Being Civil

Using 3D Blocks for Point Marker Styles

This one has popped up twice on my radar this week, so I figure maybe someone else may be wondering how to do it. What happens when you want to use a multi-view block for a point marker style for visualization purposes? Chances are, you tried this and it didn’t work, so you abandoned those plans. When this popped up a little voice in my head spoke up and reminded me that I’ve seen this one before (that little voice says that a lot…) So I browsed through my IM list and found that Dana Probert was online, and that little voice reminded me that she and I have talked about this before. So I bugged her (we do that often throughout the day) and she refreshed my memory.

Another visual aide - viewing your Profile in 3D

Justin's post last week on Visual Tracking got me to thinking about another visual aide you may or may not have noticed, the 3D Chain item in a Profile Style.  When you create alignments, they are 2D objects, so in a 3D view with a surface, you see the alignment down below at zero elevation.

If you create a profile for the alignment, either from a surface or a design profile, you are adding that Z value, the elevation data.  You can create a profile view but what about visualizing the alignment in 3D with the additional profile information? 

Visual Tracking between Alignment and Profile

Hopefully, you all enjoyed Brian’s video sneak peeks at the 2010 Ribbon.  We have a few more of these videos in the works for different features in the next few weeks.  We are really psyched about the upcoming release and I’m sure you will be too! 

Today, I am going to show you a quick tip to help you track a station between your Alignment and Profile/Section View.  It is not mentioned in the Help Menu, so unless someone has shown you this, you may not even know about it! 

Using the ShowDrawingTips variable will turn on a display-only graphic that creates a tracking line on your Alignment as you move your mouse along the Profile.  It also works in reverse.  Move your mouse along the Alignment and you will see a tracking line at that corresponding station on your Profile View.

Try this out and hopefully you find this useful during your designing.  Below are the three variables that relate to this feature.  These are drawing-specific, so set them in your Template if this is something you will use in the future.

ShowDrawingTips – turns drawing tips on for the current viewport only
ShowDrawingTipsFull – turns on drawing tips for all viewports
HideDrawingTips – turns drawing tips off comletely

Enjoy!