Civil 3D - In The Trenches

Choosing Your Battles

2006-05-14T23:38:00.000-05:00

Thank you Carlos for your comments and observations. They bring up one of the most important points I wanted to make for new Civil 3D users. When you first start using this program you must choose your battles wisely. Certain parts of the program work extremely well and wil be at least similar to the corresponding functions within Land Desktop. Differences in terminology are the biggest problems. If you get a drawing from a Land Desktop project, many things can be imported directly or via XML transfer.
Points management, surface creation, alignments and profiles all work very well and I would concentrate on these functions at first. I also like the piping functions and think if everything else works well they are worth putting into the model as well. I find grading and especially parcels to be a problem and I am still not using these features myself. (until the "perfect project" comes along, of course)
It is very easy to get bogged down trying to fine tune something that Civil 3D creates that is close to the results you either want or may even need for the reviewing agency or your engineer's approval. Your first battle will be the standard style Autodesk provides to express your new objects. NOTHING that came "in the box" was remotely close to what our engineers were used to seeing or that our local reviewing agencies demand for submittals. You must have at least some object properties established, label formats and styles set that will be acceptable or the plug may be pulled very early on Civil 3D. The excuse that "this is the way the program makes it" does not fly very far. It is not necessary to have something for every condition in place before starting, but some very basic types that can be modified as needed are quite important.

My "Tip Of The Day" - Get very familiar with TOOLSPACE and the LABEL STYLE COMPOSER before you start.

Getting Started - Without A Net

2006-05-08T23:05:00.000-05:00

The time has come . . . Civil 3D has been sitting on your computer untried except some tentative practice during lunch break or before work, but now the perfect first project is in the office and the boss gives you the nod.
His vision for this project is a finished subdivision in record time, perhaps even faster than that one on the sales pitch. After all, it is surrounded by already platted and developed properties and he has even generated the general layout for you. This will be a great project on which to learn this new software. The budget was designed intending to use the old familiar but slower software, so there is plenty of overhead left for getting up to speed. That training program the reseller was pushing would have really been a waste.
Little do you know as you finally start messing with that goofy Toolspace box for real that you already have about 5 strikes against you. Despite the familiar windows and menus, this is most definitely NOT your old AutoCAD. That custom pgp file and library of special routines you have been building for years will not be saving your bacon this time around. This is not a world of lines and arcs or circles and text that you are about to enter and the era of creating these entities is for the most part over. A model created with Civil 3D could quite easily use NONE of the AutoCAD primitive elements, leaving them useful only in some sheet notes and details along with you sheet template. So what are those strikes and what can you do about them now? That is what this blog is about and the next few entries will deal with that and more. For now, this is your situation:
First, your boss has set completely unrealistic expectations and will be evaluating your progress from some faulty assumptions.
Second, even an isolated model with no existing conditions to match is difficult the first time through. As you begin abutting improvements and boundaries you encounter non perfect conditions that are difficult to put accurately put into the model.
Third, that sketch plan will most likely prevent you from using parcels. It is quite difficult to justify recreating what is already there for you. Even though it is linework with none of the intellegence of parcels, when the crunch comes, you WILL use it and lose much of Civil 3D functionality in the process.
Fourth, your old standby commands and routines worse than being not as useful as with the old design software can now actually be detrimental and even dangerous. Commands like "OOPS" and "UNDO" can send you on a direct but painfully slow trip to desktop when they attempt to restore Civil 3D objects.
Fifth, which really encompasses all of the above, is that you are going into battle completely untrained. There is NO substitution for a solid training session before deploying the software and idealy a second refresher some months later. Without it, that "extra" in the budget can easily dissapear with the first invoice period. Whether provided by CD courseware, an Autodesk Reseller or a reputable independent trainer, some formal training is essential to become productive when designing with Civil 3D. Unless you learn how to use these tools and perhaps even more importantly what just doesn't work yet, a project is almost certain to linger well past profitability and the client's good will and be reverted back to "old reliable" to just get it out of the office . . . It may well be a long time before Civil 3D gets a chance at its next "perfect project".

Welcome, it is a pleasure to meet you

2006-04-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

My intent for this blog is to share my experience as an ordinary designer trying to use Civil 3D for as much of my work as possible. I am not affiliated with AutoDesk or a reseller in any way - I am just a customer. I am not even a beta tester, at least no more than anyone else who has been using Civil 3D to this point. There will be no scoops of new features and since my own upgrade to 2007 is still very much in doubt, there will probably be no brand new "bugs" exposed for the first time here.
I simply want to share the things I have learned along the road from being an unimpressed Land Desktop 2005 designer to one using Civil 3D 2006 for at least 90% of my subdivision design and drafting. Despite the prevailing wisdom that Civil 3D is still not a mature package that can be relied upon to finish out a project, I know that it can be done. My hope is that by sharing techniques that work and perhaps more important, the pitfalls to avoid, more designers will give this powerful software a chance and resist the temptation to convert their project back to Land Desktop on those days when Civil 3D seems just too difficult to justify taking it any further.