Sometimes the simple tricks are the best tricks! This post discusses grip editing in Civil 3D and vanilla AutoCAD. These are fundamentals for creating and editing content but some are not ‘in your face’ and go unnoticed by even the most seasoned of users. Check it out and let everyone know which you did, or did not, know (comments section).
Archive for Civil3D2008
Polylines, Alignments, and PI’s
You’ve created an alignment from a polyline, but upon inspection, there are no PI’s (line extensions) at any of the curves. Why? And, how can can I get ‘em? Read on…
Category: Alignments, Civil3D, Civil3D2007, Civil3D2008, Civil3D2009, Civil3D2010, Civil3D2011, Polylines /
Civil 3D Annotation Scaling Revisited
One of the most frequently-asked questions in the Civil 3D discussion groups has to do with how scaling works for Civil 3D labels and tables. The question usually comes up phrased as “How come my text looks good in modelspace, but is huge (or tiny) in paperspace?” or “How come my Table columns overlap in paperspace?”
At first glance, Civil 3D labels and tables seem to scale much like Annotative Text. However, Civil 3D Labels and Tables were capable of their auto-sizing behavior long before AutoCAD got Annotative Text, and do not use the Annotation Scale at all. Instead, Civil 3D Labels size according to their own rules. Read on for more…
Category: Civil3D2008, Civil3D2009, Civil3D2010, Civil3D2011, Fundamentals, General, LabelStyles, Styles /
Tags: annotation, LabelStyles, scale, styles
Displaying Lat/Long in Decimal Minutes
We recently had a client request that we display the Latitude and Longitude of Cogo Points formatted as degrees and decimal minutes. This format seems to have become a standard display format of many hand-held GPS units. Unfortunately, Civil 3D does not contain a built-in option for formatting Latitude and Longitude in decimal minutes. No problem, I thought… I’ll simply use some expressions. But it turned out to be a much more difficult task than I expected… Read on for the details.
Category: Civil3D2007, Civil3D2008, Civil3D2009, Civil3D2010, Civil3D2011, LabelStyles, Points, Styles /
Customizing Civil 3D
One of the greatest strengths of Autodesk products is the extensive Application Programming Interface (API), which gives users the ability to customize and extend the functionality of the software. In the past, some favorite techniques included using Visual Lisp or VBA to create any needed customizations. However, technology has been changing, and with Civil 3D, we need a somewhat different approach…
