Data Extraction

Ever had a site topo’s field work completed in record time by your trusty local surveyor?
Sure you have! Those guys have some mind blowing equipment; they can really rock and roll out there. But then what, it takes two weeks office time to make a drawing file? Really? All I have ever needed as a designer is a .txt file straight from the gun they took the shot from.
Often when we actually do receive a drawing, at first glance it looks great, good patterns, good intervals, all utilities, and property corners have been located. But wait, what’s that, those aren’t C3D points, or Softdesk point blocks? Essentially these are often simple blocks with attributes. Rather than cuss, or wait another two weeks for the .txt file that you wanted in the first place, fix them and keep on trucking.
Data Extraction was my little secret, I kept hidden from my co-workers so that I still had some useful value to the company, and a need to keep me on payroll. After reading an excerpt Chapter 4 in Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008, I felt like it may be time to let everyone know that they too can create something from nothing.
EATTEXT
1. Tools - Data Extraction or EATTEXT at the Command line.
2. Create New.
3. Select Display blocks only and Select Display blocks with attributes only.
4. Locate the Point Number, Elevation, and Description, and X & Y.
5. Rearrange the Columns into a PNEZD format and remove any extra columns.
6. Select Output Data to External File. (Choose .xls Excel.)
7. Open the created Excel file, delete the header information, and Save as to create a .txt file.
8. In C3D… Create Points - Import Points - Import the .txt file.

Happy Friday for Me!

Sp2 is out!!
I recommend you read the read me file. But do not hesitate to run the file. Autodesk has made some very impressive upgrades and hotfix's. It's almost the way I've always wanted C3D to be.
Be sure to check out upgrades to your "Communication Center."

Also my copy of "Mastering Civil C3D '08" has arrived!
It was authored by some of the greatest, so I look forward to coming in on Monday with a new desire for mastering my design practices, and the confidence to attempt processes I have not yet been confident to attempt in the past.

Mnid oevr Mttaer...

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtsy, it deosn’t mttaer in what odrer the ltteers in a word are, the only imprmoetht thing is that the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can still raed it wouthit porbelm. This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe.

My eeys do tned to wnoedr on thier on. I thnik tihs is a good exmalpe of why we shulod trun oevr our deisgns to ohters to reivew, smoetmies we get lsot, and can't see mionr falws.

Check it out!! Civil 3D Wish List Ballot

Everyone should take time out of your busy schedules for this. It is a great way to be included in the C3D formatting and software design. There are some really good requests from users on there. Routines, commands, and things I have never even thought about before. Although I didn't find any of my requests. :)
I am really surprised the response that Autodesk has received with there Customer Involvement Program..., and Product Wishes located under the help menu. If you are not involved, please do so. If you are, Thank You.

By the way, TIN volume is not measured in ounces (oz)!

A TIN volume surface is a composite of points in a base surface and comparison surface.
A TIN volume surface provides an exact difference between the base and comparison surfaces. Therefore, the Z value of any point in the volume surface is precisely the difference between the Z of the comparison surface at that point and the base surface at that point. This is true whether the comparison and base surfaces are both grid or both TIN, or one of each.
A volume surface is a persistent surface object. Therefore, you can display cut and fill contours, cut and fill points, and add labels to it. A volume (cut, fill, net) of a volume surface is a property that can be viewed by selecting Surface Properties.
If you want only to query and obtain information about a surface volume or bounded volume, you can use the Volumes and Bounded Volumes utilities. For more information, see Calculating Surface Volumes.

To create a TIN volume surface:
Click Surfaces menu --> Create Surface.
In the Create Surface, in the Type list, select TIN Volume Surface.
Note: If you do not select a layer, the surface is placed on the current layer.
In the properties grid, name your surface.
Note: To name the surface, click its default name and enter a new name, or use the name template.
Chose a Style for your surface.
To change the render material for the surface, click the Render Material property in the properties grid and click in the Value column.
Click the Base Surface property to select the base (bottom) surface. Enter the surface name or click to open the Select Base Surface dialog box where you can select the surface in the list.
Note: Select a surface in the drawing by clicking and following the instructions at the command line.
Click the Comparison Surface property to select the comparison (top) surface. Enter the surface name or click to open the Select Comparison Surface dialog box where you can select the surface in the list.
Note: Select a surface in the drawing by clicking and following the instructions at the command line.
Click OK to create the surface.
The surface name is displayed under the Surfaces collection in the Prospector tree.

Click --> Surface properties --> Statistics.

= CUT, FILL, NET!!!

Stop Monkeying Around!

CAD Monkey \CAD Mon"key\, n.; pl. CAD Monkeys.

1.(Zo["o]l.)

(a) In the most general sense, any one of the Computer Aided Designer/Drafter Quadrumana, including CAD apes, CAD baboons, and the lesser known CAD lemurs.

(b) Any species of CAD Quadrumana, except the lemurs.

(c) Any one of numerous species of CAD Quadrumana (esp. such as having a lack of knowledge and lack of ambition, ask few questions and work well with red-lines, exclusive of CAD apes and CAD baboons.
Note: The CAD monkeys are often very easily satisfied with red-line drawings that consist of little or no thought, since they lack the knowledge or experience to identify being shot out into space blindfolded. When using CAD Monkeys make sure you discourage any ideas or thoughts they may have and if they start to question methods or tasks you can change their title to CAD Technician (they will still be your CAD Monkey they just won’t realize it), which will make them forget about any problems they were having with the current company standards or lack there of. However be very careful not to allow the Monkey to read, search the Internet or talk to other CAD Personnel from outside the office, or they may have ideas that would improve the function of your CAD Department (if you have one). This may lead to us having to learn something new, it is better to hold them back with us (not that we need to know CAD functions), before they ask for more bananas or worse have them teach us something we have not had the chance or desire to learn. Also if at all possible get the Monkeys straight out of school this will decrease their gained working knowledge and will help you keep them in line with our other monkeys that lack knowledge, experience or desire for CAD improvements.

_Thank you Christian Barrett (friend and co-worker) for your often humorous, banter.

Like it or not, we are perceived this way, and it is up to us to change the way we are viewed as designers. I agree that there are in fact many CAD Monkeys among us, but if you are reading you most likely are not. Making an effort to educate yourself or helping others is a great example of taking that extra step to breaking out of the monkey cage. You will be surprised how great it feels for others to have a need for your skills. The more you know and control your CAD designs the more power you will maintain. Trust me, if you like it, stick with it, because no one else wants to do it!

More than a "LIST"

Most of us use the LIST or PROPERTIES commands to inquire about an object’s Type, Name, or Layer. Try using INSPECT.
“INSPECT”
You have to have MAP installed and running.
You have to have Display AutoSnap tooltip checked.
After entering the command you will be prompted to hover over entity.






Also try DATAEXTRACTION to sort and extract data, such as polylines, blocks, etc., into a table. This is a great feature to summarize waterlines.
I have not played around with this nearly as much as I would like to. As with anything else there is an abundance of data this can be useful with! So I will probably have more to add later on.
_Thanks to Lynn Allen for this "Hip Tip".

"What would you do with this cul-de-sac?"

I had a co-worker ask me today, “What would you do with this cul-de-sac?”
We then discussed what we actually need, for design model, plans for permitting, or survey construction staking.
The design model I believe should be as complex and precise as time and money should allow. After all object viewer is wicked cool and a time killer when the monotony of modeling goes stale. If you are hourly employee and have plenty of budget then go wild with the design, spend the extra time building corridors to include intersections and cul-de-sacs.
Plans sheets are of coarse our nemesis. We either show so much it becomes confusing or we don’t show enough. As you are aware we don’t always show EOP spot shots every 5 foot on plan sheets. Why would we? Governing agencies don’t care, and it looks like crap at 40 scales. Most of us can compute rim elevations using simple math equations, and with that and some polylines, POOF, you have a grading plan.
Guess what? Most surveyors will not use your model either. Being mathematicians they don’t need to. Print them some stations and profiles and they will stake all your curb returns on three foot offset, no questions asked, not even: “hey, what grade did you use for curbing on cul-de-sac #2?”
Being a designer, I love to model in 3D. Corridors and Assemblies were a godsend to C3D.
But how much is too much?
Cul-de-sacs are really not bad, you need a main profile and one more for your eop or curb line, which extends to the main profile. Intersections are much more complex, needing four profiles minimum, each one tied to another.
Subdivision corridor design can get very detailed, with many baselines and regions, but when complete and correct it is again, wicked cool. But what is not so, wicked cool is the fact that you will need so many independent alignments, profiles, and subassemblies that if revisions are needed you may find your designer with a knife to their wrist.
After spending many hours on the corridor you still may not get exactly what you are looking for. What we really need the corridor for is proposed surface elevations right, but when building tin data from the corridor the software seems to have a mind of its own.

CORRIDOR:

TIN SURFACE:

With all these freaky looking tin lines my contours are exactly where they should be!

Notice this is a low point, so my center line profile has a grade in and a grade out. If I were to revise the profile slopes, my curb returns will not update as they are on separate baseline within the corridor. <-- Not Cool!

Water? What Water?

Has water line design simply been forgotten about in C3D?
Drawing polylines seems to be the only solution. There are so many “canned” pipe materials for PVC within C3D, but those are for sewer systems. Take a look at this example:

It shows a HELP search for “sewer.” Notice what is found. Rules, networks, profile views, etc…
The next example is of a search for “water.” Again notice what is found:

Water Drops, & Watersheds, but no water line design tools!

Why?
Is it because it is way too simple? Or there is not a need to include it in your design?
I don’t think so. With agencies requesting minimum depths, separations, and even profile views to ensure these requirements are met, it is absolutely necessary to be included, dynamically, in our models.

But how do we achieve this?
Using polylines can be useful in horizontal locations; it becomes visible and can be utilized for noticing separation conflicts. Also alignments can be created using these polylines and then a vertical design can be utilized as profiles can be created. After that you still have no “pipes” or “networks” to apply revisions too all at once. Or if you needed the water line to be shown as a crossing pipe in your sewer profile. Or if you needed to label it?? What! Why would you ever want to label it? Labeling your polyline will give you length from beginning to end, but maybe you want this length to be measured from valve to valve. Well guess what? The model has no idea that there is a valve anywhere at all, as it is probably a simple block for visual representation proposes only. These labels are not dynamic either, meaning, if the line needs to be extended, the label has to be revised manually. :(

After all that venting, I can make a couple of suggestions.

Make one or more styles for your water line design labels. These styles should be alignment driven not by the polyline. This can read 3D lengths and will update when revised. Keep in mind the waterline is not dynamic but the alignment is. These label styles will only be using the 3D length of the alignment everything else remains non-dynamic, such as size and material. These labels should be on a layer all there own as you would a sewer pipe label. Text styles of these should all ways be associative. For fire hydrants, bends or valves, these will be non-dynamic as well, unless you have a block label reading the name and consecutive numbering of the block, but that is another Blog altogether.

A cool routine comes to mind when I discuss water design. It’s relatively simple to use, and creates more information than a List or Properties.
How much 6”? How much 8”?
1. First make sure all water pipes that are 6” are on the same layer (like C-WATER-PIPE-6”), and the same for 8”.
2. Then Using Map Explorer go to Topologies, Create New.
3. Create a new Network Topology named 6” Water. Notice that you can select: each line, all lines, or simply the layer that you created in the first step.
Once finished, your water line topology has a mass of information useful in any cost analysis or application for permit.
4. Now you can expand Topologies to view your created “6” Water” topology. Right clicking on this will give you several options, like showing geometry to verify what you’ve created, and statistics for things like number of nodes, links, and total lengths.
5. Repeat steps for your 8” lines.

3GB Windows Switch

As you have already noticed, some of our 3D models are getting larger in file size. Trying to rebuild surfaces using corridors made up of intersections and cul-de-sacs, our virtual memory sometimes seems non-existent. Complicated surfaces are not the only things difficult to compute, running large sheet sets using multiple drawings, often takes hours. Not to mention the Internet, media player, and outlook, that are running in the background constantly.
I'm not IT so I can't explain why running systems with more power is better, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one.


An explaination from our friends at Microsoft.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833721
It is also explained by Autodesk.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=9729516&linkID=9240697
I've also seen this blogged several times, so it seems to work pretty well.

What do you need to do?
1. OPEN - System Properties
2. OPEN - Advanced
3. OPEN - Startup and Recovery Settings
4. EDIT - System Startup
5. This will bring up a note pad file which you need to edit.
Replace...
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
With...
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3GB" /3GB /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
6. SAVE
7. Restart. Notice Windows will now open using more RAM!! Wicked Cool!! If you choose to, you can leave both the default and the 3GB, and Windows will prompt you for the type you would like to open.

Forward

I just read the “How to Blog” article from the Dumb Little Man website; I found it very informative. It discusses items like scheduling, topics, keywords, grammar, and honesty. It started me thinking of how to maintain some form of credibility while simply passing on information, and how it could be a little difficult at first.
I have never been a writer, and I have really never been very technical. I have so many visions of what I should be writing. I’m finding it hard to narrow the thoughts down. As I type, my mind wonders away into something much more interesting than a white screen with black text. Keeping in mind, difficult reading is never appealing, even to engineers. We love highly concentrated subjects and in-depth descriptions, in order to visualize, analyze, and conclude our own theories. Suggestions of procedures and tips to heighten experiences are really all I’m after.
My goal is to find the most motivating and simply “cool” routines or commands with the quickest results to make the average user intrigued enough to maybe someday strive to be a power user. Overcoming challenging tasks and demanding precise output is exactly what C3D was designed for, so it’s our job to make it the seemingly impossible, possible, with simplicity in our methodology. I have often found “crashing” or C3D disappearing from the screen altogether is a result of corrupt design. So being aware of this often changes the way we move forward. It’s necessary, now more than ever, for us to start our designs with precision and accuracy in order for us to meet the demand of precise model results and accurate plans for construction. “Garbage-In = Garbage-out”.

Welcome

As I start my first blog I wonder what, if anything, does the reader want to read. Should I be so selfish to only write what I want or need?

Sure why not.
I've come to conclusion if anyone should read, and comprehend, we can move on from there.

I want this to be my information outlet for all things CAD, focusing on C3D. Along with tips, and tricks I've collected while "monkeying around". Currently, all I've got is a lot of random thoughts of processes and procedures, ways I have done things in the past, ways I want things to be done in the future. All that stuff is just dancing around in my head looking for a way out, if only to be replaced with more developing ideas. I will post any and everything I deem as worthy material. So feel free to suggest subjects and themes.