I am teaching terrain modeling, corridor modeling for stream design and roundabout modeling. I did as much as possible in drawings in the local language to make it easier on my translators and the students. It's pretty hard to follow a roundabout design when the alignments are named in Czech! (Well, not if you speak Czech, I suppose.) I also think I learned how to say "triangles, points and border" and other handy phrases such as that.

So James over at Civil3D.com posted his list of favorites and some videos, and I know there is more on its way all across the Civil 3D blogosphere. You might want to sign up for Tenlinks email if you don't already. I am sure Roopinder will have some listings of key articles as the weeks go on.

Since we've already talked about intersections quickly, and shown how much faster it is to build an intersection model in Civil 3D 2010 (and its sure to be high on all of the other bloggers' lists of things to talk about), I've uploaded a video about the new Quantity Takeoff Tools in Civil 3D 2010.

Pay items can be built into your corridor model, your pipe networks, and assigned to blocks, lines, hatches and areas. While we have been able to get quanities out of corridors before, it was never in the right form. Who cares about the cubic yards of material in curb? That isn't how we order it and pay for it- we pay for linear feet. The new QTO tools take care of that for you and can produce reports, tables and more. Check out the video on youtube, or watch below. (The video quality is not the best, I forgot to reprocess it in camtasia before I uploaded it, but hopefully you get the idea. It is narrated by Karen Weiss, our Transporation Technical Marketing Manager.)

Related Posts:

Civil 3D 2010: Very Quick Look at Intersections

Building Intersections in Civil 3D 2009 vs Civil 3D 2010