Being Civil

Civil 3D 2012 Update 2 is now live!

I know many of you have been waiting for this, and now it is available. Many improvements have been made in this update and I think a lot of you will be pleasantly surprised after having a look at the README. Please follow this link to download Update 2: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL20021271

Have a great weekend!!

Add Reset User Settings in Civil 3D 2013

As many of you may have already known, Almas wrote this great post for Civil 3D 2012 which streamlines the process to reset your user settings when troubleshooting user specific issues. To simplify this for the new release I am posting the updated steps and paths for 2013:

1. Go into C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013
2. Right-click in it and chose New and Shortcut
3. In the next dialog paste following text (including quotes) "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013\AdMigrator.exe" /reset and click Next
4. Then type Reset User Settings (or anything you wish) for a name of this shortcut and hit Finish
5. Now go to Start>All Programs>Autodesk>AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 and note that Reset User Settings is listed
6. Now go ahead and run it if you wish

You can even create a little desktop icon like I did, which makes it even more accessible as I often run this utility to bring me back to stock settings.

Thanks again to Almas for the great original post!

 

Why Can't I See My Custom Paper Sizes in Plot Dialog

Some of you that have dealt with our PSEB team know how good they are. Those are the same people helping you with various AutoCAD (and not only that), but other technical difficulties with a range from plotting to some other AutoCAD vertical programs. So they deserve a credit for this post, too.  So’ let’s get to the reason I wanted to share this finding.

One of our customers installed new Operating System Windows 7 64-bit, installed the latest plotter drivers he could find for his plotter, all Plotter paths in Options menu>Files tab were set to look for PC3, CTB, PMP files. But, he was unable to see custom plot sizes until the plot sizes were manually entered. Also other users pointing there could not see the sizes, as well. In short, that was the food-for-thought. 

Note: As a precaution, before you load the .reg file on the other machines, export their version of the registry key first, so that its settings can be restored if necessary. Off course read the red text below:

Warning! Problems caused by improperly editing the Windows registry could render your computer operating system unusable. Microsoft provides a wealth of critical information that you need to know about the registry in the Microsoft Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com/support.

 Use the Microsoft® Registry Editor only at your own risk and only after backing up the registry as well as the system.dat and user.dat files as outlined for your operating system in the Microsoft Knowledge Base and in the related solution, TS66513. Additional information about the registry is also contained in the Help topics in the Microsoft Registry Editor.

This is what we did to resolve. As always:

• Ensure all machines have appropriate drivers for the type of OS they are using as well as have PC3 files set up and pointed to. Plotter manufacturer's web site is the best place for it.
• Go to Options menu>Files tab>Printer Support File Path and you will see 4 options. Make sure they are identical to all machines.

This is the area that in particular we needed to concentrate. It also validates the need for that disclaimer above. It appears that the paper seizes must also be written in a printer driver. There is a registry key which stores the information about pages. Verify that their registry keys on all the machines are the same.

1. To get into registry go Start and type REGEDIT
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Forms
3. If you notice a difference on the machines whose paper sizes don't match the model system, then right-click that registry key and export from the model machine
4. Copy the .reg file to the shared location on the network so others can access it
5. Go to each machine and double-click on teh .reg file to update that key for each machine.

You should be able to see your custom sizes.

 

 

Allow your Reseller to view your Web Support Requests in Subscription Center

Seth Hall brought this to my attention and I think it is a good way to get more eyes involved in your submitted issue. So, I just wanted to make you aware of this option.

You may allow your Reseller to have read-only access to your support cases and allow them the possibility to provide additional solutions or training for your users. 

More aboiut it could be found here.

Infrastructure Modeler and XP

For those that read the README (that should be everyone!), you may have noticed that Infrastructure Modeler is not supported on XP, and won't install if you try.

 

For those of you installing AIM from the Building Design Suite (but not Infrastructure) you may find that deploying the entire suite to XP fails.  This is due to having AIM in the list of products selected for install.  For a solution, please go to usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS19352282.

Cannot See Data Shortcut's Descriptions

Now that it seems more and more users are using Data Shortcuts, it makes perfect sense to give you more information about what is going on with some files. I have received an issue where one of our customers could not see the description shown in the Set Data Shortcut Folder dialog. For all of you working in production and having years’ worth of work stored in your project directory, it makes whole lot of a difference to have description listed next to the project.

Here is what happened. Customer had descriptions showing in his XML files that are in charge of storing these descriptions. If the file ShortcutsHistory.xml is opened with browser or XML Notepad this user could see the descriptions but just could not see them in the dialog. I have to admit it, was pretty puzzling to me too, since all permissions to the files and folders were showing properly. With little help of Eddie Ng, our developer, I was quickly able to find out the missing piece.

Pressure Pipes, Follow Surface, and the Resulting Segments

By now many of you have had time to "play around" with the new Pressure Pipes functionality, and to also get a good feel for how in works within Civil 3D 2013. You may have noticed and used the Follow Surface command in the profile editing contextual ribbon. This handy tool will allow you to force your pressure network to follow the specified surface at a specific depth. It works just as expected, and much like the old workflow (feature line>elevations from surface>lower feature line>create pipe network from object) many people used to simulate pressure networks with gravity systems.

After the network has "followed" the surface you will see that the network will be segmented to reflect the new vertical path that the follow surface command produced. These segment lengths are specified in the catalog and can be changed based on your requirements.

If you need to change this just open the Content Catalog Editor (START>PROGRAMS>AUTODESK>AUTOCAD CIVIL 3D 2013>CONTENT CATALOG EDITOR) and open the SQLITE file that contains the pipe. Typically found here:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2013\enu\Pressure Pipes Catalog\Imperial

Find the Cut Length column and edit accordingly. Your new networks created after this edit will reflect this new Cut Length next time you run this command.

 

New Labs features!

Take a look at these two recent Labs releases: Project Artoo lets you run a process very similar to the old standy MAPCLEAN on your FDO features!

And Project BaseJump is only going to be around a few more weeks, so get it while you can!  It allows you to drop a Bing map background into any drawing!  No more need to have aerials, roads, etc to give your map some context.