Being Civil

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 New Feature: New Help

When helping yourself or helping others the best place to start your journey is - help menu! The online Help system for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 has also been significantly restructured to provide faster, search-based results thats's easy to navigate. As before, you can access it from the Help icon on the InfoCenter or by pressing F1 key on your keyboard. Either way should work just fine.

The Online help window is displayed by default. But if you prefer to use the system stored on your computer you may go into Options menu>System tab and uncheck it there. So this is all the same as before.

 

What is different, you may ask? Once you get into Help you will see that the interface looks nicer and easier to navigate. One other thing that is different is that now each article shows following options (icons): Home, Show in Content, Navigation buttons, Favorites and Share.  

 

• Home button gets you…well, to home page
• Show in Content. It will allow you to enable Contents on the left, but also if right-click you may see an option “Copy Link”. This will allow you to send the article’s online link. Very useful feature for all of us supporting others.
• Navigation buttons allow quick and easy going back and forth and up. Very intuitive so no further explanation needed!
• Favorites. How many times you have found a good article and then the next time you needed it had hard time finding it? Use favorites and never lose it again.
• Envelop icon. Other way to share the articles. When you click here, program automatically opens Outlook and let you send the link to the article.

More to come!

 

I want my settings back in Civil 3D 2012…

It is my great pleasure to introduce some of the bloggers that will be posting in the future on Being Civil. When we started back in the fall of 2008 (Brian Kling, Jason Hickey, Justin Ziemba, Seth Hall and I) we were concentrating on Civil 3D and its core functionality. Our goal throughout this entire period was to help our customers and share some of what we know with the rest of us. In order to bring it all to the next level we decided to bring more power to the team of us so that our readers could get a different perspective to the issues we all are facing daily.

In the previous period some people moved to other roles while some others came to replace them. Now, 413 posts and almost 500,000 page views later, have what we are now – Being Civil blog, supporting our infrastructure users around the globe. You can read our posts on Facebook or Twitter or receive them via RSS feeds. It's just a small milestone we have reached and we thought you needed to know about it. We see your support every day and we hope it will continue to grow in the future. If there is something you would like us to blog about please drop us a note and we’ll be happy to help.

You already had a chance to get some of the Map 3D perspective from Nathan Moore, as well as to read some posts about Storm Sewer Analysis (SSA) from Matt and Anurag. Now we are introducing Tatiana Machado and Phil Borycens and I am sure you will be able to get more from them in the nearest future. To learn more about our new additions please visit their own pages on the left (About the authors section). Today it will be Tatiana’s first post on Being Civil. Please join me in welcoming Tatiana and Phil.

                                                                                                                         - Almas -

 

This will be like the second part of Add Reset User Settings in Civil 3D 2012 post from back in May of this year. We had some user asking, “OK, I just saved my custom setting... but now what can I do with the ZIP file that is created before resetting my setting and how I can get my settings back?” Well, you would need to do a similar procedure to the one that you did before to create your reset user setting shortcut.

I am one of those that think that an image is worth 1,000 words, so here is a short video that you can follow to get this done.

Quick Tip: Label Style Composer Missing Preview

If when composing or editing a label style, you happen to notice that your preview window is blank, this may lead you to believe that there is a graphics card issue or possible corrupted installation. Typically this issue has nothing to do with either of those, but rather the naming (or renaming for that matter) of this folder:

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2012\enu\Data\Preview

• Windows Vista & Windows 7: C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2012\enu\Data\Preview

These previews are stored as .DWG within these subfolders, so renaming them or any changes to the folder structure will cause the program to display a blank preview window. This is actually documented in the HELP menu within Civil 3D, but given the misleading nature of this issue it could lead down the wrong troubleshooting path. Enjoy!

 

Come Meet the Experts!

I know not every one of you can make it to Las Vegas for Autodesk University 2010, but for those of you that have made the yearly pilgrimage, why don’t you visit the smiling faces that help support you? On the third floor of the convention center you will find the AEC Lounge, which is staffed by Autodesk employees working in development, QA, product support, and product management. Bring your ideas and questions – we would love to meet you!

Questions about Autodesk Subscription?

Are you wondering how to give other users access to benefits that Subscription offers? Or maybe you have never used Subscription and are wondering how to get started.

We now have a website with a handful of tutorials to help you get started.

www.autodesk.com/subscriptiontutorials

Help!

I am sure there are some of you out there who just can’t get enough of Civil 3D.  Now you can access the Help content outside of the product, via the web.

http://www.autodesk.com/civil-help

And for those who want it in PDF formation, follow this link: http://www.autodesk.com/civil-documentation  Why not download the PDFs and put them on your eReader?  I will be putting them on my Nook tonight!

FYI – Software Download for 2011 Product

Starting this month, software download will replace CDs and DVDs as the default method of delivering software upgrades to most Autodesk® Subscription customers worldwide.

• If a customer would prefer to receive their software upgrade via CD/DVD instead of via download, customers can set their delivery preference to “box” by signing in to Subscription Center and updating their profile prior to March 12, 2010.  (Date does not apply to Media and Entertainment customers.)
• After March 12, 2010 customers in countries affected by this policy change can still request a CD/DVD by submitting a request in Subscription Center and Autodesk will ship a CD/DVD at no additional cost.

Software download gives Subscription customers immediate access to the latest Autodesk® software. It’s more convenient than installing upgrades from a CD or DVD. And, it’s a more sustainable choice. Autodesk will continue to ship CDs/DVDs to Subscription customers in some countries as the default delivery method. However, these customers will also have the option to download their Autodesk® software upgrades.
Questions

Additional information and a Customer FAQ can be found on the Subscription Software Download page.

Best Practices Guide

I recently put out a request on our Twitter account, asking for topics that our users were interested in.  One user, Bryan, was looking for “something simple for those just staring out – like simple workflow from beginning to end and file management between drawings.”

This is a pretty big topic, Bryan.  But you are right, starting out, it is so important to be headed in the right direction.  The way things were done using Land Desktop are probably not the way you want to do them with Civil 3D.

There is no single “right way” of doing things that is going to apply to every project, and every design firm.  But I do believe that there are some principles that should be held as general rules to keep things running smooth. 

I think it gets overlooked too often, but Civil 3D ships with a document called the “Best Practices Guide” that goes over all of these topics.  You can find this in the Help Menu, under Learning Resources.

Here you will have 12 different topics ranging from “What’s New” to how to get Technical Support.

 

I think the sections on “Moving from LDT” and the “Best Practices Guide” are two of the first things you should read when starting Civil 3D. 

I hope that helps!