Being Civil

Product Support at AU

I will be travelling next week to Las Vegas for Autodesk University 2009. Come join me Wednesday morning for my class on getting the most bang for your computing buck and throughout the week at the AEC Lounge. If you spot me, come up and say hi! I’ll be blogging throughout the week with news from AU – stay tuned for more!

How to extract MSP file and apply it to the Admin Image

Knowing that many people do not read readme file with whom I can totally relate for the most part… But, trust me, I’m getting better. Nice thing about re-designed installation wizard that now you can include Service Pack (Update) from Autodesk.com (if available). That is in my opinion the easiest way to do it. But in case if you for any reason would like to test drive it before installation or if you would like to install it from a local copy of the Update you know you have to create MSP file. This procedure sounds harder than it really is and it's also applicable to older versions of Civil 3D, too. Creating (extracting) MSP file is pretty simple. To read about it click continue reading...  

Where to find coordinate system False Origin

The other day I had a customer asking what the False Northing and Easting was for a specific coordinate system in Civil 3D. Not knowing off the top of my head, and with some help from the Map Team (thanks Doug!), I discovered that this is fairly easy to find within Civil 3D. First we start off with the command ADESETCRDSYS, this will launch the Assign Global Coordinate System dialog which will allow you to select a coordinate system. Clicking on the Select Coordinate System button will launch another dialog which will give you the options to pick your category and the coordinate systems available in that category. For my example I selected NHHPF HARN (HPGN datum) New Hampshire State Planes, US Foot. You just need to select the coordinate system, and click on PROPERTIES in the lower left hand corner of the Select Global Coordinate System dialog box. The False Origins as well as the Projection Parameters will be displayed on the PROJECTION tab of the Global Coordinate System Properties dialog. 

Sharing Pipe Network Parts: 101

As is the case with other objects or files that are shared between users, (Hint: Xrefs, Data Shortcuts, Images, etc.) the drawing does not store these files/objects inside but rather remembers where are they coming from by using paths. It is important to know that Parts Catalogs are external to the drawing, too. By default all pipes are stored in this location: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2010\enu\Pipes Catalog.

This Catalog Manager (a person assigned to manage parts) can use different location and you, as user, can manually point to that location. That way you will always have updated version of catalog files. This task is easy to do. All you need to do is to select Set Pipe Network Catalog from Home ribbon.

 

Advanced Daylighting Design and a farewell...

Hi all - this design scenario came up a few weeks ago, funny enough from two different sources, in Europe and North America.  How do you design an Assembly that in cut conditions daylights from the hinge point and has two parts (see below); first a variable dimension (x) and then a second part with a fixed dimension (y)?  As you may know, at first glance Assemblies can only have a variable dimension on the "last" daylight portion, where you just tell the Subassembly to find the surface wherever it is.  This seems impossible - how could we achieve this?

  

Implications of Rotating a Surface

There may be times where you need to rotate some Points you got form your survey crew.  However, these Points have already been used to create a Surface.  What is the best way to go about this?

Well, first thing to know is that you only want to rotate the Points, not the Surface.  If you grab both, it will end up doubling up the rotation of the Surface.  So make sure you are only rotating the definition of the Surface and then simply rebuild your Surface to see the corrected location.  But wait…there’s more!

New Commands for Editing Survey Figures

Now when Subscription Advantage Pack is out, our Subscription customers can begin to use some benefits from it. If you remember prior to the release of Subscription Advantage Pack you only had limited options when editing Survey Figure. This is the Figure Properties dialog prior to Subscription Advantage Pack release:

 

Windows 7….revisited

So a while back I had posted that Windows 7 was not officially supported for Civil 3D 2010.  While we certainly continued to assist customers that were early converts, Windows 7 lacked that, ummm, “official” blessing.

While, some of you may have stumbled across this post in our Discussion Groups from our Sr. Product Manger, which stated:

The Civil 3D team is excited by the interest shown in Windows 7 and on
moving to a 64 bit operating system. We have tested Civil 3D 2010 and
Windows 7 and haven't found any issues that should stop you from deploying
Civil 3D 2010 on it. We are planning to update our website to list Windows 7
as an operating system for Civil 3D.
Windows 7 is one of the operating systems that Civil 3D will be tested on
moving forward.
Regards,

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

Could it be?  Is this legit?  Absolutely!  Peter stopped by my desk yesterday to confirm that this is truly official at this point. 

So for those of you waiting to jump to Windows 7, now is the time.  Just do yourself a favor and make sure you go for the 64-bit version!