Cadapult's Civil Blog

Teaching a class the other day, yesterday in fact, my students and I stumbled upon a topic that doesn’t seem to have much coverage. Today I’m hoping to shed some additional light on this topic to help out all Surveyors who are new to Civil 3D and would like to be able to add an adjustment into their project database.

 

Previously, this thought was much like the dream for Rome in Gladiator. If you made a sound any more than a whisper it would vanish, thus making life miserable as can be seen by the article written here about Civil 3D and the drawing transformation settings.

 

The magic button that needs to be pressed is the Scale Factor, listed under Survey Database settings. However, this isn’t where the story ends. The questions remained “What scale factor is it using, and where do you set it?”

As thought in previous releases, perhaps it’s the transformation scale that is set in the drawing settings on the Settings tab of Toolspace. Alas, setting that does more harm than good, again see previously referenced article. What was needed was a consistent, reliable and safe method of applying a scale factor.

During a recently held Cadapult Survey event, I had the change to ask Josh Kehs from Autodesk a few questions about RAW data conversion and commented lines in a FBK file. As I have previously been asked many times how to perform coordinate adjustment when it’s set in the RAW file.

 

As  may or may not be known the conversion process from a RAW survey file, whether it be .RAW, .RW5, .JOB, SDR etc. into FBK, removes all of the critical information relating to data transformations (Elevation adjustment and Scale Factors). When asked about why this is done the way it is, the answer was simple, direct and most importantly it made sense. This information is commented/stripped out of the FBK file to prevent any accidental double/triple corrections from happening to the data.

While that’s great for preventing accidental duplication of adjustments, it doesn’t help when an adjustment is actually required. So to proceed with adding a scale factor to a survey database there are a few things that need to be setup.

 

How are your feet?

 

As in most things Civil 3D related the devil is in the details. While this next bit should be a no-brainer, it still catches people out when using the survey module.

 

Foot/USF/International Foot … it all seems so straightforward on digital paper, however in the real world it gets fuzzy. Case and point: During the survey class yesterday I had the customers RAW file which we converted into a FBK, and then added it as an import event through the Survey module. However, things didn’t come out quite right. Having been shot in assumed coordinates, the know XY of point 501 should have been 10000,10000. When the points were imported into the drawing point 501 was NOT at the above mentioned coordinates, instead it was at 9999.98,9999.98. The obvious answer here is the conversion from the different units of Foot measure (International and US). Upon further inspection into the data we noticed that in the RAW data the UNITS were indeed “FOOT”. The comment was made “All looks good here!” However, that isn’t exactly the case. In this instance while yes the RAW file didn’t say International Foot, it also didn’t say the correct term for Us Foot which is “USF”. This seemingly innocent oversight would have caused numerous issues down the road. After clarifying this verbiage to them, it was then obvious what went wrong. (Whether this is instrument specific has yet to be determined.)

 

With the RAW file updated to USF for the UNITS, we reprocessed the FBK file and reimported it into the existing database. Much to our delight the points came in on the correct coordinates as they should have in the first place.

 

In the trenches – Getting things right in the field …book

 

The next step in getting the scale factor to apply properly to the survey database is to actually add it into the FBK file.

 

Now before I get any comments on how the actual FBK should never be modified, we aren’t really changing it per say, just adding some information back in using the correct format.

Note in the FBK file header that there is a SF call. This is where the scale factor that the survey database check box is looking for resides, and is the only place I’ve found to apply this factor correctly. To further illustrate the “point”: Below is a line drawn between points 500 and 501 and dimensioned before and after applying the scale factor. Ok so technically it’s 2 different lines, but they connect the same points. The upper dimension before the Scale Factor Adjustment and the bottom dimension is after the Scale Factor Adjustment which in this case was .9999057.

 

Hopefully this write-up clarifies how to properly use and apply a scale correction factor to a survey database using Civil 3D. (In this instance 2013, however this option both exists and works in 2012.)

The Planning and Construction Department at the University of Delaware gave a presentation “Building the Future 2011” to Delaware-based design, construction and contracting firms on September 12, 2011.  CADapult recently launched a new division called CADapult Consulting which focuses on providing Building Information Modeling (BIM) expertise and services.   CADapult has the staff and expertise to assist you in any services you may need to perform the work at UD or other BIM or CAD projects.  Our goal is to partner with our clients to help them address their emerging needs of leveraging BIM through the following services:

• Personal and Corporate Training on all Autodesk’s BIM applications such as the Civil3D,  Map3D, Navisworks and 3ds Max Design. 
• Implementation Consultation Services Including Template Creation, Building Information Model (BIM) Creation Services using Civil 3D, Map 3D and 3ds Max Design
• Project and Model Healthchecks
• CAD Drafting for infrastructure projects
• IT and Networking Consultation and Support
• Virtualization Services and Consultation for Remote Interoperability
• Facilities Management Turnkey Solutions with CadapultFM Suite of Applications
• Skills and Needs Assessment of your Current Practices, Working Environments, and Project Team Member Relationships
• Standard Software Deployment, Optimization and Support Services

CADapult Consulting offers BIM-related services to architects, engineers, and construction firms as a turnkey package or as individual services.  Each of our technical staff has over 10 years of practical industry experience in applying the latest Autodesk technologies in a production environment, and have attained Associate and Professional level certification(s) in their software of expertise.  Our technical staff members routinely train our customers in the latest Autodesk applications, and present classes at important industry events such as Autodesk University (AU).  Our sales staff have passed advanced Autodesk-provided certification exams as well.  This level of expertise means that you can rely on our personnel’s extensive product and professional knowledge to help your organization meet and exceed your client’s expectations on your next project.

So a few weeks ago I stated that I would open to the public the amount of style knowledge I’ve amassed over the years. I was not kidding, but have been extremely busy getting ready for classes that I’ll be teaching this month. However, that being said today I thought I would showcase a little golden nugget from back in Civil 3D 2007. The ability to create this label is dependent on a virgin install of 2007 Civil 3D, i.e. no service packs or service updates installed for it.

 

Back in the days of needing to be uber-productive I was at a loss on how to automate my grading plan spot shots. I reached out and not many people had any advice for me, as I needed a label to be able to pull the CL elevation into an expression and then calculate different values based on given parameters (Offset from CL, Flowline elev, TOC/BOC etc). The only person that gave me a glimmer of hope was Dana Probert. All she did was send me a file that had a linked label, and I had to reverse engineer it from there. You see this was accomplished via an exploit in a borken bit of code. However, once the style is created it travels forward very nicely. In fact I create these styles every so often for clients as they request them.

 

But enough reading let’s get on with it:

First, fire up an install of 2007 Civil 3D. You still have on of those, right? If not … sorry. Mine happens to be installed on Windows XP 32-bit as it isn’t compatible with 64-bit OS.

Navigate in the settings tab to: Profile –> Label Styles –> Station –> Major Station –> Expressions, right-click and select New.

 

Give the Expression a descriptive name, as you’ll be selecting it later on. From the Variables pull down menu choose Profile Elevation. This will take the instantaneous profile elevation and expose it to the mathematical expression we are about to write.

The expression is very simple: [{Profile Elevation} – (11.25*.0208)] which means: The profile elevation minus the distance to EOP (11.25) multiplied by the road cross slope (.0208)

 

So if there was a profile elevation of 55.25 the value of this expression would give 55.016.

Now let’s add this expression to a Station Offset alignment label:

First begin by creating a NEW Station Offset label style, then when in the label composer delete the existing label components.

 

Next, add a new piece of Reference Text.

Making sure when prompted to select Profile as the Reference Text type.

Once in the properties of the newly created component, change the component Name and then click the ellipsis to change the label contents. Note the expression created previously is in the list … don’t try this with anything newer as the glitch was fixed.

 

Now all that is left is to send the expression over to the right and delete the “Label Text” verbiage. Once that is complete this particular style is complete.

Label Style is almost complete. Hit OK to accept these changes and notice you are greeted with “???” as the label preview. This is normal as the preview window doesn’t know how to properly compose a preview for a reference text created label that contains an expression of this type.

You are now able to use this label style in your drawings.

Lather

Rinse

Repeat

NOTE: You can not create new expression for use in these label styles in any Civil 3D version other than 2007. The existing expressions can be modified but their descriptions can not be changed. Just a little FYI!

 

Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane…

So a few weeks ago a professional friend blanketed every Autodesk reseller technical person with the label “Knowledge hoarder”. Well, over the next few posts I’d like to dispense some of the knowledge that my clients have come to expect from me, whether I give it for free over the phone or via a paid training session. The articles will deal with hurdles that MOST companies have when moving to Civil 3D from say, Land Desktop or some other ancient program that is long overdue a retirement to sunny FL.

 

With this being said I’ll be starting to write some articles that in my opinion are fairly basic, but are topics that I get asked the most. My previous post on AutoCAD variables was the beginning of this idea to pass along the knowledge even before I was so rudely lumped into a group of people that I don’t belong in. There is one particular article that I have already written, but not posted is actually from a VERY OLD version of Civil 3D as it exposed a setting due to a broken feature. I just wanted to state that I’m not just going to cover how to do things in the new software, because there were plenty of hacks I figured out doing real production work that most people would find useful. Of course they won’t all be earth shattering, mind blowing epiphanies but some may just turn on a bulb in your head and THAT is the goal of this blog.

 

Stay tuned to the same bat-channel for more!

As everyone should well know by now Autodesk has begun releasing the 2012 products to the masses. While new software is great and Support people like me love to play with it, where does that leave end users? The NORMAL support cycle for ALL Autodesk products is as follows: the current years software plus an additional 3 years prior. To the layman that means that as of last week 2008 products are no longer officially supported by Autodesk and in turn by the Technical Staff at Cadapult LTD. However, if your company is current on subscription, or under a support contract with Cadapult, fear not as we will still support your software issues.

 

I feel it necessary to bring this out as I’ve been getting quite an abnormal amount of calls for retired software support. Another thing to think about is if you are running unsupported software (i.e. anything prior to 2008) and want to buy a new PC, you WILL have issues getting the product to run properly on Windows 7. Don’t ask me how I know this, let’s just say that 6 hours later I know the ins and outs of where 2007 LDT will crash in Windows 7.

 

If your company is not current on subscription with Autodesk and would like to be, contact Rachel Pennington to discuss your options. As our industry moves forward and becomes an integral part of the BIM process it would be very easy to get left in the dust due to out dated software.

Be sure to signup for the Autodesk Virtual event showcasing the new 2012 software! Click the banner to go to the registration page.

Sometimes being a technical person that supports users on a high level, I often lose sight of the simple settings that can go astray leaving users stranded. Not every issue has to take an hour or more of my time to investigate as I was so reminded last week by a few support calls.

 

With AutoCAD becoming more and more advanced, with that move forward more system variables are introduced, with some of these breaking VERY important aspects of the software. Other variables can just make using the software for certain tasks less “fun”.

 

I’ve gone over notes from classes I’ve taught and the most common variables to invoke discussions are listed below, in no particular order:

 

FILEDIA – if you hit open and you are asked to type the file path this variable has been changed. It should always be “1”.

CMDDIA – this variable controls how some of the text editor boxes work. If your FILEDIA variable went to “0” it’s a good bet that this one has as well.

OSNAPZ – when moving an object around it’s possible to have your new location grab the instant “Z” value of the selected location. This can sometimes be undesirable. However, understanding what this variable controls is important because it can at times be useful. (Ex – When doing a survey elevation transformation, you select the existing elevation and have your OSNAPZ variable set correctly and when the new point is selected all points will have adjusted accordingly)

XDWGFADECTL – this is a newer variable for fading of XREF’s. OOTB (Out of the box) installs have it set to 50%. Some users like this setting, other do not.

XREFTYPE – lately I’ve seen a lot of users attaching Xref’s to their drawing instead of overlaying. Overlaying is the preferred method and also the default method, this variable shouldn’t be changed but that never stops people.

GEOMARKERVISIBILITY – Ever wanted to remove that annoying geo-marker from your Civil 3D/Map 3D drawings? Well this variable gets rid of it.

LAYERDLGMODE – Are you not a fan of the new modeless dialog layer box? DO you prefer the old modal button with OK – APPLY – CANCEL buttons? Well if you are for some reason then this variable will change it back.

LAYLOCKFADECTL – OOTB layers that are locked in a drawing are faded, usually to 50%, just like Xref’s. I personally am not a fan of this and change it in my drawing template. This is tha variable to make the change.

MBUTTONPAN – strangely this one has been cropping up more and more. I’m not sure if the old dog AutoCAD users are de-evolving into their previous self’s or what. If for some reason your wheel button and wheel no longer invoke Zoom/Pan respectively, then this variable has gone awry.

PICKADD – do you have a single object selected and are trying to add objects to your selection set with no luck? If so then this variable has changed to “0”

PICKFIRST – most users will select an object first and then apply a command to it. With this set incorrectly that isn’t possible. This should always be set to “1”.

PLINEGEN – this controls the generation of a linetype along polyline vertices. If you aren’t getting proper definition of you linetype, check this variable.

PSLTSCALE – if you are having trouble getting linetypes to display properly in viewports regardless of what your MS ltscale is set to then this variable has been changed to “0”.

REINIT – if you have made changes to command aliases through ALIASEDIT then you need to reinitiate the .PGP file. Set it to 16 to reinit the PGP file you have modified.

VISRETAIN – do you constantly find yourself resetting layer colors/linetypes for Xref’ed layers? If so then this variable is set incorrectly. For current drawing layer control it should be set to “1”. Otherwise your drawing will always revert to the layer state of the Xref drawing.

 

While this list isn’t all inclusive it is a good start to check things against if you are having issues with your AutoCAD not working the way it’s supposed to.

Have you ever had to move a Civil 3D project to a new server location, or maybe you have received a project from a client that was done by another firm, and the data shortcuts need to be updated. This at first seems like a daunting impossible task, but hang on a second, it’s actually fairly straightforward. Note I didn’t say easy or quick because it’s not really either of those. Let’s begin …

After the project in question has been moved/copied the following tasks need to be completed for EACH data shortcut.

First, download XML Notepad from Microsoft if you don’t already have it.

Select the shortcut you want to edit, browse to the location of that project and expand your shortcut folder, in this case it’s an Alignment shortcut. In the Alignment shortcut folder find the shortcut in question and right-click, selecting Open With, Select Default Program. XML Notepad will probably not be listed as an option, select browse, and click to the following path: c:\Program Files\XML Notepad 2007 (note: if you have a 64-bit machine the path changes to: c:\Program Files (x86)\XML Notepad 2007) and select XML Notepad from the dialog box. Now the data shortcut XML file can be double clicked and opened in XML Notepad.

 

 

 

Do not fret, XML is pretty easy to understand and edit as seen in the screen capture. There are 2 lines that need to be changed: Name under Shortcut and Name under File.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The XML File now represents the new location of the project: In this case the project was moved from the local C: drive to a network location on the U: drive. Once all changes are made hit the save button and close XML Notepad as it is no longer needed for this particular shortcut.

 

Going back into Civil 3D the shortcut will still show as pointing to the C: drive until all the shortcuts are validated. Right-click on the Data shortcuts header and select: Validate Data Shortcuts.

 

 

 

 

This will mark all shortcuts as Broken, which is no big deal as the drawings need to be officially located by browsing for them. Right-click on the broken shortcut and select: Repair Broken Shortcut

 

 

 

 

 

Selecting Repair Broken Shortcut will open the File Browse dialog box. Note the drawing name to be located in the lower left of Prospector, now find this file (in the new location) and select Open.

 

 

 

Once the file has been located, Civil 3D will search the drawing to make sure the item referenced is actually located in that drawing file. Assuming the right file was selected, when the Open button is selected the Shortcut should now be valid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that the Birch Lane EP alignment’s shortcut location has been correctly changed. However, expanding the Alignment shortcut to expose the Profiles for this alignment reveals that they still need to be fixed.

The easy way to accomplish fixing the entire project is change all the XML files at once. Then go into Civil 3D Validate the shortcuts and repair the broken links.

While this isn’t the easiest task or process it will come in handy if a project ever needs to be moved or copied to a different location.

This is a call to all engineers and GIS professionals. If you want to know how to do a particular task utilizing Map 3D and geospatial data please let me know by posting a comment. Thanks and happy cading