Civil 3D / AutoCAD Tips & Shortcuts - Pt. 3 Workflows

hi I'm Jeff bartels infrastructure technical specialist at Autodesk and today we're going to be completing our series called civil 3d and AutoCAD tips tricks and industry shortcuts throughout this presentation we've been exploring several time-saving shortcuts that are associated with civil 3d in AutoCAD those features have been presented in three major categories interface helpful tools and workflows throughout the presentation I've been using a rapid-fire approach so we can get through as many concepts as possible this recording is focused on workflow tips and shortcuts and it represents part three of the overall session I've just launched civil3d 2016 and I'd like to start by opening a drawing let's open this file called surface holes I'm going to screen is a surface currently I'm using a surface style that displays triangulation lines contours and points if we look closely we can see the surface has a couple of holes in it we'll say this is the result of some over-aggressive editing let's zoom in and we'll close up the holes now in many cases you can close the hole by simply recreating the missing triangle line let's try that I'll select the surface I'll open the Edit surface menu and I'll choose a headline and then I will snap a line from this endpoint to this one perfect let me press escape a couple times and we'll pan down and take a look at this hole sometimes when you have a larger hole it can be a little more challenging I'll select the surface and we'll go back and choose add line let's try and snap a line from here to here maybe from this end point to this one and this is pretty good I've closed up most everything but I have one open triangle here there's nothing I can snap to that's going to close this let me press escape a couple times to get out of the command let's zoom in the way I like to close these is to select the surface let me go to edit surface and I'll choose add point what I'm going to do is add a triangulation point along one of these edges I'll just shift right click and choose nearest and I'll snap to one of the edges and then I'll press ENTER to accept the elevation that did not change the surface at all that elevation was consistent with that triangle line let me press escape to get out of the command as you can see the holes been closed now I'm going to go back and delete this point that's why I'm using a surf style that's displaying the points let's select the surface I'll go to edit surface and I'll choose delete point I'll take that point away and my surface is closed let's look at another way that you can close a large hole I'm going to launch the undo command I'll just type undo and then I'll come down and choose back will undo everything let's zoom in another way we can close a large hole like this is by creating a show boundary first I'd like to trace this edge one quick way to do that is to select the surface I'll go to my properties palette and I'm going to change the style to one that displays the border this one displays the border only that'll be perfect I will then extract this line I'll do that by selecting the surface and then I'll choose extract from surface extract objects I'd like to extract the border I don't want to extract all of them I'll choose select from drawing and then I'll click the green box I'd like to extract this object and I'll press Enter I will then click OK I'll press escape to get out of the command we will then select the surface and I'll switch this back to the style where we started points contours triangles by extracting that boundary I have a nice traced edge here now I'll go to the modify tab and I'll say I want to modify a surface I want to add some data to it I want to add a boundary this boundary is going to be called show we'll make it a show boundary and then I'll click OK and I'll select this object and press ENTER to close the hole let's look at another workflow I'm going to close this drawing we won't save changes I'll open another we'll open this file called sample drawing this drawing represents like a company template something we'd start with now that we're in the file I'd like 2x reference a drawing my external references managers anchored to the interface so I'm just going to come over here I'll right-click and say attach DWG we'll attach this file called civil objects and I'll click open I'm going to accept all the defaults and I'll click OK I will then pan this up and we'll Center it on screen the drawing that I've referenced contains several civil 3d objects I've got a surface in here I have an alignment and have a pipe Network normally when we label objects we tend to label them in the drawing where the data exists we don't have to using civil3d I can label through an external reference for example let's go to the annotate tab and I'll come down and click this price tag this brings up the add labels dialog box from here I can select the item I'd like to label let me open the feature menu and I'll choose surface I'd like to label multiple contours I could change the styles if I wanted to but these are perfect let me click Add and then all I have to do is select the surface I'm interested in civil 3d finds it through the external reference I can then click and drag my line to create my labels let's do a quick regen these labels act the same through an external reference as they would if the surface was here in the local drawing let's try labeling the alignment I'll go to feature I want to label alignment let's label multiple segments we'll label the geometry in this case I'll click Add and I'll select the alignment and we can see the labels we have the same controls as if the alignment was in the native drawing so I can pull this down I can flip it to the other side finally we'll put a couple labels on the pipe Network I'd like to label the entire network in the plan view let me click add and I'll select this maybe we'll flip one of these so it doesn't encroach on the curved label the nice thing is even though these labels are in this file in the event the data changes these labels will update as well let me close this dialog box and we'll try that let me open the external reference I'm going to do that by selecting it I'll right-click and from the menu I'll choose open xref this takes me to the drawing from here I'll select this manhole and maybe we'll put it over here I'll press escape will come up and save those changes I will then jump back to the other drawing where I'm given a notification that my reference file has changed I'll click this hyperlink to reload and when I do we can see that not only does the geometry update but all the labels update as well I always like to put things back the way they were let me go back to my civil objects drawing and I'm going to back up to the point prior to where I did my grip editing I'll save the changes will close this drawing will reload the reference and we can see the change not only can we label data through an external reference we can also sample data through an external reference let's take a look I'm going to close this drawing we won't Save Changes and I'm going to create a new drawing from the company template I'll just choose this one called sample template now that I'm in this drawing I'm going to save it I'll use the save as command here in my quick access toolbar and I'll overwrite this drawing I made earlier called sections so essentially I have a blank drawing at this point let's open another file I'm going to open up this one called corridor momentarily this drawing contains an existing surface I have a corridor and this corridor includes a top surface many times when you pull cross-sections you might think that you have to pull them in the drawing that contains the corridor you don't you can actually pull your cross-sections through an external reference and civil3d will find all the data let me close this corridor drawing we won't save changes I'm going back to my sections file here let's X reference that corridor drawing in to this one I'll go back to my xref manager and I'll right-click and choose attach DWG we'll attach the corridor drawing I'll click OK I will then double-click the mouse wheel to do a zoom extents so I can see that geometry if you want to create cross-sections in a separate file the only object that needs to be in this drawing is the alignment currently my alignment is coming through an external reference I'm going to hide this version momentarily I'll do that by going to the Home tab and in the layers panel I'll click the layer freeze button and because of the way I have my template set up I can click this alignment to freeze it I'll press Enter and do a quick regen to hide the labels next I'm going to data reference that alignment from the project if I drag the prospector down to the bottom to my data shortcuts area earlier I created a data shortcut for that alignment I'm going to right click and I'll choose create reference to bring that alignment into the drawing so at this point everything is an external reference with the exception of this alignment it is a data reference now let's create some sample lines I'll come up and launch the sample line command it asks me to select an alignment that's why I have to have the alignment in the drawing and we can see in the dialog box it has found the existing surface the corridor and the top surface through that external reference I can sample that data essentially what i'm doing here is assigning the styles that i want to see in my cross-sections so for my existing surface that style is perfect for my corridor i'm going to choose the sections plot version and for my top surface i'm going to choose my proposed surface style I'll click OK I can now place my sample lines I'm just going to open this menu and I'll choose by range of stations we'll accept the defaults here looks like I've got 90-foot swath width to the left and right and I'm going to be dropping these every 100 feet let me click OK and I'll press Enter so there's my sample lines now I'd like to create cross-sections I'm going to create these a 10 scale so let me change my annotation scale to 10 and then I'll come up and choose create multiple section views I'll be creating my views for the Main Street alignments using my sample line group I do want to change the view style or the grid style for these sections I'll use the plottable version that I created let me click Next I'm going to pull these in a production configuration so I can put them on sheets and I will select a drawing on the network that contains layouts that are configured for cross sections let me select this template file and I'll click open it has a layout configured for cross sections at ten scale so I'll make sure that's selected not click okay group plot style how do I want these sections arranged on screen I want them in the plot configuration let me click Next offset range in elevation range I'm going to keep the defaults section display options this is giving me a second chance to select styles for the cross sections one thing I am going to do here is you know what I'm not going to draw the top surface because the corridor is going to include geometry that from the daylight all the way up and over down to the other daylight so I don't need to draw that top surface we'll turn that off I'll choose next let's put in a date aband at the bottom I'll choose my band set this is going to place the section offset labels along the bottom let me choose create section views and then I will place these right here if i zoom in we can see the cross sections they are configured for each sheet and I was able to pull these through an external reference so in the event my corridor or any of my data changes in that host drawing all of these cross sections will update let's create some sheets I'll do that by going to the output tab and I'll choose create section sheets I'm going to add these sheets to an existing sheet set let me click the ellipsis button and I'll choose the slug sheet set that I've created this contains the project data that I'd like to appear on all of my title blocks I'll click open and I'll choose create sheets that'll save the drawing as you can see those sheets have been added to the sheet set they're all locked because I'm in the drawing if we look down at the bottom we can see all of the new layouts that have been created I'm going to close the sheet set manager momentarily let's jump to sheet 1 if I back up we can see that it looks nice let's take a look at the lower right corner because I'm using the fields all of this has been populated from the sheet set and that is consistent on all of the other sheets let's go back to sheet 1 let's look at another workflow based on the way these sheets are configured all of this geometry in these fields exist locally on each layout what if somebody changes the title block for instance I'm going to make a few changes here let me launch the move command and maybe we'll move the label down below I'll press spacebar to relaunch move and I'll select these objects and will move them up will select one of these lines and I'll right-click and choose add selected will draw a new line on the same layer with the same settings to close that off maybe we'll move this text down and then we'll say that they inserted a company logo so this represents the new title block but now I need these changes on every other sheet in my plan set let's look at a way that we can automate that process now that I've updated the title block I am going to select this geometry I'll right-click and choose clipboard copy with base point and I'll copy it from this lower right corner I will then press escape now that that's on my clipboard let me jump to the next sheet from here I'm going to update this title block but I'm going to record the process that way I can replay that recording on any other sheet let's go to the manage tab from here I'll click the record button notice we can see the red light of the cursor civil3d is now recording everything that I do I will select this geometry and I'll press Delete I will then paste in the corrected version let's right-click we'll go to clipboard and I'll shoot a s--t I'll paste this to the lower right corner and then I'll do a quick regen when I'm finished I'll come up and click stop I am able to save this as a custom macro or an uber command I'm going to call this fix-it for right now and I'll press Enter now I can jump to any other sheet like this one and I can launch my new command fix it I'll press ENTER and you can see that sheets corrected let me close this we can jump to the next sheet press the spacebar to relaunch fix-it that sheets corrected let's do this one this one and this one not only can I use that action in this drawing but I can use it in any other drawing just imagine what you could do if you could record what you do and then replay it again in the current drawing or another file if you found this content helpful please rate it by clicking the thumbs up icon this will help other akn users identify valuable content on behalf of Autodesk this is Jeff Bartles saying thank you for watching

Channel: Jeff Bartels

Views: 29,795

Keywords: AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autocad (Software), Bartels, How to, Tutorial, Tips, Tricks, Shortcuts, akn_include

Id: ES2PNb9RI5o

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2015