Being Civil

Binding a Raster Image in AutoCAD...

Not too long ago one of our customer asked me this question, how can I bind a raster image in AutoCAD?... As you probably already know raster images can only be referenced into AutoCAD drawings. If you send the drawing to someone else, you must send the image file also, if not you will end up with a broken reference.
One way to get it done is inserting the image as an OLE object.
Go to the Insert Tab and look for OLE Object or just type INSERTOBJ on the command line.
Choose "Create New", and then choose "Paintbrush Picture".

Next, Windows Paintbrush should open up.

In Paintbrush, choose from the ribbons -> Paste, then Paste from...

Select your existing image file (JPG, BMP, PNG, TIF, etc.)

Close Paint and save your AutoCAD drawing.

Text… Custom Linetypes!!!

Sometimes we have the need to create a new custom linetype to denote different lines in our drawing, like water lines, gas lines, fences, etc… For those of you that have some custom linetypes with text and have been moving this LIN file alone from older releases, here is something that you may not know.

When we talk about text custom linetype we need to consider: Text Styles, Scale, Rotation, X offset, and Y offset. Probably the rotation is being the most painful one, because is not the same to draw a line from left to right, that from right to left…. So we end up with things like this...

Here is how this line looked like until 2010:

*AUTODESK, BeingCivil ---- ADS ---- ADS ---- ADS ----

A,.2,-.2,["ADS",STANDARD,S=.1,R=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05],-.25

But since 2011 Autodesk did something really nice for us… they change the rotation parameter, and give us the ability to manipulate this factor in a different way, introducing U and A, beside the original R. What this mean to us?
R=value
R= specifies relative or tangential rotation with respect to the line.
U=value
U= specifies upright or easy-to-read text.
A=value
A= specifies absolute rotation of the text with respect to the origin; that is, all text has the same rotation regardless of its position relative to the line.
So in any AutoCAD based software, this is how my custom linetype with text looks now.

Here is how this line looks like since 2011:

*AUTODESK, BeingCivil ---- ADS ---- ADS ---- ADS ----

A,.2,-.2,["ADS",STANDARD,S=.1,U=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05],-.25

Remember, text styles can be annotative as well, so that is another thing that you could consider when creating and working with text in custom linetypes.

Here is the location on Vista and Win 7:

C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\C3D 201X\enu\Support\acad.lin

Computer Freezes After Open, Save As,...

Sometimes some issues should be classified in rather “bizarre” category if there is a tag for it. Many times hangs and lock-ups are bad signals that may be related to bad installation, application conflicts, graphic related issues or just bad files…but not always. A few days ago we have received one report from a customer who was experiencing lockups any time he tried to run OPEN or SAVE command. This customer did some homework and made sure the system is up-to-date, graphic drivers are also updated. CMDDIA and FILEDIA were set to 1 (you would be surprised how many of these we see).

So, what is bizarre about this one is that the issue is not with program, installation, bad driver or whatever,... but the fact that user was running multiple screens (very common these days) gave us this wild idea. One of the common reasons for dialogs not to show up, acting as there is a lock-up while in fact program is waiting for user response, is because the dialogs are displayed off screen. Put it this way, if you have multiple screens and you have different resolution settings, you may have your screens mapped differently causing some dialogs to show off screen.

So let’s see how we can check if this is the case.

AutoCAD Civil 3D Crashes When Rotating

Over the years on Being Civil we have written numerous articles about crashes and how and what caused them and how to avoid them, yet they still occur and we keep writing more and more. Just as a refresher I am throwing some links from this article: Troubleshooting 101

I am sure all of you out there have seen your fair share of crashes not only from AutoCAD but from other programs, too. Besides trials and errors it is really hard (and I think impossible) to come up with a silver bullet that resolves it once for all. It may happen one day, but most likely not in my professional lifetime. Until then we have to go back and investigate crash by crash, case by case. If you happen to get one, please don’t forget to send CER report and get familiar by it from this post: Reminder: The Importance of Customer Error Reports (CER)

So now, let’s see what’s “the crash of the day”.

One user reported that he was having some trouble with Civil 3D when trying to rotate views. Every time he attempted to rotate his view or change visual styles program would just collapse. Worth mentioning (and a good tip for us to narrow down the cause) is that this happened with some complex drawings and large files.

Why is this tip for us? Well, it seems that program was having hard time processing graphic changes caused by rotation since it involves regenerating everything. That gives us a clue that it may involve graphics hardware or driver especially given that simple drawings are performing OK.  

Generally, the issue of crashes when rotating large objects is due to the display issues, perhaps insufficient graphic card memory. Always a good place to start troubleshooting is by checking graphic card drivers and settings. Please see if you can go to the following link and see if your graphic card is listed there and if there is better driver for your machine. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/cert?siteID=123112&id=16391880. It is known that uncertified devices have stability and other issues such as missing cursors, View Cube, Smooth Display Issues, etc. 

 If your graphic card is supported and preferably certified and your driver up to date then see if you are using hardware acceleration. Also, see if you can contact graphic card manufacturer and see if they have better driver optimized for AutoCAD. 

1.     In command line type 3DCONFIG 
2.     Click on Manual Tune 
3.     On top of the next dialog check “Enable hardware acceleration” toggle
4.     Repeat step 1 and now go to “Check for Updates” and update driver if necessary 

This helped my customer, I hope it will help you too. If not, and you are Autodesk Subscription Customer you can always contact Autodesk Product Support. 

Error When I Try To Print From Help

As a strong advocate of using Help menu whenever you can I am just compelled to write about this. We recently had one report where users could not print the articles coming from Help due to the similar message:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH 
Application Name: AcBrowserHost.exe 

In other situation your request may just be denied. It may even be more suspicious if you get similar behavior when accessing other online services from Autodesk.

This error seems related with the proxy configuration that may be blocking your request to access Autodesk’s servers. So you would have to adjust the settings and create some exceptions for Autodesk (or other) sites. If you take a look at the following two articles you may find a way to check that as well as to set it up correctly.

TS16732564

http://autocad.autodesk.com/?nd=blogs&post_id=170996&blog_id=62

In the meantime, you may use an Offline help by simply telling AutoCAD to use it from local storage.

To do so:

1. In command line type OPTIONS

2. Go to System tab

3. Under “Help and Welcome Screen” uncheck “Access online help when available”



4. Try accessing help and try plotting

From now on you will be accessing Civil 3D help content stored locally. 

Note for AutoCAD users: In order to access locally stored help, you would have to download it first as you would be greeted with this message and a prompt to do so. 

Stay Tuned for more!

How to identify a 4th generation MrSID®

While we await support for the 4th generation MrSID® file format in AutoCAD, how can you know if your MrSID® image is a 4th generation or not? Because all generations have the .sid extension, the file extension won't tell you. Here's one way you can find out:

1. Launch the program GeoViewer (a free download from www.lizardtech.com).
2. Go to File > Add Layer > Local Layer to bring in the image.
3. Once the image appears, go to Layer > View Layer Metadata.
4. Look under "Image properties". In the value for Format, a generation 4 MrSID will show MRSID/MG4RASTER.
Other generations will show other formats (e.g. MG2 if it's a MrSID generation 2).

You can also use GeoViewer to Export to TIFF (Tools menu). The file size will grow a bit, but it won't crash AutoCAD! :)

CATCHMENTS FAIL TO EXPORT TO SSA

You might have been stumped as to why some of or all the catchments from Civil 3D would not export to SSA using the “Edit in Storm and Sanitary Analysis”.  You will come across this issue if you have selected the Time of Concentration Method for the Catchment Properties as TR-55 and did not provide the corresponding slopes to the Flow Segments (i.e. slopes for the Sheet Flow, Shallow Concentrated Flow and Channel flow segments) as the default value assigned by Civil 3D is zero slope. 

The flow path has no time of concentration as the slope of the flow line is zero.   A time of concentration of zero does not export since there is nothing to evaluate. Hence you may want to expand the Catchments from the Prospector tab, right click the Flow Path and select Edit Flow Segments to modify the slopes to a non-zero value.

Another pre-requisite is that, the catchments have to be referenced to a pipe network structure; hence you want to make sure that each catchment is referenced to a structure as shown below:

Hope this helps. 

 

 

My viewport always zoom extent when it's activated…

Hello everyone…. I was working with some cases regarding this and I thought that it will be good to share in case that you come across with this situation in some point.

You are creating viewports or copying layout tabs and when you double click the viewport to activate it. Because you need to change the scale, regen or zoom to a different location your viewport does an automatic zoom extend. If you have a lot of information on your drawing this could become a really anoying problem.

Change the UCSFOLLOW system variable to 0 inside the viewport.

The UCSFOLLOW setting is saved separately for each viewport, paper space and model space, when you create a new viewport it always maintains the setting use on model space.

Hope you will find this helpful.