Friday, January 30, 2009

SQOTD: "My view is whacked"

This SQOTD is inspired by my buddy Rob C. who is a former co-worker and perpetual punk.

Q: All my layers are on, but I can't see all the objects I'm expecting to see in the drawing. It looks like I can only see zero-elevation stuff. What's up?

A: The fix - type PLAN at the command line. Then W for world. (If you are not a key-in person, go to View > 3D views > Plan > World). This will turn your UCS and your view to Top in relation to the world coordinate system.

When you are working in Civil 3D there are quite a few ways a person can accidentally whack out their view. In Civil 3D the most common culprit is jumping into View/Edit Corridor section view and for whatever reason C3D gets stuck in the temporary, unnamed UCS.

Another common culprit is accidentally using Shift-middle mouse wheel. Shift + select adds items to the selection set. Shift+middle mouse wheel gets you into 3D orbit mode. Your view is whacked, even if your coordinate system is still world.

So there you go: PLAN W
Memorize it.

1 comment:

Lizzie said...

Thanks a million for the tip. I was stuck with just a cross section and some random lines. After adjusting the plan, I also had to adjust the ucs to world (type UCS in the command line and then W for world) to get back to my initial view.