Part of a new occasionally recurring series, my friends Dave Simeone and Dan Philbrick have agreed to answer five interview questions from the Civil3d.com audience. Submit your best question as a comment, and we’ll edit and pass them along for their written answers. This might take a while to get back, but we hope to see future versions with other members of the Autodesk (and other CE industry folks even) team that perhaps you’re less familiar with. Be nice and be professional if you want your question used! This doesn’t mean you have to throw softballs, but don’t expect flames to be passed along.
Follow the jump and post your questions!
I’ve been trying to decide what to do with the introduction of AutoCad Civil. Most of my users don’t use Map functionality but the part that concerns me is the notion that extensions will not be available for Civil. It’s pretty hard to determine our best license mix based upon the ability or inability to run extensions that haven’t been written yet.
So my question I guess is how do you see the development of extensions as opposed to core product development?
On a similar track to John:
Will there be enhancements to the Geospatial Analysis & Mapping functionality for the full Civil 3D package? – I understand that the boyz probably won’t be able to answer direct questions on functionality for new releases, but we’d love to see something like the ability to run queries on the Civil objects…
cheers,
SeanT
I would like to see an in depth look at how to give my clients, who don’t use Civil 3D (which is all of them!) a drawing that they can use. Or at least look at.
Will a tool be provided that can comprehensively compute pay-item based quantities based on the objects in the drawing? Count (each) items, length items, area items, etc. The objects in the drawing need to be taggable that not only include the pay-item number (the accumulator), but how the item is to be quantified (including the formula for calulating the quantity, the rounding method, the payer participation, etc.).
Hi
I would like to know when some more work will be done in the pipes area of Civil3d as the last couple of releases have not really touched this area.
In particular a couple of key requirements most practicing consultants would like to see are:-
1. Being able reference the pipe inverts in a profile band any where along the pipe without tracing a profile along the invert line.
2. Structures knowing the invert level of the pipe at the structure wall.
3. Profile band text cranking to avoid overlaps and/or each text being a selectable drag able text. Particularly for labelling short pipe runs in the bands or adjusting text not to overlap.
4. Structures in profiles transfering the knowledge they have of the incoming and outgoing pipes drawn in the profile to Band text.
5. Band text being able to reference pipe and structure expressions.
I would like to know why there are still big issues with grading stability after 5 years of product releases. I suspect there is a fundamental problem with the topology model. Could we get some explanations as to what is the reason for the continued problems?
I’d like to know why they stopped doing their D&D show! I miss that. Not that Lucy isn’t good, but she isn’t a Dan or Dave (take that for what its worth! 🙂
[…] Five Questions With Dan and Dave […]
I would like to know how to show utility crossings in profile if the utilities cross each other away from the alignment. When working with road profiles and a storm pipe runs behind the back of curb and there is a sanitary crossing it, the sanitary will only show as a crossing where it crosses the alignment which doesn’t help to show it at the storm crossing. We are currently manually drawing the ellipse of the crossing.
I would like to know why in certain areas of labeling we have access to certain information and not others.
First Example: In structure labels we typically have a label that reads :Sta. 288+50 CONSTRUCT Inlet (Type 22) Rt. INSTALL 15″x53′ Storm Sewer (RCP)(N)See Sheet No. 52. I can get to all of the info except the length of the connected pipe.
Second Example: I can add a band style that calculates stopping sight distance for crest curves (Except if both incoming and outgoing grades are negative) but I can not get to the stopping sight distance other than using the band or writing my own expressions.
To me if the program has the information, then why is it only available in limited areas?
And finally, why can we not edit labels and add any “Fields” to the labels?
Thank you for your time.
Daryl Standrich
When will the data available in Civil Object become available as data in fields?
Hi
Is it plannned to make corridors available in data shortcuts and/or vault. To allow someone to model the corridor and then share it with someone else (normally less experienced) to do the labelling and plan preparation and output.
Justin
Dave and Dan,
Why have all the “RETIRED” macros and the LDT utilities been taken away from Civil 3D that have been in Land Desktop for years? OK…, so they weren’t really taken away, they were just never included. (It’s like taking the cup holders out of a newly designed car. You can get around by not using them, but you have to make extra trips to the dry cleaners every week.)
Seriously, I have many clients that have asked me, where they are. They are needed back. They should at least be offered as an option for those that have used them for years. It’s not like they have to be re-developed.
Autodesk… Please bring them back as an option. You will make a lot of your customers very happy!
Jonathan Stewart
Why the lack of Civil faces everywhere now a days? Back when we first started down this road with C3D, Dan, Dave & Peter were always on the boards and such discussing problems and offering advice on work arounds. Seems like since C3D was moved under the AEC group, we’ve lost our 3 Musketeers. Just doesn’t seem the same anymore. I’d like to know what happened?
Shawn
I recently learned that FDO will not be part of the AutoCAD Civil release. As Surveyors are targeted as users of Civil, can you explain why geospatial features, particularly FDO data acces capabilities are left out? Base geospatial data integral to many Surveyors’ workflow are increasingly supplied via WMS severs and server based data stores. I can understand leaving out GIS analysis tools from Civil, but why base data access capability?
Steve