You may receive an ESRI Shapefile collection from a GIS user for a data source in generating a surface. This is typically a ShapeFile Type 1 (Point) or Type 2 (Polyline) which contains the XY values in the .SHP file, along with the elevations in a field of the associated .DBF file.
You may have noticed that when you try to copy named objects in Civil3D (or use the same name) that it will append a (1) to the name. What you might not have noticed is that if the string case of the named object varies, Civil3D will let you create what we consider to be a duplicated name !
We sure that by now everyone has heard about the deadly Corona virus. One natural response is “how close is it to me”. As it turns out, Johns Hopkins University has utilized (as of February 11, 2020) ArcGIS to produce a nearly real time map.
There are times within every project where something (or many things) can gum up the works and slow your group’s productivity. The question is how prepared you are tor them in advance and how you react when they do happen. When you hit a snag and one or more team members end up spending hours doing repetitive tasks, do you dare bill for all that time?
When gravity and moisture begins to work on steep slopes (disturbed or natural) the results are often less than optimal and slides occur. This can present the need to install anchor bolts and plates going from the loose surface to a more stable rock strata underneath. Boreholes can help determine the location of the stable strata, but from the surface it’s not readily apparent how far (on a given slope) you will need to drill to reach the stable member. Read More →
When Autodesk first introduced the Set Location tool (on the Insert tab) in 2016 we briefly experimented with it, thought it to be confusing at best and ignored it. It was a couple years later when someone sent us a drawing started this way that we determined it to be dangerous at the least.
November 4th, 2016 was a day to remember, as Autodesk had just released a 16.2 revision to Civil3D that provided what initially appeared to be some useful improvements to the Civil3D API (Application Programming Interface). A couple years before (11-29-2014) we had requested several improvements to the API to allow the creation and editing of FeatureLines on a level similar to polylines.
Sometimes when you receive a drawing, the contents can often be far from what you need, but you have no choice but to make the best of it. Such is case when (one instance) Civil3D users have moved labels away from the point, exported to AutoCAD then exploded the resulting anonymous blocks.
The list of file formats that CAD users need to deal with never seems to stop growing. For a long time the ESRI Shapefile was pretty much the exclusive format from ESRI users but it was always an export from the GIS. Now users find themselves receiving folders of content with the folder having a .GDB (GeoDatabase) extension.
In mapping environments, the problem occurs when you receive a drawing that has not been properly assigned a coordinate system. Without a proper system assigned it’s nearly impossible to merge data from other systems or view the project in tools like Google Earth. A glance at the coordinates indicate large numbers that should reflect a known system, not random coordinates.