Civil 3D – 2010 Publish DWF

I have always been a huge fan of DWF publishing.  I found a few new things, and thought I’d make a few notes.

Batch Plot

Selecting Batch Plot activates the publish dialog, and feeds it all the current drawings that are open.  You get same publishing interface as the ‘Select Tabs, right click and publish’ that we were used to, but here you are not limited to selected layouts.

Publish

The publishing is similar to the previous version, however there are a few differences.

 

Civil 3D – 2010 where the …. did it go?

Ok.  The interface is nice.  I have had the pleasure for years of using a context based interface in Inventor.  Civil 3D had had a slow migration of this in some parts of the application as well.  There are times when, no matter how nice the interface is, you just can’t find something.

Here’s a good example.  The edit menu->FIND.  I used this a great deal to search and replace information.  I use some * and keywords to index things in borders and text paragraphs when I don’t want sheet sets.  Find will replace the keywords at the tail end of the job, when I have more information.

It’s not there.  What gives.  Here is a nice help feature to get you going.

Where Is My Command?

Go to help, and in the huge list of options (apparently they were prepared for a lot of questions…. I wonder, maybe they checked out the forums.

Civil 3D – 2010 Setup

Well, guess what came in the mail from Santa. 

There were no surprises during the installation, but install configuration contained a bit more options than expected.  There were a great deal of path settings, of which I suspect were some of the program data options.  I left everything default except running all my Autodesk installs to the c:\Autodesk\ path as usual (instead of the c:\program files\ path).  As I suspected, everything installed to the locations I had become accustomed to.  If you don’t like where you pipe catalogs, etc are being installed, you may want to make some path changes now.

Registration

For what ever reason, my registration wigged out. 

I opted to try the website registration option.  It took me to a panel, which used my subscription login.  Once in, the registration interface asked for OS, and my serial number.  Then it wigged out again.

Civil 3D – Point Style File Size Issue

If you hadn’t noticed (I didn’t), the size of your Civil 3D 2009 drawing will change depending on style factors. 

A buddy of mine questioned me yesterday about some substantial differences related to the size of the drawing he was using, and noted that while he saved his site plan with trees (point styles) on, the drawing was twice the size.

I just tested it.  I took a huge site plan, and saved it with trees on, and saved it with all point styles overridden to standard.  Sure enough, I got a 30% reduction in size.

It appears that the application does not treat the Point style blocks as it treats normal blocks.  Normal blocks are place holders, an entity shell that contains the standard DXF table entries for location, scale…….etc, and then upon regen, it goes to the block table, and pulls the information to display it, where the place holder says it should be.  Instead of saving 40k 1000 times over, it stores 1 40k reference, and stores 1k 1000 times. 

However, for point styles, it appears as though the application is treating the drawing as if it had 1000 different entities, and is storing all the reference information at each point location.

If anyone has additional input, please comment. Christopher, James, Dana, that means you!

Autodesk 2010 Products available for download…

….that is if you are a subscription member.

Log in with your contract username:

Link to Autodesk Subscriptions

If you are not a subscription member, check out some of the benefits:

Subscription Benefits

Company Subscription yes, Login No…

Is your company a subscription member, but you can’t login? You need to be added to the subscription contract contact members list.  Contact the company Subscription Manager.

“But I get the runaround when I talk with anyone here about the contract site…”  or  “no one will tell me who the Contract Manager is…”

Well, try this:

You could contact your company reseller, and tell them you have no idea who the company subscription contract manager is, and are desperately trying to get on the subscription site.  They will tell you who the company contact is.  I can’t tell you how to get the contract number out of them, because…well it might lead to fraudulent activities in the online community.

Or

You could contact the Autodesk Subscription help, and they can send you the contact name and email address and a notification to get added to the magic list,  that you can then forward to the Contract Manager.  Then you may stand outside his/her door until:

a) they acknowledge your desire, and agree to add you to the list (20 seconds of effort)

b) you walk away in frustration after being ignored

or

c) you are fired for wasting company time.

Good luck with this.

You have got to be kidding me!

I am still caught up with doing my part to keep my company afloat, as well as keeping the quality of my training materials up, and have been snowed under.  I haven’t forgotten about you.

City of Valparaiso, Florida pursues suit against USAF

You would not believe some of the things going on locally.  While it isn’t nationally relevant, it could become regional. 

To give you some insight, this amazing beauty is coming in to Eglin today!

This is how the Valparaiso City Officials thank the adjoining counties:

“…city officials promised to fight any Air Force decision that would use Eglin’s existing runway 1-9 for its soon-to-arrive F-35s.
That promise came to fruition Monday when Valparaiso officially filed its second BRAC-related lawsuit against the Air Force in U.S. District Court.” -NWF Daily News

Those opposed realize the jets will but a financial boom, but they say it’s not about the money.  It’s about noise and the quality of life. Edie S. says, “please be considerate of the values of our house and the values of our children."

Hey Edie, what’s the quality of life when 10,000 people are standing around your neighborhood begging for food.  If you don’t like liberties, get out of the USA, and if you don’t like loud airplanes, don’t live next to an Air Force Installation.  F-15’s have been here since before I joined the USAF, and are loud as hell. God Bless America.

I live right in the flight path of one of the runways. You don’t tell the Air Force to build a new runway somewhere else.  Hell, I want those mothers coming straight over head, balls to the wall. 

If any of the officials at Eglin and the USAF can read this, know that we would be glad if you just moved the loud people away, and replace them with F-35s.  Keep up the good work.

If I could get the opportunity, I’d get my old uniform, and stand at attention on the end of the runway as that first bird arrives.  The city officials of Valparaiso, and the whiny bastards that are financially solvent enough to not need a job, can kiss my oshiri.

Civil 3D – Clearing Object Dependencies

I was adding a large XML EG surface to a quick job, and noticed the usual XML garb brought in.  After deleting some of them I ran into Object Dependencies (because I approached it in the wrong order), and thought I’d write this for the newbies.

Various objects in Civil 3D are dependent on others.  Styles are included in this scenario as well.  This is a good thing.  These dependencies make the world go round.  Surfaces are dependent on Point data and Feature lines.  Profiles are dependent on Alignments, and The alignment is dependent on the Visual Alignment style.  It makes the object oriented world go round.

The downside is when you need to delete something, and it just won’t go, in fact, the option to delete is just not there.   Like below:

There is no delete options.  The reason is that this Object is being referenced by another.  In this case we’d need to know what that is.  unfortunately, there is no good way to determine that except to plow through the design in the Prospector.

Hey Autodesk, how about “Go To Dependency” or similar type function!

Anyhow, in this case a surface is using the object.

Here, once we delete the Point Group from the Surface Definitions, the Dependency will clear, and I can delete the group.

Civil 3D – Point Style Default

I thought I had something on this, but I couldn’t find it.

One reader was having trouble with the default points.  He wanted to do some specific point styling for a specific purpose, but regularly, and to that I offer to following possibilities:

Best Solution –> Description Keys!

Set a permanent Key and use FG perhaps as the description code, and the application will assign the Point Style and Point Label Style as specified in the keys.  This is hard coded to the point.

Next –> Point Groups

Us FG as the description code and crate a Group up at the top to trap all FG codes, and specify the Style and Label Style there.  This is only as permanent as the group remains at the top of the list.

Lastly –> Point Defaults

Set the current default Point and Label style to what you want in the Create Point command settings.  Then all the points you set will default to the FG style.

 

Subscription Renewal – Musical Chairs and Subscriptions?

Recently I got a tip that I could drop some seats off of my subscription, and pick them up for pennies on the dollar.

Hmm… One of the vendors really wants my renewals.  Good!  I think I just found out how to get past this year, and get a decent deal too.

Well, if there is a good angle, someone will figure it out pretty quickly, and plug the hole.  Starting March 16th, to pick up a dropped subscription seat will now run you 50% cost.

That scenario will no longer work for me (which is what the mothership expected).  So much for the bennies I was trying to pull together, as well my Christmas bonus and the petty cash for Vegas. 

If you are renewing, and planning on a little musical chairs with the subscription seats, you may want to talk with your VAR or ISV.

News 4/7/2009

Wow!  It has been a busy 3 weeks.

Freak out for 1 week.

Work non stop the next.

And try to plug all the holes for another.

If you have submitted comments and don’t see the discussion I apologize.  I’m getting through it with my emails, but I will get it out there.  I get a lot of spam comments, and have to weed them out for the discussions.

Inventor 2009 Essentials

The new Complete Essentials level vBook has been completed and released to my publisher, and subsequently Autodesk. 

I was already Authoring the intermediate level vBook series “Inventor 2009”, volume by volume, when my Publisher said, how’d you like to have some fun?  I need a Basic, all inclusive single volume, for beginners and struggling professionals.  Oh and I want it now.” So here we are.

The information in this vBook begins at the Beginner’s level, and moves the viewer through some Intermediate topics.  The detail is not as intricate as the intermediate level 2009 series, allowing me to cover a lot more ground.

The information is all there, so I am continuing to go through everything and tie up any loose ends, and add content until it becomes counter-productive. 

Leave for AU 2009

I had to use all my leave due to the urgent nature of this particular vBook, so I have no leave to AU 2009.  That would suck!  Work this hard for something related, and have no leave left to go to AU.  All you brilliant people out there, someone post a solution to this one.

Inventor 2009 – 2D Environment

The publisher restructured while I was busy, and I found my first vBook link pointing to a Revit Book.  I like Revit and all, pretty cool stuff, but not what my link was supposed to point to.  They apparently have the new links out.

Inventor 2009 – 2D Environment link

I will continue to add content, and get back into the swing of things here, so please be patient.