White Papers-Large Subdivisions & Styles

Autodesk has released two new White Papers, one for using Civil 3D for Large Subdivisions and another for Setting up Styles. If you are interested in either one, here is the link to the main page which also has the other White Papers that have been released; http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5173807 .

The White Paper entitled "Civil 3D 2007 for large subdivisions" is a pretty good paper because it outlines how a company can use Civil 3D in all aspect of the subdivision design (Points, Survey, Surfaces, Parcels, Alignments, Profiles, Corridors, Grading, and Pipe Networks). It also talks about how you can successfully use Vault in this type of environment.

The other paper entitled "Whitepaper Civil 3D 2007 Styles Updated Fundamentals" highlights the creation and clarifies what the different style dialog boxes are used for. It also talks about the differences between Object Styles, Label Styles, and Table Styles but it also talks about how to successfully use the Label Style Composer. Additionally this paper also mentions how Expressions can be used in your Label Styles. The one thing that I do like about this White Paper is that it also has a Workflow outline that goes through how most users can create styles with as little frustration as possible.

Rendering in Civil 3D-Material Library Fix

I recently discovered a minor quirk in Civil 3D while rendering a Roundabout that I created. It appears that one of the materials in the program is improperly pathed (out of the box), which in turn gave me a few errors while I was rendering the object. The material I am referring to is called "Sitework.Paving & Surfacing.Asphalt.1.jpg", the problem lies in the naming convention. The correct file is called “Sitework.Paving - Surfacing.Asphalt.1.jpg, notice the difference, the "&" symbol and the "-" in the name.

So to fix the problem the first thing you need to do is to open up the template and I don't mean open up a drawing based a template. In the Open dialog box you need to change the "Files of Type" to .dwt and select the correct template you would like to modify. I guess to be as through possible, you should probably do all 3 under Imperial (Base, Classic, and Extended). Once the template is open you first need to do is open up the Materials Library go to the Tools menu->Palettes->Materials or type in the command MATERIALS. Regardless of how you do it, once you are in there, find the Sitework.Paving & Surfacing.Asphalt.1. After you find it pick on it and you should notice that toward the bottom of the dialog under Diffuse Map, the first button allows you to map images with the appropriate material name (you may also notice it by the little yellow triangle with and exclamation in it). By click on the button, browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007\enu\Textures and select “Sitework.Paving - Surfacing.Asphalt.1.jpg”. Once that is complete, all you need to do is save the template and start using the Render command.

You may run into a few other .jpg’s that are not pathed, called Gri21F.bmp and Gri223.bmp, if you do please stay tuned because I have yet to trace them down. I am not going to say who, but they are stored on someone’s hard drive at Autodesk and he won’t admit to it. You know who you are. . . j/j!

Now if you have existing drawings that are based on the template that was just modified, you are going to have to repeat the process. These settings are only stored the template and are not shared to the individual drawings. Civil 3D is dynamic but not that dynamic, yet. . .