Being Civil

Project Objects onto a Profile View in Plan Production Sheets

One of the cool features of Civil 3D 2010 is certainly an ability to project objects onto a profile and a section. Especially it looks fancy if you were showing multi-view objects and three dimensional blocks or feature lines.

If you projected some objects to profile view they will show up just fine. But if you happen to create Sheets using Plan Production tools and choose to create your sheets in separate drawings that will not carry these projected objects. This happens because the drawing that's external becomes a reference of the original drawing. As of now, Object Projections are not supported on references. Recently one customer asked if there is a way to do it. To see how click on continue…

Autodesk University Virtual

Just because the travel budget is a little tight this year, doesn’t mean you need to skip out on one of the greatest events around!.  This year, Autodesk is offering a web-based option for those who want to attend AU, but can’t make it out to Las Vegas.

Check out this website for more information and to see Lynn’s video on this exciting event.

Subscription Advantage Pack released!

Hi all, in case you haven't heard, Autodesk is now creating a special release for Subscription Customers only.  You will need to login to Subscription Center to download and install it.  Currently is only in US English, but localized versions will follow soon.

For those who have installed their products using Deployments, you should review this Technical Solution (but I don't really need to tell you right, the link is also in the Readme file, which you saw already!).

Also, we have our monthly PS YouTube video which reviews some of the features and covers some FAQs, have a look

Pumping up the Value: the Subscription Advantage Pack for Civil 3D 2010

Not on Subscription?  Check out the benefits - it's way more than just free upgrades!

Want To Work For The Greatest Company In The World?

OK, so I may be just a bit biased in the above statement, but I love my dream job – and you can too! We’re hiring! We are looking for a Product Support Specialist to work with our team. You can find this job on our Careers page. Follow the link to see the job number and job description.

Where’s my Civil Right-click Options?

This variable has stumped even the most seasoned CAD user, and I don’t go more than a month without someone asking about this.  Typically, the call or email comes in from a frantic user who no longer has access to their Civil options when they right-click on a Civil object, such as a Surface.  Instead, they are either greeted by the standard AutoCAD options, or possibly a repeat of their last command.

So instead of getting this:

They are getting this:

This is an easy fix.  There is a system variable called PICKFIRST.  This allows you to pick an object first, and then make a command, such as right-click.  Type this variable at the command line and set it to 1.

This will get you back up and running in a matter of seconds!

Updating Edited Figures to the Survey Database

There are some instances where you want to edit a Survey Figure and then push it back into your Survey Database.  This is easy to do and allows a lot of flexibility to the user.  However, if you break a Figure into two, and then try to update the two parts back to the Database, you will encounter this message:

If Jerry Seinfeld used Civil 3D, I could just hear him saying “What is the deal with this message?”  After all, you just used the Database, how can it not be available?!?

This drawing was saved with an earlier version...

You most likely have seen this message before. It happens if you are opening a drawing that is created by the older version of Civil 3D. For instance if Civil 3D 2010 opens Civil 3D 2009 drawing. This message is called a “courtesy message” informing a user that drawing is created by the older version and that saving it will upgrade it. As you can see this message can be suppressed by checking the toggle.

 

If you accidentally or purposely suppressed it and then want to be able enable it again…That is where the problem starts. In the pretty impressive list of system variables in AutoCAD is is hard to find correct one that will do the job. So it took some teamwork from our team to come up with resolution. Knowing that most of you do not have a privilege to be surrounded with a large support team I will share a secret with you.

If you type AECFILEOPENMESSAGE in command line you will get a Yes/No option to display this message.

For more detail on drawing migration, have a look at our migration video on YouTube.

But I Have Already Installed Update 3 for Civil 3D 2009!

Lots of customers are still using Civil 3D 2009, and everyone wants to keep up with the most current versions. However, some users still receive emails when they submit a CER that tells them that they should install Update 3 even when Update 3 has been installed.

Rest assured that although annoying, this message is benign. You really do have Update 3 installed. The system is incorrectly reading your CER and sending out those emails. You can safely ignore them and keep on working!