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!