Speech Recognition - yeah right!

I was showing some of the engineers and designers the built-in capability that Vista has with speech recognition. It does work pretty slick.
One of the designers asked why can't we have that in Civil3D?

I thought about it for a bit and started laughing out loud - I explained that it is easier typing in the command than saying some of them! :)

For example:
Convertlineworktomaskblock
AeccAddLinkAtStation
BAuthorPalletteClose

I just thought it was funny. But who knows whats in the minds of the AD/C3D programmers for release 2020! :)

Hyd - whhhhhhhhat?

I just returned from our local AUGI user group meeting. The subject was on Civil 3D 2009 Hydrology. The subject was well presented and received, but it was waaaaaaaay above my head :) Being in a room that is primarily PE's generated the deep-searching questions.

I did glean some stuff from the presentation though which; if it's simple enough for my brain to comprehend, it will be okay to post here - lol

1. Create your Drainage area using the catchment area calc and then turn it into a parcel! Use a separate site name so that it doesn't interfere with your other site stuff. Create a nice looking label using parcels. like DA1 (Name), and Drainage area.

2. When laying out your pipe network, a recommended method is to create a network, place ONE structure on your drawing - it doesn't matter where! Use the good old AutoCAD Copy, move, rotate and (dare I say) mirror to get your structures where you want them. The Structure names will be real funky, but that can be edited later. Then go back and edit that network and add pipes only. Make sure you add them upstream to downstream if you are going to bring into Hydra.

That's it for this post.

Surface editing

A lot of my focus lately has been on surfaces. And of late I've been playing with the various surface editing tools. Before I get into it, there are 2 schools of thought on surfaces:

A. The surface from the surveyor is gospel and shall not be edited in any way, shape or form.
B. The surface has some oddities that are NOT in the field and they need to be fixed.

I tend to lean toward the latter. Editing surfaces is an art. You might be hitting your head against a wall trying to figure out why the surface does this when you swap edges or worse yet, when you can NOT swap an edge. Just like learning a new language, it does not happen overnight. I still struggle with the why's and go to other more knowledgeable people for answers.

What I have found may or may not work for you, but it does work for me:

1. Do NOT delete lines inside your surface! You will create holes! Deleting lines is best for outside or outer perimeter editing.
2. Be CAREFUL when moving points! It might look good in the area that you are editing, but it may cause a snowball effect on the rest of your surface.
3. When deleting points (surface points, NOT survey points) to delete a group of points, press the C key for CROSSING.
4. If you have survey points that are not to be included in your surface, create a group of the points you want to include and then use that group.

I'll have more later - I'm sure.

Catchment Area

One of the nifty tools in 2009 is the catchment area. It is the opposite of the rain drop feature. It saves time especially when trying to figure drainage areas. I use the 2D option, so I can get an area. I haven't played with the 3D option, as I think it would give erroneous areas since it basically drapes itself over the surface and follows every hill and valley.

THEN - I can convert this into a parcel and get a nice area label for my Drainage Area mapping.

Nifty, eh?

Pasting Surface - order

A quick one to enter - Again, my posts might be very simplistic to some but epiphanies to others.

When you are pasting surfaces, the order in which you paste them is important! For example, if you have the following surfaces; Existing Ground, Finished Grade, Corridor (Road). The order should be Existing FIRST! That way the others will paste ON TOP of the Existing and show/view correctly.

Not ANOTHER Blog!!

Yes there is!

My hope with this blog is to show the Simple Civil 3D capabilities. Of course one person's 'simple' is 'wow that's great!' to another. If I use someone else's information, I will certainly give them full credit due.

I will be posting what I find to be time-savers and the ones that I classifiy as: 'yeah, I already knew that but it is good to be reminded again'.

Just remember that we were all Civil 3D newbies at one time. I hope you enjoy 'Simply Civil 3D'