Civil 3D Template Tips & Shortcuts - Pt. 1 Template Settings

hi I'm Jeff bartels infrastructure technical specialist at Autodesk and today we're going to be starting a new series called civil 3d template tips tricks and shortcuts in this session we'll be exploring several time-saving shortcuts associated with template and style creation the content that we look at is going to be organized in two major categories template settings and style creation throughout the session I'll be using a rapid-fire approach to the material so we can get there as many concepts as possible this recording represents template settings tips and shortcuts and it's part one of the overall session as you can see I've just launched civil3d 2016 let's assume I'd like to create a civil 3d template for my company or for a customer normally when I create a template I'd like to start from a completely empty blank file to do that I'll come up to the application menu and I'll come down and choose new and then rather than selecting a template I'm going to open this menu next to the Open button and I'll choose open with no template Imperial this gives me a completely blank slate to work from if I open the layer panel we can see that it only includes one layer I actually have just the bare minimum for this drawing to even exist if I go to the Settings tab on the tool space just for a second will open the point category let's open point Styles you can see I have one style here called standard label Styles one called standard basically I have one style for everything I can then edit that style or create additional styles to match my CAD standards let's close this back up the next thing I like to do is adjust my annotated scales if I open this menu you can see since we're starting from a generic drawing we have a lot of architectural scales in here I'd like to use engineering scales let me show you a quick way to load those I'll go back to the settings tab let's drag this to the top I'll right click on the drawing name and I'll choose edit drawing settings here on the units in zone tab I'm going to open this menu in the middle and I'll choose a u.s. survey foot that represents the unit of measure I'd like to use then I'll come over and open the scale list here are my engineering scales I'm going to start by selecting ones equals 10 feet and then I'll come down and click apply when I do you can see that was assigned to the drawing it's also been loaded to the annotative scale list from here I can open the menu and I can continue to load more of these there are other ways to create scales this is a really quick way let me grab a couple more I'll choose one inch equals 60 feet and then we'll choose one inch equals 100 feet I'll click okay let's open the list you can see those now exist I'm going to roll the mouse wheel down to get to the bottom of the list I'll choose custom from here I can delete the styles I no longer need I'll start by selecting one to one let's drag the slider to the bottom I'll hold my shift key and select the last scale and then I'll choose delete and then I'll click OK if I open the annotative scale list you can see I've got a nice start for my scales as a side note let me click custom one more time if you need to decree additional scales we can always do that right here next I'll ask myself if I have any existing content that I can leverage maybe I'm migrating to civil 3d from another CAD package like MicroStation or may be lamb desktop maybe I have a DWG file that contains content like layers or line types or blocks rather than reinventing the wheel and creating those items again I can bring them into this file I'm going to press ctrl 2 to bring up the design center over here on the left side of the screen it's just like Windows Explorer I can navigate my hard drive let me navigate into this folder called exercise files and then I'll click the plus to expand this drawing called customer file notice all the categories representing the content that I can steal I'm going to select layers here's all the layers that are in that drawing I'm going to drag them all into this file let me select the first one I'll drag this to the bottom and I'll hold my shift key and select the last one I will then click hold and drag and drop these into model space now I apologize for my screen size the little type here let me drop those right there note that if you wanted to you could also right-click on these and choose add layers let's bring it a little more content I'll go to text styles and let's bring in this Autodesk one let's bring in this one called Roman s maybe we'll go to dimension Styles I'll drag across these we'll bring these into the drawing at this point I can continue to shop for content until I bring in everything I need when I'm finished I'll close the design next I'll assign the default properties I'd like to use for my label Styles I'll do that here in the settings tab let me right click on the file name and I'll choose edit label style defaults these settings represent the starting point for every label style in civil3d to open a category I can click the plus or I can come down and use these buttons to expand or contract all of the categories we'll look at a couple of these right here text style this is where I can assign the default style for every label I'll click in the field and then I'll click the ellipsis button let's select the Romanesque style I dragged in and I'll click OK under plan readability right here we have readability bias 110 degrees that controls the readability of our text as it's rotated based on the current setting it'll actually go upside down a little bit before it flips over so I'm going to click in here and I'll assign a default rotation of 90 degrees and I'll press Enter coming down a little further we have text height maybe my typical text height is 0.125 I'll assign that here note that there is also a text height associated with the drag State I'll set that to 0.125 basically by assigning my properties here I don't have to assign it on every style these become the starting point for every style let's drag this back up note there are some child overrides here for right now I'm going to turn these off we'll talk about child overrides in just a little bit let's remove those and I'll click OK we'll then check let me right click on the drawing and I'll choose edit label style defaults let's expand these and I can see all those overrides have been removed I'll click OK the next thing I'd like to do is select some object layers I'll right-click on the file name and go back to edit drawing settings from here I'll choose the object layers tab and here we can see a list of every object civil3d can create and the default layer that that object will be placed on right now they're all the same let's adjust the alignments I'm going to click in the layer property from here I can select a layer from my drawing if I had more than one drawing open I could change the source and actually pull layers from another file let me drag down and we'll say that every alignment I create is going to be placed on this layer called Z - a line I'll click okay let's test it let's click OK and I'll come up and launch the alignment command alignment creation tools we can see right here that the alignment that I create will be placed on this layer now maybe I'd like even more control because the way this is set up now every alignment I create is placed on one layer maybe I'd like each alignment to be on their own unique layer let's look at how we can do that close this up let's right-click we'll go back to edit drawing settings what I'm going to do is add a modifier let's click on the modifier column and I'll choose suffix and then for the value I'll type - asterisk what I'm saying here is when I create this civil 3d object it's going to be placed on this layer and that layer is going to have a suffix of the objects name fortunately we don't have to remember to use the asterisk we can see it written right down here let's test this new setting I'll click OK I'll go up and we'll create an alignment we can see the difference let me name this alignment I'll call this Main Street and you can see how that's going to be placed on a unique layer note that when I create an alignment I can choose the object style what does the geometry look like I can also choose the label style what are the labels going to look like since I'm in a relatively empty drawing I don't have many options here so I tell you what let's close this file I won't save changes and let's create a new drawing let me choose new I'll create a new drawing from the default civil3d Imperial template now that I'm in the new drawing let's go up and we'll choose alignment creation tools and you can see there are some styles already selected if I open the object style list you can see there's a few object Styles in here same with the label Styles you may be wondering if it's possible to preload these options and we can do that let's close this on the settings tab I'm going to right click on the alignment category from here I'll choose edit feature settings I will then open default styles let's expand this dialog box a little right here we can see that object style is proposed let's make a change I'm going to set this to layout for right now and then the alignment label set let's change the as well let's change this to major and minor only note that we have some child overrides we'll take care of those in just a second for right now I'm going to clear these let me click okay so we have our object style and our label style let's go up and create another alignment alignment creation tools right here you can see we're using the layout object style and major and minor label set let's close this so by assigning the properties here at the feature level I'm saying that every alignment I create no matter how I create it is going to have that object style and that label style by default I can always change it but those are the default settings maybe I'd like even more control let me drag this tool space open a little wider let's expand alignments inside the alignment category is a commands group let me expand this in here we have every command associated with alignments here I can set default styles and settings on a command by command basis for example if I want to create an alignment from objects I will right click on this command create alignment entities edit command settings let's go to default styles and we can see layout and major/minor only that's what every alignment is getting by default but when I create one from objects I would like it to have an object style of existing and I would like it to have a label set of will say no labels that'll be easy to remember note that as I make these adjustments it's coming up as an override that's because I'm overriding the properties assigned to the feature class keep that in mind let me click OK now let's draw a polyline here on the screen we'll make an alignment out of this alignment create alignment for my objects I'll select this polyline I'll hit my spacebar a couple times and you can see when I create one by objects it's getting the existing style and no labels let me click OK yet if I just go to create an alignment using the layout tools that method is still using the feature defaults let me close this now that I've made adjustments to this individual command let me try to go let's right-click on the feature and we'll choose edit feature settings we'll go to default styles notice the two child overrides this tells us that the feature by default is getting this object and label style but somebody at a lower level has overwritten those values if I click unfortunately it won't tell us where that's overwritten but if I wanted to clear it I could click these boxes and then click OK now that I've made that adjustment we can go back down to create alignments entities and a command settings default styles and you can see how that's back to the feature settings what you want to do with civil3d is create styles that represent your CAD standards and then assign those as the defaults for your commands let me close this I'm going to create another polyline quickly and let's go to alignments and I'll say create alignment from objects I will then select my polyline I'll press the spacebar a couple times so we've seen how we can preload a layer and styles you may be wondering if it's possible to preload some of these other settings actually the workflow is the same let me close this I'm going to right click on the create alignment from entities command and I'll choose edit command settings see these options right here that look like little dialog boxes if I expand these we can see some of the properties associated with that command and curves between tangents you know what let's set that to false alignment type option by default that's going to be centerline maybe I would like that to be miscellaneous after making those changes let me click OK let's go to alignment great alignment from objects I'll select this one press Enter and you can see my add curves between tangents setting has been removed and we are creating this as a miscellaneous alignment let's close this let's take the concept a little further I'm going to close this drawing I won't save changes let's open another file let me click open and we'll open this drawing called corridor this drawing was created using the civil3d default Imperial template as you can see I have a corridor on-screen here let me select this and I'm going to bring up the section editor by default we can see the configuration of views now this isn't bad but maybe I'd like it to be a little bit different I'm going to come over here to the right and I'll choose edit the viewport configuration options maybe I'd like the section view to be on top I would like the profile here in the number 2 viewport and I would like the plan view in the number 3 viewport let me click okay that looks good another thing I'd like to do as i zoom in and out here on the section view I really don't care for the adaptive grid so let me open up this dialog box and from here I can choose the adaptive grid let's turn that off I could also adjust the colors of the grid we'll make them black maybe we'll set that for the major and minor grid color and then maybe the text color will make that yellow I'll click OK there we go as i zoom in and out we can see the grid the size the squares doesn't change so this is nice I adjusted these settings in this drawing but these settings are only saved in this drawing how can I set these properties in my template let's do this I'm going to close the section editor and I'm going to create a new drawing from scratch this will be from the civil3d template when the drawing comes up let's go to the modify tab and then I'll come down and click the corridor button then I'll open the section editor menu right here I can assign my viewport configuration we could do this the same as we did before let's open this up again here's where I go to view edit options and I can adjust the properties of the section editor these settings will then be retained and displayed in every future drawing let's close this I'll return to my corridor file let's talk for a second about object naming I'm going to go to the Home tab and let's create an alignment here I'm just going to create a polyline quickly we'll put an arc in here and I'd like to turn this into an alignment let me open the alignment menu and I'll choose great alignment objects we'll choose this one by default this is called alignment - and then the next counter how can we control that let me close this on the Settings tab I'm going to come down to alignment I'm going to do this at the command level I'll say create alignment from entities let's right-click edit command settings from here I'll choose default name format right here alignment name template let me click in this dialog box and I'll click the ellipsis button maybe would like to just use alg - and then I can drop in the next counter or if I want to I could delete we can open up property fields okay I guess next counter is the only one that we have basically the workflow for these alignments is going to be the same workflow that you would use for any object you'll find that on occasion we have different property fields let me accept that one I'll click OK let's make the alignment again alignment realignment from objects this one alg and then the next number if I you know wanted to go with that since we put that in there we'll keep it let's go ahead and click OK now let's create a surface profile I'll select my alignment and then I'll come up and choose surface profile so alg one I'm going to be sampling the existing ground surface when I click Add you can see the name that it's going to give that profile and unfortunately I can't change that name here let's save a step in this case as well let me close this here on the settings tab I will go to profile let's go to commands I'll find create profile from surface let me right click at a command settings default name format profile name template let me click in this field I'll click the ellipsis button I would like to use all this is selected right now let me just click insert I'd like to start it with the alignment name - and then I'd like it followed with the sample surface name using these name templates we can ensure that all of our civil 3d objects utilize consistent naming I'm going to click OK then I'll click OK let's create the surface profile again I'll select this and I'll go to surface profile let me click add we can see right there it's going to be called alg - 1 - eg I'll choose drawn profile view create profile view and I'll place this let me pan this over here I have my assembly that I used for my corridor if I hover over these sub-assembly parts you can see they've got the original names ok urban curb gutter general very long in most cases you know when we're working on our corridor especially if we're doing targets let me select this and I go to court properties if we're assigning targets sometimes having those big names isn't the most descriptive thing in the world so then we end up coming back and we select the assembly we go to assembly properties and then under construction here we can give these unique names let's look at how we can save some time I'm going to close this dialog box let me hit escape a couple times I'm going to create a new assembly we'll just call this sample and I'll place that here now before I add some new parts wouldn't it be nice if each time I dropped a part in here it asked me what I wanted to name it to do that I'm going to go to the settings tab and then I'll come over to sub assembly commands I'll right-click on this one create sub assembly tool edit command settings let's open sub assembly options sub assembly name prompt that's turned off let me turn that on I'll click OK now let's add some new parts I'll click the assembly and I'll go up and choose tool pallet to open that up let's go to the lanes tab and I'll choose Lane superelevation AOR let's check now let me go to the properties palette looks like I'm dropping this on the right side so let me click the assembly will call this Lane right let's drop another one we'll call this one Lane left by turning the automatic naming on in your template once again you can ensure that these objects are named at the point of entry let's look at another helpful tool I'm going to close this palette let's open another drawing I'm going to open this one called sample data in this file I have multiple surfaces I have multiple alignments let me hover over this surface it's called eg1 and it's got the style contours too and 10 background this one's called eg - same style this one's called eg 3 same style on the settings tab I'm going to open the surface category I'll go to surface styles and we'll expand this right here we can see the styles that are in use we can tell that by the small triangle let's look at how we can find where these are used I'm going to right click on contours 2 and 10 background and I'll choose find references when I do civil3d will show me every place the surfaces utilized it's applied to 310 surfaces and it's associated with a drawing setting which one we can find it by right-clicking and I'll choose browse to it'll take me right to that area in the settings tab from here let's right-click I'll go to edit feature settings default styles and it's right there let's change this I'll click the ellipsis button we'll change this to one in five design I'll click OK and I'll click OK let's close this I'll go back to the surface styles we'll right-click and we'll choose find references you can see it's only on those three surfaces now maybe I'd like to change the style associated with those surfaces I'll right-click on the style and I'll choose replace with this will replace the style no matter where it's at if it's on an object or if it's applied to a setting let's swap this out with elevation banding to D I'll click OK we can close this you can see how that Styles been applied to those surfaces and you can see the contours two foot & 10-foot is no longer in use this can be a nice tool when you're trying to delete styles that are hard to remove it can also be nice if you receive files from others you can use this to apply your styles to their objects let's look at one more helpful tool I'm going to open this drawing called facet dev in this file I have a corridor if i zoom in we can see the corridor as a top surface there's also a pipe Network in here let's Pan the silver and we'll look at the profile in the profile we can see the pipe Network if i zoom in on the end view of some of these pipes they kind of look like polygons it is possible to smooth their appearance there's a system variable called facet dev let me press Enter by default that's assigned a value of 0.5 the lower you make the number the smoother the arcs are going to appear that being said there is a trade-off with drawing performance for this example I'm going to set it to point zero five and I'll press Enter and we can see the difference it's important to note that the facet dev system variable is associated with civil3d not AutoCAD and it is saved in the local drawing if you found this content helpful please rate it by clicking the thumbs up icon this will help other acan users identify valuable content on behalf of Autodesk this is Jeff Bartles saying thank you for watching

Channel: Jeff Bartels

Views: 59,379

Keywords: AutoCAD Civil 3D, Tips, Tutorial, Bartels, How to, Template, Styles, Settings, akn_include

Id: we5BRDUPpZE

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2015