Being Civil

AutoCAD Civil 3D New Feature: Other things about Subassemblies…

Hi everyone! Last but not least, regarding new functionality for Subassemblies on Civil 3D 2013.

Now we can:

• Insert a subassembly between two existing subassemblies.
• Replace an existing subassembly with a new one.

The CreateSubassemblyTool will display as soon as you select an assembly on your drawing and select a different one on your Tool Palettes. At that point you will tell the software if you want to (I) Insert it or (R) Replace it.

Also, how many times you needed to modify a parameter on a subassembly that is in your drawing? More than ones?! Before we needed to do it one by one, but now we have Select Similar Subassemblies

This will allow you to select and modify any parameter in all the similar subassemblies on your drawing at the same time using the Properties Palette.

Hope you will find this information helpful.

AutoCAD Civil 3D New Feature: Naming Assembly Groups and Subassemblies now easier than ever!!!

Hello everybody … As I mentioned on my last post we have lots of new functionalities regarding Assemblies and Subassemblies on Civil 3D 2013.

Renaming groups and subassemblies is really an important task, because they facilitate all our target mapping inside the Corridor Properties. It's always been a lot of work and it consumed a lot of time getting into the Assembly properties and renaming all of them one by one. Civil 3D 2013 gives us the ability to name groups and rename subassemblies and the moment that we are inserting them using Assembly Group Name Prompt and Subassembly Name Prompt.

You can access this option under CreateSubAssemblyTool command (Setting tab -> Subassembly -> Commands -> right click on CreateSubassemblyTool -> Subassembly Options).

Assembly Group Name Prompt

If this property is ON, each time a new assembly group is created, the Assembly Group Name Dialog Box is displayed giving you the option to keep the same name or rename it at this point.

 

Subassembly Name Prompt

If this property is ON, each time a new subassembly is created, the Subassembly Name Dialog Box is displayed. Now, you have the option to rename the subassembly at the same time that you are creating your assembly.

…Stay tuned for more good things to come!!!

AutoCAD Civil 3D New Feature: Subassemblies… Now have Auto-side detection!!!

Hi there… It is that time of the year again. With each release Autodesk always gives us a way to facilitate our life. In Civil 3D 2013 we have a lots of new functionality regarding Assemblies and Subassemblies.

I am sure that you inserted a subassembly in the wrong side probably in more than one occasion. Well, now we have Auto-Detect!

The Auto-Detect Side command setting enables AutoCAD Civil 3D to apply the side parameter of the subassembly to which a new subassembly is attached. You can access this option under CreateSubAssemblyTool command (Setting tab -> Subassembly -> Commands -> right click on CreateSubassemblyTool -> Subassembly Options). When this option is set to ON, the existing subassembly side overrides the side that is specified for the Current Side option.

Stay tuned for more good things to come!!!

Quick Tip: Subassembly Composer "Not a Valid Parameter or Variable"

This tip comes to us all the way from our friend Nicolas Menu in Neuchâtel Switzerland regarding this initially puzzling error.

You may have noticed this warning when begining to create a new subassembly in the Subassembly Composer (SAC) after adding a geometry point or other components, then attempting to add a code to these components. As soon as you enter the code (XXX being our example code) you will get a warning sign indicating:

“The code XXX is not a valid parameter or variable"

 
Although concerning at first, all you need to do to resolve this is to place the code in quotation marks " " and you are back on track. The new code should look like this: "XXX"

 

Hope this helps, and thanks again to Nicolas for providing this tip to share on Being Civil!!

 

Daylight Rounding and Why You Might Like It

Old school engineers and drafters still live in a world when a set of plans is a work of art and should reflect the real world. However, in the modern computing world, when finite math reaches a number, the computing stops. A great example of this is how the contours look when you are creating a corridor surface.

Contours are a major player in the older practice of hand drafting. Contours are flowing objects with few hard edges and angles in the real world. Yet when we calculate a TIN intersection the contour will just stop and make an abrupt turn where that intersection is computed without any thought to what the end result will look like. I hear this question a lot from users: “How do I make my contours “tie in” with corridor surfaces?” By “tie-in,” they mean make the swooping arcs and look like they eventually will in real life. If you follow the link below, you’ll see an example of what old school engineers don’t want to see, how to fix it, and what the end result is.

Assembly Types and Superelevation

While working on a complex corridor design for testing in Civil 3D 2012, I noticed something a bit new upon creating my assembly – what is the assembly type? What does this do, and why do I need it? Since the online help file wasn’t public at the time, I couldn’t simply go look at it – so I sent out an email to our worldwide development team, and finally figured out what this does – and why it’s important. Follow the jump to find out just what the assembly type does for you when designing your corridor.

 

Autodesk Subassembly Composer Live on Subscription Center!

Back in December I wrote about the Autodesk Subassembly Composer up on the Autodesk Labs website. It was absolutely great – users could create their own smart assemblies and use them in Civil 3D. But in a quest to make you, our customers, happy – we made it Better, Faster, and Stronger! And now it’s released as a full extension on the Subscription Center for all Subscription users.

For those of you who used the Labs version, this one uses the same workflow, only with a LOT more options. I’m personally calling this one “SuperSAC” because of everything you can do with it. Stay tuned for more information to be posted about how to use this beauty – there are already some recognized superusers out there that participated in the beta period for this program.

I do want you to be aware of something before you download it, though – and this is very important. So important, in fact, that I’m going to make it bold and italicized so you’ll notice it. Read it, pay attention to it, because if you don’t, you’ll have questions:

When you log on to Subscription Center to download the extension, you will find four possible files available. You will find 32 and 64 bit versions, and for each version there will be two files – Autodesk Subassembly Composer – English and Support Pack – English. If you are installing the Subassembly Composer, you DO NOT need to install the support pack. As a matter of fact, you will receive an error if you try to do this. The support pack is intended to be installed on machines that will not have the Subassembly Composer installed, but will be using content created by the Subassembly Composer.

This extension will work with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 and 2012, both 32 bit and 64 bit. Content is currently available in English only, but will install on all language versions of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 and 2012.

Optional Points in the LaneOutsideSuper and LaneInsideSuper Subassemblies

I spend a lot of time looking at the Subassembly Reference included with the help menu on Civil 3D. If you’ve never been there and looked, this reference tells you everything you want to know (and more!) about every subassembly available to you. When someone has a subassembly question, this is almost always the first place I turn to start diagnosing the issue – if you want to know if something’s misbehaving, you first need to determine what normal behavior is, right? So when a customer started asking me about optional points in the LaneOutsideSuper and LaneInsideSuper subassemblies, I immediately turned to the Subassembly Reference. True enough, I found the optional points, but absolutely no way to figure out how to enable them – there’s no magic switch. So what was I to do? A quick IM to Nick Zeeben, Civil 3D Product Manager, led me to the answer – see, Nick is still my corridor guru, even if he doesn’t really work with them much anymore. But being as awesome as he is, he still led me down the right path. Follow the jump to go down that path yourself.