When we were approached to add a Catchment Report tool to our Civil3D tools package, we were pessimistic at first, since the API exposes very little about catchment objects. However, if there’s one thing we have plenty of it’s determination and after some experimentation we found a way to collect the necessary data. The results turned out better than we initially hoped.
A common request in Civil3D is the ability to add station and offset values to CogoPoints placed along an alignment. Since this is not a built-in ability we approached the problem and found a very good way to do it. Also, since Civil3D users expect dynamic results, we added reactors so that if the points are moved, the station offset values update instantly.
It’s usually easy enough to draw a coordinate grid on your project in the current coordinate system. But what if you need to draw a latitude longitude or other coordinate system grid. The lines and labels aren’t ortho anymore nor is the spacing the same (or even consistent).
If you receive a drawing from a Civil3D user, there is a possibility it contains CogoPoints that appear locked. You can’t move them, you can’t rotate them, etc. Since you don’t have the Survey Database you can’t unlock them like the original creator did. If this happens to you, read on.
Like a lot of things in Civil3D, it is possible but not easy to do. This post is an attempt to provide a step-by-step procedure on how to add additional properties to AeccCogoPoints.
The ESRI Shapefile is a common exchange format with GIS systems and users often receive .SHP files representing contours. However, most of the time the elevation data is not stored on the shapefile geometry, instead it’s a column in the associated .DBF file. This typically leads to multiple steps having to import then do processes to read the attached data to elevate them properly, so why not do it all in one step.
The process of importing contours from shapefiles is actually a two step process, since the results from Autodesk’s MAPIMPORT command does not elevate the resulting polylines. This is a step-by-step procedure on how to take a shapefile of contours to elevated polylines in AutoCAD (Map/Civil3D).
Sometimes things that should be simple turn out to be (at best) difficult to do in CAD engines. For example the need to draw text along linear objects such as lines, arcs, polylines, etc. Long street names are a good example, if there isn’t a long straight segment for a regular (but rotated) text, what’s left to do.
Legends are a standard inclusion on any civil/survey drawing. A table to describe the graphic symbols and even linetypes are needed. The question is when these table are generated and how. Some users wait until the project is nearly complete then manually draw the tables. Revisions may introduce new symbols that can’t be forgotten. There has to be a better way.
Harvests multiple drawing extents and properties (DWGPROPS), creates output drawings or reports. Export to Google Earth (KML) with preview thumbnail or web ready reports (HTM) and more.