Being Civil

QTO – Garbage In, Garbage Out

As you all know, Civil 3D 2010 includes some new functionality, including the much-anticipated QTO. No, this is not the Quick Turtle Option, nor is it Qualified Technical Overachievers. QTO stands for Quantity Takeoff, and is very powerful in helping estimating potential project costs.

I have been working in and around the QTO functionality, trying to gain more knowledge. In my quest for knowledge, I ran across a post in the Civil 3D discussion group about a problem with a Master Pay Item list. I had to ask for help on this one, but figured out what was going on. Follow the link to find out more.

Raster Design on a 64-bit OS

As I have mentioned before, I am a fan of using Civil 3D on a 64-bit Operating System.  For those of you using Civil 3D in this environment, you will run into a small bump in the road when you go to install Raster Design.  You will get a message stating that “No supported desktops for AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 were found…”  This is because, Raster is looking for a 64-bit version target.  Not to hard to workaround though.

You can get by with some web Help from your friends...

Gotta try with some web Help from your friends.  Anybody hear Ringo Starr's voice yet? 

So our great Tech Pubs team, who brings you the Civil 3D Help documentation, has now made it available on the web!  Should help when doing web searches, and of course you know it includes tutorials and workflows, etc.  Want to review some things but you aren't on your computer with Civil 3D installed?  No problem, now you've got Help, if you need somebody, Help, not just anybody, Help, you know you need someone...Help!  Okay, Beatles on the brain, but they are a classic  Check it out..

www.autodesk.com/civil-help

Sometimes The Answer Is Not Staring Us In The Face

Sometimes cases come in that are pretty easy to resolve – I can’t count the number of times that I’ve run around my office giddy with excitement when a FILEDIA=1 question comes through the pipes. But occasionally, answers tend to hide out a little more and it takes time to find them. In this post, I am going to walk you through the steps that I took during a particularly difficult case that finally reached a resolution. The answer was so simple, but of course it was the last thing we checked. Follow the link to find out some of the thought processes that we go through during some cases.

Can't import ZIP project into Vault?....Try this...

I recently had some unplanned free time and thought I could use this time to share something with you. If you tried to import zip project into Vault and were unable to, this is due to visualization settings in Administration dialog that is set to "Enable Visualization File Attachment Options."

1. Go to Vault Explorer and from Tools > Administration.
2. Then go to Visualization tab and click on Define button under Define Visualization attachment options.
3. This will open up a dialog box with “Enable Visualization File Attachment Options” checkbox
4. Uncheck it and click OK until you get out of any dialogs.
5. Now you may try to import your zip project into vault from Prospector tab.

Enjoy!

Unloading Map from Civil 3D 2009 or 2010 startup and welcome Almas!

We won't tell you about every Technical Solution we publish (look to our RSS feed on the left sidebar or subscribe yourself), but this one deserves a mention. Yesterday we published a method of how you can turn off autoloading of the Map 3D functions when starting Civil 3D 2009 or 2010. If you don't use Map functions very often, this will free up approximately 85MB of Memory. You still have the option to load them on an as-needed basis.

Also, last but not least, you probably noticed we have another mugshot on the top left - Mr. Almas Suljevic!  Since Almas has been posting often for awhile now, he has been added as a regular contributor to BeingCivil.  You can find out more about Almas by clicking on his photo.

Latest version of Google Earth and importing images

Google released an update (5.0.11733.9347) to Google Earth recently, and there have been some reports of images not coming in correctly.  The images will show up in the approximate location, but the scale appears to be off.

Until Google gets this sorted out, you can download the last version (5.0.11337.1968) that still imports correctly. 

You can check your version of Google Earth by going to the Help Menu, and then selecting About Google Earth.

I will keep you posted, as I hear more.

[edit: The original link did not have the download anymore, so I removed it.  However, a quick google search should provide you with the previous version]

Raster Design 2010 Hotfix for Licensing and Civil 3D Feature Update Released

The Raster Design 2010 Hotfix for Licensing and Civil 3D Feature Update has been released. It addresses the license issue and allows AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 network licenses to be installed with supported standalone AutoCAD 2010 applications. The hotfix will not allow a standalone AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 installation to install with network deployments of host applications.

Download the the readme and read before installing, please. You can find the download for both 32 and 64 bit operating systems here.