An Experiment in E-commerce

Hi All-

As many of you know, I enjoy writing documentation and helping spread the good cheer when it comes to Civil 3D. I've written a document for an introduction to interesection design and want to share it. However, I put a lot of personal time and effort into it - therefore I am going to try a little experiment. Are people willing to spend money on the information I give them? We'll see...

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Civil 3D 2009 Intersection Design 101 - $5.99USD (Quite a bargain for the folks using Euros!)

This document is intended for people who already have built Civil 3D corridors and want to take their knowledge to the next level. Concepts also apply to Civil 3D 2008. This 18-page PDF document will introduce you to the basic concepts behind interestion design.

To get the most out of this paper:

• You have a basic understanding of corridor design.


• You understand how to create and modify both Alignments and Profiles.


• You understand how to build assemblies.


• You can perform some minor style modifications.

In this example we will create a very basic intersection:

• Aspen Lane and Maple Road have same cross section.


• Both streets maintain crown through the intersection.


• The streets are perpendicular to each other.


• The radii of the curbs are equal.

Click on the button below to purchase the PDF document I created for intersection design.

Let's Make the Most of This Beautiful Day

Ms. Holland's Neighborhood, Civil 3D style:























This little subdivision only exists in my mind and as a 3D model on my computer. This rendering took 4.3 hours in Civil 3D 2009 on an HP with Intel Core2 2 GHz Duo, 4 gig ram and Vista 64.

The numerous 3D trees took forever to render. These are the concept trees found in the Civil MV Blocks palette.

Some settings I had on:

• Fog - Off
• Fog Background - Off
• Sun - On
• Sky - Off
• Force two-sided - ON (which is needed to render the corridor correctly)
• Output size - 2048x1536

Click on the image for full-blown effect. Can you spot the 3 pedestrians? Hint: 2 are on the nature trail and one is on the sidewalk.

Smack My Map Up

I've yet to run into a program that I couldn't install on 64-bit Vista. The latest challenge I've taken on is Map 3D 2009.

Disclaimer: If you attempt the following procedure, you are on your own. Autodesk will not support these "hacked" versions. I am just putting this out there for your information - I assume no responsibility for this not working for you, your lost time or hair.

This is how I beat Map3D 09 into submission:

1. Download Orca.msi.
2. Copy the Contents of the Map DVD to a hard drive (you can delete this after the install is complete).
3. Browse to the (x86) folder and open ACADMAP.msi with Orca. (After Orca is installed you should be able to right-click on this and select Edit with Orca.)
4. There are three locations to delete in this MSI file. Table: Custom Action Action: Checkfor64bitOS, Table: InstallExecuteSequence Action: Checkfor64bitOS and Table: LaunchCondition Condition: VersionNT >= 500 AND NOT VersionNT64.
5. Save and close the modified MSI file.
6. Run the install by double-clicking the MSI file. I recommend installing to default locations.
7. Lastly, we have to move some resources that were placed in the wrong location. Browse to C:\Program Files\Autocad Map3D 2009 and move the entire folder to the C:\Program Files (x86) directory.
8. Click YES to merge folders if it asks.

You should be good to go from there.

Doing a Little Remodeling

I just added Google analytics to my blogs and decided to use the opportunity to freshen up the look of things. Feel free to comment on the new layout.

Profile Style Weirdness

I have so much on my mind this week, I'm so glad I finally have some time to blog.

This first post is regarding a funny "gotcha" in the profile styles.

It all started when I was doing some one-on-one training on P&P sheets for a client and he wanted all of his profile views to have a vertical exaggeration of 5x, rather than the default found in the OOTB templates of 10x.

To change this I went to the profile view style by right-clicking on the view.

I jumped to the Graph tab and set the vertical exaggeration to 5 and thought I was home free. In theory, I'm changing the style that is active for all the profiles. The funny thing was that all the profiles changed except for the one I had right-clicked on.

After tinkering and repressing my curse reflex in front of a client I discovered that even though the profile in question was not being split, it was grabbing the style as if it were.

To fix it, I went to the Profile View Properties and unchecked the Split Profile View option.

A different way to solve it, if you are always going to have a 5x exaggeration anyway is to change all of your styles to be the scale you want. Just make sure to go into them via the Settings tab - 'cuz right-clicking the object won't get you to the correct style!

The same info applies to both 2008 and 2009 Civil 3D. Hope this saves someone some grief.