Being Civil

Generate a Layout for a View Frame Overview

It is my great pleasure to introduce Karsten Saegner to the blogosphere. Karsten is our co-worker from our Munich, Germany office and in the future will be contributing to Being Civil blog. I am sure you will find great benefits from his perspective, knowledge and experience he brings to the team. Now our team is really global and as we have contributors from three different continents and cover something like 18 hours of time zones. Please join me in welcoming Karsten.

Almas 

You might have wanted to create a map series of your model and realize it with View Frames in Civil 3D.

In the Model View you see all your View Frames and how they line up to each other. To give an overview of where each View Frame is located in the model you might want to create an overview map and plot it, but the View Frames are not displayed in the Layout.

 
    View Frames in Model View and they are missing in the Layout View.

The solution is to check the Viewport Frame Type and set it to “Undefined”.
After a REGENALL command the View Frames should be displayed in the Layout View and the overview map can be plotted.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014 New Feature: Automatic Pan and Zoom and Import/Export Query

Continuing with our New Feature articles there are two quick things I wanted to show today. The first one is the ability to use Automatic Pan and Zoom to Survey Figure. This is useful in case if you were reviewing or editing your figure. Now as soon as you select Survey Figure Properties program zooms to the figure. This setting is found in Survey User Settings dialog.

 

Another quick thing I wanted to introduce is the ability to Import or Export Survey Query Files from a Survey database. This way you can export all defined queries from your Survey database to a specified location. Program will create a query file with QML file format. This query can also be imported into the Survey database.

In your Survey Toolspace tab, if you right-click on Survey Queries and choose Export you will see the option.

 

Stay tuned for more.

Why PDF Created From Civil 3D Opens in Wrong Version of Adobe

This may not be the issue you may encounter very often but if it happens you may have hard time to figure it out. In that case you may appreciate it. In any case, it’s not bad idea to be aware of it even if it never happens to you. I have to admit, most of these blog posts I use for my personal reminders….Here is the story:

Customer has Adobe Acrobat 6 and Adobe Reader 10. When he tries to plot using DWG to PDF.pc3 while having an option to automatically open PDF upon creation, the PDF is being opened in Adobe Acrobat 6. This would not be so much of the issue if version of PDF was not newer and as result it would not open in older version of Adobe. Naturally, the user would check Windows defaults settings. But that was not it and it did not help, by the way. One way to open PDF was by double clicking PDF; that works fine. Again, the issue was that when set to automatically open it would open in wrong version of Adobe.

So to resolve this issue there are two known ways:

Compare DWG File Changes in AutoCAD

Seth just passed this one to the team and I think it is a great one to share with the rest of our little community. Wehn working with multiple users, multiple offices it is not very hard to edn up with files with identical names and different time stamps. Th logical question at that point is: "What's the difference". Shaan Hurley wrote about it and I will just link his great artcile. 

 

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.

Check Out features BEFORE you attempt to edit in bulk!

"Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally." Remember that from algebra class? This memory aid is helpful to understand the order of operations required to get the correct answer when solving algebraic equations.

Similarly, when it comes to working with FDO, sometimes, it's all about order of operations.

The following workflow, innocent as it is, will result in a freeze/indefinite hang:
1. Connect to an FDO data source in AutoCAD Map 3D.
2. Select many features (I selected 809 points)
3. In the AutoCAD Properties Pane, try to "globally" edit the value of one attribute for all of your selected features.

Sadly, even if Auto Checkout is enabled, you're just not gonna get anywhere. You'll likely have to End Process for acad.exe in Task Manager.

Now, augment your workflow by adding a step:

Photo © Eric Gevaert

1. Connect to an FDO data source in AutoCAD Map 3D.
2. Select many features (I selected 809 points).
3. Hit Check Out (same as running MAPCHECKOUT).
4. In the AutoCAD Properties Pane, try to "globally" edit the value of one attribute for all of your selected features.
Result: almost an immediate change!
Finally, be sure to Check In your features by clicking the button or by running MAPCHECKINALL.

Lesson: if you follow order of operations, you're almost guaranteed smooth sailing!

Can't See Preview on Open and Save As Dialogs?

You know that we have been advocating opening AutoCAD drawings from within AutoCAD. Besides making sure you are opening your drawing with appropriate application one other thing that I believe is very useful is that you can preview your drawing. If you paid close attention you may have seen that preview is not listed under Views. If you can’t see your drawing preview during Open dialog or when using Save As then there is a way to turn it one. To illustrate, I am placing before and after images for you to look:

Before:

After:

So to make it work you would need to go to Registry.

Note: Don’t forget to take a special caution when working in registry. Making a copy of Registry Key is best way to ensure if you mess up you may be able to undo it. 

To get there please use Start>Run and type REGEDIT. Once in there browse to the following locations and set PreviewVisible registry key to 1.

For save as:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0\ACAD-B000:409\Profiles\<<C3D_Imperial>>\Dialogs\Save Drawing As 
2. On the right side look for PreviewVisible and double-click on it
3. Set Value Data to 1

For Open dialog:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0\ACAD-B000:409\Profiles\<<C3D_Imperial>>\Dialogs\Select File
2. On the right side look for PreviewVisible and double-click on it
3. Set Value Data to 1

Stay tuned!

Quick Tip: Abbreviations

When dealing with complex designs and issues day in and day out, sometimes it is the simplest things that trip us up. I fall into that particular catergory today. I had what seemed to be a simple question from a customer who wanted to change the default PT and PC abbreviations to something that complied to the local regulations. Of course I overcomplicated things and ended up spinning my wheels when the answer was right in front of me the whole time: DRAWING SETTINGS>ABBREVIATIONS tab. Here you can change all the default abbreviations found in Civil 3D.

Although this is probably something a lot of you already know, it really isn't a frequently visited part of Civil 3D so hopefully this quick reminder will help someone else out there!