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Tapping Into Civil 3D
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

About Me
Match Maker
Name: Matt Castelli
So I was playing around in C3D '09 and stumbled upon something Location: Fort Worth, Texas, United
States
pretty sweet. Match Properties now works on object styles! No special
View my complete profile
command needed, just click on the paint brush or type in MA at the
command line and use like normal!
Civil Inspired Blogs

Selected northern alignment first...
Civil 3D - Paving the Way
Angel's Civil 3D Thoughts
Previous Posts
Match Maker
Natural Ground! Report!
Right Click, Transparency
Southern alignment now matches. Not Everything Flows Downhill!
It's OK to be Materialistic
Adding LDT commands in C3D
Critical Labels
Marking Critical Points
Archives
June 2006
I have not had any luck getting label styles to match, but I'll be
September 2006
looking forward to that feature in future releases. November 2006
March 2007
posted by Matt Castelli at 7:04 AM | 0 comments May 2008
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Site Feed
Natural Ground! Report!
Nothing to report Sir!!
That is what you'll notice too when you try and run the Profile-
Incremental Stationing Report.
The VBA report is supposed to have the ability to list "PVI stations and
elevations of the selected existing or finished ground profile at regular
intervals, at critical geometry points, and crest and sag curve points."
However, any profile created from a surface does not show up in the
list of profiles in the drawing.
http://tappingintoc3d.blogspot.com/ 29/11/2008
Proof that there are profiles in the drawing.
Come to find out the VBA routine only works on finished ground
profiles, contrary to what the dialog box tells us. So we need to figure
out how to get a FG profile to match our existing ground profile, with
out tracing ;-)
It's actually pretty simple.

Step 1.) Create an assembly and add a marked point to it.
Step 2.) Create a corridor; use the alignment that the surface profile
was created from as the baseline, use the surface profile as the
profile, and use the simple assembly from step one. Your frequency
really shouldn't matter so long as you have the option "At Profile
Geometry Points" on.
Step 3.) Now that you have your corridor built...
Extract a profile from the corridor
C3D will prompt you to select a feature line; this should be easy since
there is only one! After picking on the lone feature line, give the new
profile an appropriate name and style.
After clicking OK, you can go to your profile view and verify that the
new profile exactly matches the original.
Now, go back and run the report and you should see the extracted
profile ready to have a report run on it.
-Enjoy!!
p.s. Looking ahead to '08, the same procedure will be necessary.
posted by Matt Castelli at 3:30 PM | 1 comments
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Right Click, Transparency
Scott and I were at a local surveying firm today showing the ins and
outs of C3D to some new users. Obviously, being a survey firm, they
would need to know how to draw a line by direction so we showed
them the "Bearing Distance" button on the transparent command
toolbar. One of the users then asked, "Can I get to that with a right
click?" Makes sense...almost everything else can be accessed through
a right click. However, out-of-the-box c3D does not allow you to
access the transparent commands with a right click. But, just because
it doesn't come OOTB, doesn't mean we can't add it in!
Type CUI at the command line to bring up the Customize User

Interface. Expand Shortcut Menus and locate "Context menu for
command mode"
Once you've located the menu, right click and add a sub menu.
In the lower left corner of the CUI dialog box there is a section call
"Command List:" this is where we will locate the commands to drag
into our new sub-menu. In order to help find the commands, sort the
commands by Source. After sorting, scroll down until you find "Angle
Distance", this will be the beginning of the transparent command list.
Now just left pick on a command and drag it under the new sub-
menu. Add as many or few commands as you like.
When your all done, you should have something that looks like this.
-Enjoy!
Monday, November 06, 2006
Not Everything Flows Downhill!
Water Lines, Gas Lines, Electrical Conduit and everything else that
doesn't have to flow down hill can be a bit tricky to show using pipes
in C3D. That doesn't mean it's not possible though. Follow along to
see how.
I start out by drawing a polyline across my surface. This represents

the centerline alignment of my water line.
Turn the polyline into a feature line.
I like to keep my drawings organized so I choose to create an "H20-1"

site to place the feature line in. Style is not important and erasing the
existing entities will not affect the end result.
Project the feature line to the Surface.
Notice now that we have quite a few vertices in our feature line, in
fact, too many! We need to "weed" out some of those vertices to
prevent our pipe network from being a bunch of little pipe segments.
To accomplish this, we will use the "Weed vertices" button on our
feature line tool bar. I choose to set the criteria to %0.60, you may
find that a different percentage or a combination of angle and
distance yields a better result for your situation.
Select the Feature line, right click, and go to the elevation editor. This
is where you will use the Lower Incrementally button to set the depth
of your water line. In my case, 4' below natural ground.*
*The feature line will define the center of the pipe. So, since I lowered
my feature line 4' and I am building a 12" water line, I will have 3 1/2'
of cover.
The next step is to create a parts list from which our network will be
created. On the pipes tab add waterever pipe material and size of pipe
that suits your design need. If you can't find the material you like,
look here. On the structures tab DO NOT add any structures. Simply
modify the style and the rules being used.
The rules being applied to the pipes and structures are key in this
process. Here is how they should be set up.
Pipes:
No, there is no mistake here. I've actual created a rule set that has no
rules.
Structures:
Before we turn our feature line into a pipe network we need to edit
our "CreateNetworkFromObject" command setting.
There are three setting that need to be adjusted:

Default parts List, Pipe Default Rules, Structure Default Rules
With the settings set...we can now turn our feature line into a
pipenetwork
After selecting the feature line the below dialog box will show up.
Notice that the option to choose a structure has been grayed out. Also
be sure NOT to select a surface and make sure "Use vertex
elevations" is NOT checked.
At first glance, it appears that we have now placed structures at all

the remaining vertices....
But, as we roll the model up into 3-D, we see that indeed, no

structures were placed in our network
At this point we have completed laying out our network, but we still
need to get it into a profile. And what's the first step of creating a
profile? Well, we need an alignment, so let's create an alignment from
network parts.
Choose the first "structure", then the last "structure", and then hit
enter to confirm the selection.
Well organized sites and thought out names for objects and styles
make it easy to breeze through dialog boxes like this. Make sure to
check "Create profile and profile view"
Add the Natural ground surface, and then draw it in a profile view.
Adjust the profile view to your liking.
Place the profile view somewhere in your drawing and you should
have something that looks like this!
The final step is to clean up the plan view. Browse to the structures of
the H20-1 network in the prospector. In the preview pane select all
the structures, move your cursor to the heading of the styles column,
right click and select edit. Select and more appropriate style, one that
does not use a block in plan or profile view.
Looking back at the plan view you can see that everything looks as
expected.
Look for some upcoming posts as we take this waterline profile a little
closer towards a construction document.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
It's OK to be Materialistic
Reinforced Concrete
Corrugated Steel
ABS Plastic
Ductile Iron
PVC
The above are the materials that C3D gives you to describe the pipes
inside your pipe network. However, as most of you already know, in
the real world we use a much wider variety of materials in our
projects.
Current workarounds to having your labels display properly, even

though the actual material of the pipe is incorrect:
1.) Edit the description of the pipe inside of your part list.
Then you can simply pull the description component inside your your
label.
2.) Hard code, or type in a piece of text inside your label.
Both of the above ways are not linked to the pipe model. So if the
material or pipe size where to somehow change, said change would
not be reflected in the label.
So how can you add more materials to your current list and have
them update dynamically. Easy...just type in a new material!!! That's
it!
The below process also steps you through how to create a new part
family to better organize your new materials.
Step 1. Launch partbulder. Type it in or select it from the pipes pull

down menu
Step 2. Select an existing part family to modify.
Step 3. Save part family as..
Step 4. Rename the new family
Step 5. Edit the calculations
Step 6. Notice the name that is being used in the PrtSN (Part Size
Name) Column.
Double click on one of the cells under the PrtSN column to bring up
the Calculation Assistant. Here you can edit the name from PVC to
whatever, in this case HDPE.
End result:
Step 7. Validate and save the part family
Step 8. Create a new parts list and add a family.
Step 9. Choose the freshly created part family.
Step 10. Add a part size
Step 11. Now we should be at a dialog box that looks familiar to

everyone. This is where we choose our part size and it's also where
we make sure our parts are going to referencing the correct material
(See Dana's blog here). But what if we want to use a material other
than the five listed...no problem, just click inside the cell and type in a
new pipe material.
After choosing your pipe size(s), OK out of the dialog box.
End result:
So what does this mean? I no longer have to pull the description of

my pipe in my label (which isn't even possible when dealing with a
pipe band), instead I can pull the Dia. and Material and achieve the
same result. Except this time, the label is dynamic to part size and
material.
Final Product:
-Enjoy
p.s. So yeah, I know it's been a while since I posted. I will try to post
a little more regularly from now on to make it worth people's time to
check out my posts.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Adding LDT commands in C3D
If you have visited the discussions groups at all, you've heard that
complaint/comment more than once. Well, there is simply no way to
bring forward those commands. However, one can easily transfer over
the toolbars and drop down menus from LDT into C3D. Once there, a
quick modification of the macro inside of the CUI will have your
menus and toolbars looking like LDT and working with the power of
C3D. Follow along to see how.
As an example I've chosen the "Terrain: Edit Surface" toolbar. Why?

Because almost every button on this toolbar has an equivalent
command in C3D. Not every toolbar or pull down menu will work as
nice, but if some of these basic commands can be brought over, it just
might be that crutch that some of the more "hardened" end users
need to make the transition.
Start by firing up LDT and going to the CUI. Click on the transfer tab.
On the right hand side open up the civil.cui located in ?:\Documents
and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007
\enu\Support. Once the civil.cui file is open its a matter of drag and
drop from one cui (land) to the other (civil).
Now that we have the toolbar transferred from LDT to C3D, we can
close down LDT and open up the CUI in C3D. Once in the CUI, browse
in the toolbars until you find the "Terrain: Edit Surface" toolbar and
expand it. By clicking on one of the commands under the toolbar you
will populate the properties display pane. Here you will see the
various fields we will need to edit.
The first button on the toolbar is "Import 3D lines". In LDT, it was

necessary for one to import the 3d lines prior to editing the surface.
In C3D it is only necessary for the current surface style to be
displaying the triangles and/or points. I have chosen to populate this
button with the EditSurfaceStyle command. This will allow the user
to quickly access the surface style dialog box and turn on the
triangles. EditSurfaceProperties would also be an acceptable
command, so long as a surface style for editing has already been
created. Wondering where I'm coming up will all these commands?
Open up help and type in "Surfaces Command Reference", you will be
given a result that contains a majority of the surface commands in
C3D.
To edit the macro click on the contents of the macro in the display
pane, then click on the ellipse.
The macro should be composed as:
Notice how I've renamed the button and changed it's description.
The only thing we are missing now are the icon .BMPs. This is easier
said than done, since all the .bmps are contained in a .dll instead of
"free floating" .bmps like in years past. That's where Resource
HackerTM comes into play. " Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility
to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit
Windows executables and resource files (*.res)." What that means to
us, is the ability to extract all the nested bmps out of the .dll for use
in our new toolbar and upcoming drop-down menu.
After downloading and extracting Resource HackerTM, start the

program and open up the land.dll. You can find it here, ?:\Documents
and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Autodesk\Autodesk Land
Desktop 2007\R17.0\enu\Support. If your worried about messing up
LDT, just make a copy for your use on the desktop. Once the file is
open go to the Action drop down menu and Save All resources...
Choose a destination folder for all the soon-to-be extracted .bmps and
the ".rc" file. Upon browsing to the chosen folder, you will find ~ 1630
bitmaps. They will be named "bitmap_1.bmp, bitmap_2.bmp,
bitmap_3.bmp, etc." Decoding all these bitmaps is what the .rc file is
for. Open up the .rc file with notpad and you will see something like
this...
If we go back to the CUI, we can see which icons we are looking for.
In this case "tred3dl" for the small image, "tred3dl2" for the large
image. A quick search inside the notepad document will help you
locate the various images. "tred3dl" happens to be
"Bitmap_570.bmp". Edit the "Bitmap_570.bmp" file and rename
the toolbar...I never said it was going to be fun or easy ;-)
After renaming the bmp, you will need to remap the icon location thru
the cui. To keep things well organized, put all the renamed .bmps in
the Icons folder located ?:\Documents and
Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2007
\enu\Support\Icons
At this point, we have completed the process for the first button on
the "Terrain: Edit Surface" toolbar. You will need to repeat this
process for the remainder of the buttons.
Here is the list of macros I used to finish up the transfer:
Add Surface Line...........................^c^c^cAddSurfaceLine
Delete Surface Line......................^c^c^cDeleteSurfaceLine
Flip Face.........................................^c^c^cEditSurfaceSwapEdge
Add Surface Point.........................^c^c^cAddSurfacePoint
Delete Surface Point......................^c^c^cDeleteSurfacePoint
Edit Surface Point..........................^c^c^cEditSurfacePoint
Add Breaklines...............................^c^c^cAddSurfaceBreaklines
(^org. name of Nondestructive Breaklines)
Minimize Flat Surface Faces........^c^c^cMinimizeSurfaceFlatAreas
Raise/Lower Surface.....................^c^c^cRaiseLowerSurface
Paste Surface..................................^c^c^cEditSurfacePaste
Surface Boundaries.........................^c^c^cAddSurfaceBoundaries
And when everything is said and done...
Enjoy!
As always, comments are welcome.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Critical Labels
Picking up were I left off yesterday, let's label all these critical points.
Before I do though, I'd like to thank Angel for posting about my new
blog. Thanks!
Labeling Critical Points

None of the out of the box labels really work the way I would like
them to, but that doesn't mean that AutoDesk didn't provided the
tools to make a label like I want!
Let's start by making some new expressions. No, it's not a mistake, I
am making the expressions under the Depth label category, even
though I will eventually be labeling a station and elevation. Why?
Because I like the look and feel of the depth label, it just doesn't label
what I want it to...out of the box.
Two expressions need to be created. One for the station of the

selected point and one for the elevation of said point. Pay close
attention to the format that the results will displayed as. Now is a
good time to extend your cad standards and naming convention to
expressions.
Station Expression:
Elevation Expression:
Now that we have the expressions built, let's combine then into a
label that we can use.
First, create a new label:
Now, let's format the label to take advantage of the new expressions:
After creating the new label style, it's time to label the critical points
on our subject profile.
Profiles>Add Profile View Labels...
Now select the newly composed label:
Adding the labels to the profile view is a breeze now that we have
nodes to snap to (if you don't remember putting nodes on the profile,
re-read yesterday's post). Simply snap onto the node of the various
points and drag in the direction you want the label.
As a final cleanup, change the marker style of the "CR" point group to
"none"
Now we have labeled all the curb returns, intersections, and any other
critical stations without offseting or drawing any line in our profile
view. Also, there was no need to label a single critical station in plan
view for future reference!
Enjoy!
posted by Matt Castelli at 8:01 AM | 1 comments
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Marking Critical Points
Currently in C3D there is no way to label the elevation of a profile by
simply selecting a station or keying one in. Instead, you must enter in
both the station and the elevation in order for the station and
elevation label to work. This becomes even more problematic, as
osnaps like intersection to not work on a profile. So, that leaves you
with a couple of options; 1.) trace over the FG profile with a line or
polyline, 2.) copy the profile and explode it twice. I'm sure that there
are other ways to label the finished ground at a specific station; VBA
comes to mind, but nothing really "out of the box".
Here in Texas our roads are parabolic and we design off the top of
curb, so this step-by-step guide might need to be tweaked for the
roads in your region.
This will be a 2 part write up. Today's guide is a walk-thru in marking

critical points in your profile view.
Marking The Profile
Start with laying out your finished ground profile
Next, create the assembly of your liking. Notice how I have left the
curb subassembly in the assembly that is used to model the
intersection. This can be removed later for final modeling, but must
remain present for the time being.
Create a corridor from the FG profile and assemblies, but make sure
you create a surface from the curb link.
It is probally a good idea to throw a boundary on the surface too.
Next, we will add points to the profile view to mark the various critical
points I went ahead and created a point group called "CR" (curb
return/critical points) and assigned the point group a marker style

consisting of a custom marker, a line in this case.
Points>Create points>Miscellaneous:manual
Place points with the transparent command: Profile Station and

Elevation from Plan
After selecting the transparent command you will be prompted to

select a profile view. Select the subject profile view. Next, C3D will
want to know what surface to pull elevations from. This is where you
will select the corridor surface composed of the curb links. Finally,
C3D will prompt you to select a point. This is where you can select
every curb return, intersection, or critical station along the corridor
alignment. No need to "pre-label" the critical stations inorder to
manually key them in.
Next, update the point group, CR in this Case.
After updating, you will notice that your profile view has been marked
with points at the critical stations you have choosen and they are at
the correct elevation!!
Enjoy!!
p.s. Being as this is my first attempt at a blog or a write up, any and
all comments and suggestions are welcome.
posted by Matt Castelli at 9:07 AM | 5 comments

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Tapping Into Civil 3D Página 1 de 18

BUSCAR BLOG MARCAR BLOG Siguiente blog» Crear un blog | Acceder

Tapping Into Civil 3D

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Civil Inspired Blogs

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Nothing to report Sir!!

Proof that there are profiles in the drawing.

It's actually pretty simple.

Step 3.) Now that you have your corridor built...

Extract a profile from the corridor

p.s. Looking ahead to '08, the same procedure will be necessary.

posted by Matt Castelli at 3:30 PM | 1 comments

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Right Click, Transparency

Type CUI at the command line to bring up the Customize User

posted by Matt Castelli at 4:03 PM | 0 comments

Monday, November 06, 2006

Not Everything Flows Downhill!

I start out by drawing a polyline across my surface. This represents

Turn the polyline into a feature line.

I like to keep my drawings organized so I choose to create an "H20-1"

existing entities will not affect the end result.

Project the feature line to the Surface.

There are three setting that need to be adjusted:

At first glance, it appears that we have now placed structures at all

But, as we roll the model up into 3-D, we see that indeed, no

Adjust the profile view to your liking.

posted by Matt Castelli at 2:01 PM | 5 comments

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Current workarounds to having your labels display properly, even

2.) Hard code, or type in a piece of text inside your label.

Step 1. Launch partbulder. Type it in or select it from the pipes pull

Step 2. Select an existing part family to modify.

Step 3. Save part family as..

Step 4. Rename the new family

Step 5. Edit the calculations

Step 7. Validate and save the part family

Step 8. Create a new parts list and add a family.

Step 9. Choose the freshly created part family.

Step 10. Add a part size

Step 11. Now we should be at a dialog box that looks familiar to

After choosing your pipe size(s), OK out of the dialog box.

So what does this mean? I no longer have to pull the description of

Monday, June 26, 2006

Adding LDT commands in C3D

As an example I've chosen the "Terrain: Edit Surface" toolbar. Why?

The first button on the toolbar is "Import 3D lines". In LDT, it was

pane, then click on the ellipse.

The macro should be composed as:

After downloading and extracting Resource HackerTM, start the

the toolbar...I never said it was going to be fun or easy ;-)

Here is the list of macros I used to finish up the transfer:

Add Surface Line...........................^c^c^cAddSurfaceLine

Delete Surface Line......................^c^c^cDeleteSurfaceLine

Add Surface Point.........................^c^c^cAddSurfacePoint

Delete Surface Point......................^c^c^cDeleteSurfacePoint

Edit Surface Point..........................^c^c^cEditSurfacePoint

Minimize Flat Surface Faces........^c^c^cMinimizeSurfaceFlatAreas

And when everything is said and done...

As always, comments are welcome.

posted by Matt Castelli at 1:54 PM | 1 comments