Being Uncivil

Note: This is a philosophical post rather than a technical post.

If you were to call me a year ago and ask for technical support on something I considered "simple" you would have had to endure my condescending 'tude. If you emailed me about something we did in class, I would have responded with a terse 'look it up!" type response. If you were unfortunate enough to work with me, you would receive lots of eye rolling or flat out refusal to do perfectly reasonable requests.

I can't say exactly why I was being such a bitch.  Perhaps it was grumpiness at the state of my 401k.  Perhaps I took to heart some (bad) advice I received from a teaching professional to, "treat them like scum so they will respect you." Perhaps my crush on Hugh Laurie subconsciously made me want to act like House. Perhaps I started to believe my own hype.

It wasn't working for me.

This past spring I realized that my sales people were approaching me the way you might approach a stray cat.  Was this the day I was going to bite their heard off, or was I going to play nice? I started to notice that even my  favorite customers seemed to be shying away from me. If I didn't get this crazy train on a different track, I'd alienate my allies, lose customers, or worse yet, end up working the stock room at the local Best Buy.

Starting a few months ago I started to make an effort to chill the F out.  Being an engineer fluent in AutoCAD and Civil 3D isn't going to win me any Nobel prizes. If I'm lucky, the best I can do is help someone design a better road or make their job easier. I'm certainly not going to accomplish that by being difficult.

This will be an ongoing journey for me. There will always be emails that I forget to respond to, or cranky customers out for a fight. I've never been a great people-person, but I can at least try not to be blatantly anti-social.

PS: I still fully intend to remain as crass as ever - just nicer.
PPS: I still don't like it when people call my direct line for tech support.  A person has to have boundaries.

Civil 3D 2012: Quick & Dirty GIS Surface Import

This Blog post stems from a support call I received yesterday. One of my favorite clients has recently upgraded to 2012 (yay!) and was wondering if there was a better tool than what 2010 had for GIS data import. I love it when I can say, "YES! It is SUPER easy now!" So I've recycled what I emailed to him into this post.

1. Go to Surfaces and pick Surfaces from GIS Data
   

1. Then you will go through all the steps of the Wizard.  Step 1 is where you give the surface a name.  Click Next.
   
   
2. Change the data source type to SHP – that's the most common data type from ESRI.  Then you will browse for the SHP file.
   
   
3. Click LOGIN and put a checkmark next to the item listed in this screen.  I used an example data file called Columbus.  Of course yours will have a different name.
   
   
4. Click Next.
   
5. Clear the checkbox next to Define Area of Interest by…  This is used if there is a smaller area you want to focus on.  By clearing this checkbox, you are importing the whole surface area.
   
   
6. Click Next.
   
7. Set the Elevation column from the GIS file (left) to be Elevation in the Civil 3D property (right).  You will probably need to make the columns bigger in order to see them properly.
   
   
8. Click Finish and after a moment your beautiful new surface model shall appear.
   

Have a great week! -Lou

Scaling All Bocks - without Changing Insertion Location

I know, I know.  I'm not blogging as often as I should.  But the weather has been absolutely gorgeous in Wisconsin and I'm busy working on losing my geeky pallor in the summer sun.

If you can't get enough of my nuggets of wisdom you can always follow me on Twitter, or better yet BUY MY BOOK (see sidebar). Or even BETTER yet - hire me as a consultant in your Civil 3D implementation via MasterGraphics.

So here's a simple but fundamental post:

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Recently a customer asked me if I knew of any LISP routines that would allow users to select blocks, then rescale them without changing their location in the drawing as the regular scale command would do.


There are LISP routines out there, but in my opinion they are completely unnecessary.


Note: IF the blocks you are working with are from Civil 3D, you'll need to edit the Style that is bringing them in.  For example, if the block is there because it represents, say a fire hydrant from a survey – you'll need to find the fire hydrant symbol in the Settings tab of Civil 3D.


If they really are plain AutoCAD blocks, the best thing I to do is:

1. Find the Quick Properties Icon. This is on the Home Tab or in the Properties dialog.
   
2. In the Quick select dialog, pick the following options. Apply to: Entire drawing, Object Type: Block reference, Operator: Select All (You could also search for a specific block name if you wanted – this example will give you all of the blocks in the drawing – as long as they are not on a frozen layer, of course.)
   
   
   
   
3. Click OK and all the blocks become selected.
   
4. Lastly, change the scale to whatever you like.  It will not change the base-point of any of the blocks.
   
   
   
   
   
   Hope this helps!
   
   
   Have a super-sunny-fantastic day! -Lou
   

Civil 3D 2012 to Navisworks Manage

What is Navisworks Manage?

Navisworks is a project review tool that is a relative newcomer to the Autodesk family of products. I think of Navisworks as a universal viewer and CAD-aggregator. There are several varieties of Navisworks, Navisworks Manage is the fullest functionality flavor of the product. I've got several customers using the heck out of it for scheduling and staging construction activity. With Navisworks you can pull together many different file types including DWG, DGN, point clouds, Revit, Inventor, 3DS Max, Sketchup and Pro E files (just to name a few).

Getting Started:

In Navisworks Manage, you will want to change a setting that will make it much easier to update the model from the Civil 3D file.

From the Navisworks Application Menu click Options (similar to how you jump into Options in AutoCAD).

Expand the Model category on the left part of the Options Editor and highlight Performance.

Place a checkmark next to Close NWC/NWD files on load.



This option allows us to keep the Navisworks project open and export a new output file (NWC as I create later in this post). If I kept it on, it would not allow me to overwrite the NWCs as updates occur. For those of you familiar with the XLOADCTL variable, think of this option as changing XLOADCTL from 0 to 2.

In Civil 3D 2012 (this will also work in 2011, btw):

Freeze unwanted layers and hide items you don't want displayed in Navisworks. Generally, the only things you want to bring in are pipes, surfaces, corridors and parcels that have elevation to them. I recommend creating a Layer State specifically for NWCOUT.

At the command line, type NWCOUT. Civil 3D will prompt you to save an NWC file. Save it in a sensible location with the rest of the project you are working with. This file provides the link between Civil 3D and Navisworks, so renaming it, moving it or deleting it once it is in use would break the link. Wait a moment or two for the NWC file to generate.

In Navisworks:

In Navisworks, click Append.



Once the file has been imported, use the view cube and the navigation bar to look around in the project, similar to how you would in the Civil 3D object viewer.

In my example, I have pipes that I'd like to see, but in most views they are obscured by the surface model. I can make the surface model transparent.

Select the surface in Navisworks by clicking on it. A context tab pops up and you can override the default color and transparency here.



If you have made changes to the project in Civil 3D and wish to update the Navisworks side, click the refresh button in Navisworks' Quick Access toolbar.



As you go back and forth between civil 3D, any overrides you place on objects in Navisworks hold - even after a refresh. Do not re-Append the NWC or you will end up with duplicate data!

That's all for now. I plan to add more information about working with Civil 3D objects and Timeliner (the scheduling piece of Navisworks). See you soon!

It's About Damn Time: A Post About Microstation to Civil 3D

Hey all!  I've been on hiatus from blogging due to the fact that I've been cranking out words to be included in the soon-to-be-released Mastering Civil 3D 2012.  You should buy this book.  REALLY you should.

So I'm back...and here's like a post and stuff:

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In 1959, a revolution rocked the world and the only people who noticed were surveyors and mapping professionals. This was the year that the US and its buddies decided to change the formal definition of a foot from 1ft = 0.3048006096 meters to 1 ft = 0.3048000 meters.


The problem is, most land was already surveyed by 1959, so a change in the definition of a foot could change the recorded location of survey monuments up to several feet. This major moving of the proverbial cheese has been received with mixed acceptance. For the most part, surveyors still use the 1 ft = 0.3048006096 meter definition for their work.

Why does CAD care?

One of the fundamental differences between Microstation and AutoCAD is how the programs handle units and coordinate systems. Under the hood, Microstation only stores things in meters. To an end-user using feet, Microstation uses the International foot value to convert for display. It is on the data-end that programs like InRoads and Caice compensate for the slight discrepancies between US survey feet and International feet.

The DGN by itself is always stuck in International feet.

Attached to this post is the procedure for importing a DGN and getting it translated from International feet to US survey feet. The steps in the attached document outline how to manually force the program to translate the coordinates.

How to Import a DGN into Civil 3D CORRECTLY

Enjoy!