I Can See Right Through You

If you follow any blogs – including this one – you will know that the Official Release of Autodesk’s 2011 Product line occurred today. I thought I would share one tool I am happy to see.

Now there is MUCH that will be talked about regarding the improvements to Civil 3D. However, don’t forget that AutoCAD Civil 3D is built on top of, well, AutoCAD. One of the improvements to AutoCAD is the ability to add transparency to any object in AutoCAD. How would that be useful in the Civil industry???

image Have you ever created conceptual designs? Let’s say you have an aerial image and need to show a conceptual alignment or quickly show the site on the aerial. Before when you did this you would use polylines that were really thick to represent your rough alignments and/or lots of solid hatching. Of course, this quickly covered up the existing aerial.

Now, in 2011, you can add a transparency setting to ANY object which would allow the existing image to show through your proposed improvements allowing the client to clearly see what is proposed where.

What other examples can you think of where this would be helpful??

3 comments

  1. Christian Barrett says:

    I like that! thanks

  2. Kent says:

    Transparency is something I know I’m going to use a lot; particularly in 3D.

    One way of avoiding using rendered materials to get that ‘see through’ look – to drop objects into the background.

    Groundwater surface overlaid over a geology; background buildings around a construction model. Plenty of uses. Can’t wait to give it a try!

  3. Tony Carcamo says:

    Very cool. I know some coworkers that will love this feature.