Chapter 1 AL Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D MA TE RI Just as with any piece of software, understanding Civil 3D’s controls and operation is critical to mastering it. With its dizzying array of options and settings, just getting Civil 3D to look and feel comfortable can take some effort. Learning how to use its numerous dialogs and tool palettes is critical to driving Civil 3D and getting feedback about your design.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Figure 1.1 Civil 3D in a typical environment. Toolspace is docked on the left, and Panorama and Tool Palettes float over the drawing window. Confused Yet? Are you bothered by the naming convention of all these palettes, palette sets, toolbars, and toolboxes? After a discussion with the Civil 3D team in Manchester, New Hampshire, we think we have it right. Toolspace and Panorama are palette sets, acting as containers for the palettes they contain.
Windows on the Model 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.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 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.
Windows on the Model 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, rightclicking the Point Groups collection brings up the menu shown in Figure 1.3. Figure 1.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Figure 1.4 Creating a new drawing from within the Drawing Templates branch of Prospector. The templates shown here are located in the folder set in your AutoCAD Options window. Civil 3D is built on both AutoCAD and Map, so Civil 3D 2009 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.
Windows on the Model 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 SampleSite.dwg from the installed sample files. 2. Switch to the Settings tab. 3. Right-click the filename, and select Edit Drawing Settings to display the dialog shown in Figure 1.5. Figure 1.5 Drawing Settings dialog Each tab in this dialog controls a different aspect of the drawing.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D recognized surveying coordinate system can be found in the options here. 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 1.5, both are unchecked to move forward.
Windows on the Model 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 1.6. Figure 1.6 Changing the Layer setting for the Alignment object 2. In the Layer Selection dialog list, select C-SSWR-CNTR and click OK.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Finally, it’s important to note that this layer control determines the object’s parent layer at creation. Civil 3D objects are like any other object in that once they’re made, they can be moved to other layers. Also, changing this setting doesn’t change any objects already in place in the drawing. Abbreviations Tab Users can go for years and never notice the Abbreviations tab.
Windows on the Model | You can approach this tab a couple of ways: •u Top to bottom—Expand one branch, handle the settings in that branch, and then close it and move to the next. •u Print and conquer—Expand all the branches using the Expand All Categories button found at lower right. Once you have them expanded, right-click in the middle of the displayed options and select Copy to Clipboard; then, paste the settings to Excel for review, like you did with the Object Layers tab.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D New Entity Tool Tip State You can also control tooltips on an individual object level. For instance, you might want tooltip feedback on your proposed surface but not on the existing surface. This setting controls whether the tooltip is turned on at the object level for new Civil 3D objects.
Windows on the Model | Figure 1.9 Profile Elevation Settings and the Override indicator Object Settings If you click the expand button next to the drawing name, you see the full array of objects that Civil 3D uses to build its design model. Each of these has special features unique to the object being described, but there are some common features as well. Additionally, the General collection contains settings and styles that are applied to various objects across the entire product.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Label Styles The Label Styles collection was a new addition with the 2007 release of the product and a much-requested change. These labels allow Civil 3D users to place general text notes or label single entities outside the parcel network while still taking advantage of Civil 3D’s flexibility and scaling properties. With the various label styles shown in Figure 1.11, you can get some idea of their usage. Figure 1.
Windows on the Model Figure 1.12 Surface command settings in Toolspace Figure 1.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D A Toolbox Built Just for You You can edit the Toolbox content and the Report Settings by selecting the desired tool, right-clicking, and then executing. Don’t limit yourself to the default reports that ship in the Toolbox, though.
Windows on the Model 5. Expand the Sample Files toolbox to view the new category, and then click the name to edit it in the preview area. Change the name to VBA, and press ↵. 6. Right-click the VBA category, and select New Tool. 7. Expand the VBA category to view the new tool, and then click the name to edit it in the preview area. Change its name to Pipe Export. 8. Change the Description to Runs Autodesk’s sample Pipe Export VBA Macro. 9.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Panorama The Panorama window is Civil 3D’s feedback and tabular editing mechanism. Designed to be a common interface for a number of different Civil 3D–related tasks, you can use it to provide information about the creation of profile views, to edit pipe or structure information, or to run basic volume analysis between two surfaces. Panorama typically isn’t displayed when Civil 3D is launched.
It’s All About Style Figure 1.14 Spot Elevation label styles Figure 1.15 Label Style Composer On the Information tab, change the name to something appropriate. For this example, use JW-EG. Who Built That Style? It’s a good idea to always put something in the style name to indicate it wasn’t in the box. Putting your initials or firm name at the beginning of the style is one way to make it easy to differentiate your styles from the prebuilt ones.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Next, switch to the General tab. Change the layer to C-TOPO-TEXT by clicking the layer cell and then the More button to the right of that cell. There are a fair number of options here, so let’s look at them further: Text Style is the default style for text components that are created on the Layout tab. It’s a good practice to use a zero-height text style with the appropriate font, because you’ll set the plotted heights in the style anyway.
It’s All About Style Figure 1.16 Examples of planreadable text Figure 1.17 Options for the label components Labels are made of individual components.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D The Component drop-down menu activates which component is being modified in the options below. These components are listed in the order in which they were created. The Create Text Component button lets you create new components. These components can be Text, Lines, Blocks, Reference Text, or Ticks. Some options aren’t available for every label style. The Copy Component button does just that.
It’s All About Style | The middle portion of the dialog changes depending on the type of component, but the concepts are similar. In the case shown here, the middle portion is the Text property. Under Text, the first option is Contents, which determines the actual content of the text: 1. Click the Contents Value cell, and then click the ellipsis button that appears to the right to open the Text Component Editor. 2. Click in the preview window of the Text Component Editor.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D Let’s look at the rest of the options, even though you won’t be making any changes: Text Height determines the plotted height of the label. Remember, Civil 3D knows you’re going to print and will attempt to give you inches or millimeters. Rotation Angle, X Offset, and Y Offset give you the ability to refine the placement of this component by rotating or displacing the text in an X or Y direction.
It’s All About Style | Figure 1.20 Summary tab with the Expand All button circled Object Styles Beyond the styles used to label objects, Civil 3D also depends on styles to control the display of the native objects, including points, surface, alignments, and so on. Just as in label styles, certain components of the object styles are common to almost all objects, so let’s create a new alignment style to introduce these common elements: 1.
| Chapter 1 Getting Dirty: The Basics of Civil 3D 3. Switch to the Display tab. The other two tabs are unique for alignment objects, but the Display tab is part of every Civil 3D object style. 4. Turn off the Arrow component by clicking the lightbulb in the column next to it. 5. Near the top of the dialog, change the View Direction setting in the drop-down menu to Model, and notice the change. 6. Click OK to dismiss the dialog.
The Bottom Line | can have dozens of alignments, jumping to the desired one nearly instantly shaves time off everyday tasks. Master It Open SampleSite.dwg from the sample data set, and find the parcel Property : 9 without using any AutoCAD commands. Modify the drawing scale and default object layers. Civil 3D understands that the end goal of most drawings is to create hard-copy construction documents.
