Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween



Spooky coincidence...I walk my dog in a cemetery near my house. Its perfect because it's fenced in and she can run free. I saw this headstone and had to do a double take.

Before you look at this picture, please know that I wish the living Peter Funk a long, happy, healthy life.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Anatomy of a Profile

Happy Friday.



I've been glued to my Mastering Civil 3D 2008 book. Are you?



One of the most challenging parts of implementing Civil 3D is getting your elements to look the way you want. Every line, every piece of text and every tickmark can be customised to look however you wish.
In a Profile View you have dozens of locations to change your settings. I’ve created a document you can use as a road map to these styles.


I plan to create more of these road maps for some of the more complex objects, such as Cross-Section views and pipes. Stay tuned!






BTW, you may have noticed that I removed all posts implying anything negative about any other companies. This blog should be perky and positive. I strive for world peace, one Civil 3D user at a time.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Civil 3D SP2

Happy Happy!
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/index?siteID=123112&id=2334435&linkID=9240698

Two Items

Item 1: Yes, I'm a Google whore. I've decided to add AdSense to this blog. If it gets annoying I'll kill it.

Item 2: If you are a civil engineer and looking for a job, I have had 2 companies contact me asking if I knew anyone who might be interested. One company is in the ENR top 10, the other is just a dude with a dream. Both companies use Civil 3D (must be why they are growing). Why don't I go? Hell, I suck at "real" engineering. I prefer to hide in the software world where my motto "When in doubt, overdesign." won't make anyone roll thier eyes.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Rules for Keeping a Gremlin

#1 - Keep them away from light.
#2 - Don't get them wet.
#3 - Don't respond to their flame posts on the Civil 3D discussion groups!

Please, for the love of God, people, please don't respond to the rants.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

What Layer is My Point On?

The answer to this question is, “It depends.”



The label text is on a layer. The marker (or symbol) is on a separate layer. Lastly, there is what I call the overall layer; the layer that is reported in the Cogo Point Properties.



Points inserted into Civil 3D behave differently depending on several factors.



Ultimately, points inserted into a drawing that match a description key will always take properties from that description key. In other words, description keys always “win.” (Unless you have Overrrides set in the point group properties)



If the point already exists in your drawing before a description key matching it is created, it will not pick up the description key’s properties.


I created a flowchart to help unmask the mystery of points. The flowchart was made with several assumptions:

  • Description keys exist at the time the point is created.

  • If a marker style is specified, the label style is also specified.

  • None of the layers are set to “0.”
  • I am not using any Overrides in the point group properties.


If anything in the PDF is incorrect, please let me know!

Rock on.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Firefox, We Hardly Knew Ye'



Its a sad day for me. Due to several applications that I use at work, including Civil 3D, I've come to the conclusion that life is just easier when you are using a Microsoft browser.




I liked Firefox for its built in spellcheck, cozy UI and tolerance of my sloppy HTML.


However, I kept running into trouble executing Civil 3D reports, getting into the AutoDesk Partner Center and my company's CRM package.




Sniff.




Now that I'm back with the herd, I had to change my Internet Explorer 7 security settings to get those Civil 3D reports to work properly.

This is the error I got in Civil 3D before I did so.





In order to change this, open up Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options then tab over to Security.

Set yourself to Medium, click OK and life should be fine.

Monday, October 08, 2007

P&P and Sheet Set Crash Course

Some of you are thinking, "3 stars for sheetsets? - seriously?" But I think good use of sheet sets and a proper P&P sheet template setup is not for the average end-user.

To that end, I have written a document to help you create P&P's and then find heads and tails of the whole sheet set deal.

Here she is.

In related news, I am contributing to my company's officical blog.

Sarcasm and dirty jokes (as related to Civil 3D) will stay here. Techie stuff, I'll try to post in both places. The good news is our official Blog uses Wordpress - which is clunky but at least I can post data, dwg's and the like.

Have a SUPER DAY!