Archive for Civil3D

GIS Data at Your Fingertips

Everyone is wanting to model things these days and you are going to need a skeleton to hang all of your project information on, and so in walks your GIS data. It all looks great on the screen when someone else does it but where do you go to get your data to start your project from? During the Autodesk University Infrastructure Symposium today three great resources were mentioned: USGS, WeoGeo, and DigitalGlobe. Add them to your bookmarks and next time you need some GIS take a look at what they have to offer!

Are there other resources that you have used? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Civil 3D Plugins: Earthmine and Pictometry

Today at the Autodesk University Infrastructure Symposium I heard about some neat plug-ins for Map 3D and Civil 3D today that I think will be worth looking into. They both offer street view information to help enhance your models.

Have you used these plug-ins before? I will be downloading them when I get back to the office next week and will let you know what I think!

For some screenshots of the presentation and links to their websites, read more!

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Autodesk University 2012

Well it is that time of the year again. Autodesk University is about to be in full swing. Sunday and Monday are big travel days; as all of the Autodesk users from around the world descend upon Las Vegas.

Are you going to be there?

Any lectures you are looking forward to attending?

This will be my third year and every year I head home with my mind full of new ideas. I look forward to sharing the knowledge here!

Civil 3D 2013 books! (Winner!)

Have you had a chance to read the Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D or the AutoCAD Civil 3D Essentials books in past years? Well this year they are better than ever! It is always convinient to have both current versions on your shelf for easy reference. So Wiley, Eric Chappell (author of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 Essentials), Louisa Holland (co-author of Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013), and myself, are having a little promotion.  Here’s how it works:

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Label Styles, Arrowheads, and Xrefs

An interesting development occurred with a client recently. They are using an old practice of having a base drawing with all the labels and associated data in that base drawing. This base drawing is then xref’d into the plot sheets.

The interesting development was when they had label styles where the dragged state arrowhead was set to none. In the base drawing the labels all looked correct with no arrowhead. Yet, when the drawing was referenced in the labels now had arrows!

Now here is where things get really interesting. When I go and change the current dimension style’s leader arrowhead to none, then we get the labels looking correctly again! This is the AutoCAD dimension style!

This is a confirmed issue but easy enough to correct. Just set the base drawing’s label style arrowhead SIZE to something like 0.00001.

Sometimes providing technical support can be an interesting adventure Smile.