Being Civil

Video: Troubleshooting Tips for Civil 3D

It's that time again, for the monthly video over on the Autodesk YouTube channel.  As usual we create a Technical Solution in our knowledgebase that points to it, you can find it here.

This month features a review of Troubleshooting methods, helping you to pin down issues to one of the three main branches: computer, software or file.  While it is not offering some mind-blowing secret on any particular features in the product, what I think is more important is to review your general skills in troubleshooting - if you know how to do it and what to look for, then you are better at it every time.  If I just give you specific things (of course we already do this in the blog!!), then you aren't sharpening your skills, right?  So check it out and give us a review and some comments, thanks!

New Video: Understanding Performance using Civil 3D

Time for the monthly Product Support video over on the Autodesk YouTube channel.  This review of Performance covers a collection of topics including:

• RAM and Virtual Memory
• 32 bit and 64 bit Applications and Operating Systems
• Recommended Operating Systems
• Performance Tweaks

Then it ends with a few FAQs:

• When will we have a 64 bit version of Civil 3D?
• Is Windows 7 supported?
• I am upgrading my hardware, what should I buy?
• Task Manager never shows Civil 3D using all the available virtual memory, why not?

Please do have a look, comment and rate it - this is useful feedback for us, thanks.  And thanks to those who responded to the poll on video content - we are reviewing the results and seeing where we can make improvements!  I understand from the poll some of you are blocked from YouTube; I will create some posts to cover the major topics presented in the video wihin the next couple of weeks.

To see the collection of monthly videos, go to the general playlist here.

This month's Civil PS video - understanding drawing migration

Hey all, our latest Civil Product Support video has been posted to the Autodesk YouTube channel.  This month we feature an in-depth explanation of using drawings between different versions of Civil 3D and/or AutoCAD.  Please have a look, give it a rating and any comments.

Further, note in the left sidebar we have a Poll regarding video content in general - take a few seconds to let us know what you think!

Friday fun - paying homage to the very first Support professionals

We focus mostly on providing you with the most current news and tips and information from our daily experiences here at Autodesk, but it doesn't hurt to pay homage to our ancient colleagues who made the first at home Support calls...

Survey Linework Without Codes?

As I sit here waiting on my telephone repairman to arrive to fix my DSL line (where is that guy, anyway?) I have had some much needed (and forced, to my dismay) time to sit down and write a post for the blog. I have been thinking about survey features a lot lately, and trying to put together a good workflow for a big posting (possibly even a white paper) but decided that I’d scratch out this little gem while I was brainstorming.

So let me set the scene – you’re a bit curious about your capabilities with automated linework. You’ve always realized that it would greatly increase your workflow efficiency, but you’ve always skirted around it and never really jumped too deeply into it. Perhaps one day while you were waiting on the day’s point file to arrive, you had a little time and played around with some settings. You read a few articles and maybe created a few figure prefixes just for fun, then promptly got distracted and never implemented it with your field crews. Then one day you bring some field data into the survey database and all this random linework starts showing up, even though you know your crews aren’t coding out in the field. You freak out a tiny bit, close your drawing, re-convert the data, delete the survey database, re-import the data – and you still get the random linework! You then proceed to throw your mouse, but forgot that it wasn’t a cordless mouse, and it snaps back, smacks you in the forehead, and requires a trip to the emergency room. Well, I’m here to save on your medical bills and explain why that is happening – remember, safety first!

2010 Preview: Offset Alignments

When we first saw the new functionality of Offset Alignments, I was pretty excited to see how this would work with Parcels.  Check out this video for a quick overview of how these new Alignments will dynamically update your associated Parcels.

You may want to go straight to the YouTube page for a larger version of this video.

Enjoy

Undocumented Commands Can Make Your Drawing More Stable

Before the phones started ringing this morning, I was catching up on some early reading.and ran across this article by Donnie Gladfelter. Donnie is a great friend of mine, and I am one of the people that he worked with a few weeks ago on his perfect storm issue. I had to call him this morning to talk about this article, as one of his links was a tiny bit outdated and not very easily found during a normal search of our knowledgebase. We discussed it, and I told him that I would write this as a supplement to his already excellent article to explain a bit more in-depth what was happening.

2010 video sneak peek - the Ribbon, part III

This video concludes your sneak peek on the Ribbon:

As usual, view on our YouTube Channel for the bigger version.  And hey, if you are so inclined, please rate one of our YouTube videos!

I realized near the end of this series, as a new user myself, some of my terminology was perhaps not quite accurate, so