Civil 3D – 2010 PDF Overlay

Did you know you can overlay a PDF? Not like an image, but vectored data.  Yes siree boys and girls, you can do it, and without Raster Design.

The client wanted to control a slope, and the architect sent over a snippet of what they thought would work, in PDF.  I’d like to get the thing close to what they intended, and I don’t want to wait for a DWG file.  This example does not require anything better than a quick glance from across the room, but I’m sure you can picture something more deserving.

 

If the need is bad enough, we might overlay an image, and fight it in, hoping that the proportions match and there are enough references.  A PDF however is vectored (coming from a dwg plot), and will give us OSNAPS. 

Attach

Use the Civil 3D Attach from the ribbon’s Insert panel.  A dialog appears allowing the selection of the files to be attached.  Change the file type to PDF, and navigate to your reference.

Once you select the file, the rest is like inserting an image, setting insertion point an scale.

Then I used the building and parking to align and rescale the image properly.  Look a the match along the middle of the image. 

Osnaps

The attached PDF will allow referenced Osnaps.  Notice in the image the tooltip indicates a ‘PDF (approximate): Endpoint’. NICE !!  Now I can trace over the changes I need to incorporate quickly with some polylines and osnaps.

Civil 3D – Google Earth v5 problems

8/14/2009

If you have tried installing Google Earth 5 recently, you may have run into some problem.  I did, and it led me on a wild goose chase that ended at the ‘Being Civil’ blog.  The article noted scaling problems when inserting images via the Civil 3D Google Image link.

The Being Civil Blog image article

The article explains that the current download version (5.0.11733.9347) is bugged, but points to a previous version (5.0.11337.1968) and says that it should work properly.

I did a Google search for “Google Earth 5.0.11337.1968“ and got numerous results.  Be Aware!!! Most still downloaded from the Google Earth site current release.

I found the Google release url…  Google Earth 5.0 (5.0.11337.1968) from Google

After installing I confirmed the version number; I got the same results!

Time for a major version change

I found a link on Google to the previous Major revision: 4.3…Google Earth 4.3 (4.3.7284.3916) from Google (Later I found a message from Jason Hickey discussing the merits of 4.3)

I installed it, and verified the version number; uuuh same result

Test Bed C3D 09 and GE 4.3

I ambushed one of my associates, who has been using Google 4.3 with Hypack.  I had him mock up the same 2 overlapping images, and link them into Civil 09.  Exact same result.

More Research

I went shopping to find out what gives.  Discussion groups were my next stop.  I found a discussion that referred to the ‘Being Civil’ blog (again), with a different article from February.  It discussed surfacing, and after GE 4.2 the surfacing import was altered, and a reduced amount of data being exported to C3D.  They said if this is a problem, we should go back to 4.2.  Well, I’ve tried all the other versions, why not 4.2.  I know it’s not a surfacing error, but maybe they are linked.  They were kind enough to provide a link:

Google Earth 4.2 (4.2.0205) from filehippo  BTW….The same site has links to ALL the versions!

No Joy!! 

I did the same overlap test at a different region in Vegas and even worse results.

Conclusions

I wish I had some conclusions. I can’t say what the answer is.  It just does not work properly.

All things said, I have not been keeping up with the “Google Earth gotta have latest version” push.  It’s a nice tool, but I don’t use it every day.  I cannot say when things went wrong, but I don’t remember a problem in 2008.  2009 was a blur, and all I did was study for Certifications.

I might be inclined to blame my poor abused machine, but my associate received the same results from a different version of both Civil and Google. 

If you are having the same trouble, please post here so I can determine a pattern.  Then maybe we can get Justin and Jason will to do a little more research for us.

Civil 3D – Trojan Cleanup

8/10/2009

Autodesk posted a writeup on the trojan we mentioned earlier.  There is a script and some search and destroy. 

Knowledge Base instructions

Civil 3D – 2010 Update 1

updated 8/82009

The Civil 3D 2010 Update 1 is available at the Autodesk service release site. 

I have updated and corrected the links for both Civil and Civil 3D, but the “…Autodesk product could not be located…” error is still there, no matter where the service pack was received from.  If anyone else is having the same problem, please post your issues here for the community.

Autodesk Civil Service Release site

Civil 2010 Update 1

Civil 3D 2010 Update 1

There is a wide array of fixes.  I noticed a lot of spiral geometry fixes, 2009 issues, and profile view fixes as well.  I have selected 1 item from each category listed in the README accompanying the installation.  There were at least 60 items:

General – AutoCAD Civil no longer closes unexpectedly when you run the LIST command on AutoCAD Land Desktop entities.

Alignments – Sample lines of an alignment that is a data referenced object no longer disappear when you use the RECOVER command to open the drawing containing such alignment.

Civil 3D – 2010 Write Block and Point Groups

7/29/2009

Transferring Civil entities by ‘Write Block’ has always been tricky.  We used to have to decide which we wanted more of; Re-layering all the points by copy paste and then erase the unwanted data; or exporting out the sometimes painful selection, and then use the description keys to re-layer.  Point Groups were just left out of the equation.

In 2010, the process is much easier.  Copy paste is a dream. The interesting thing is that the parent Point Group is transferred with the block.  ONLY the parent group.  All others are left behind. 

At first I was a bit miffed, but then I saw the possibilities to skim off some of the excess.  Just think, we don’t have to transfer as much garbage.  If you are asking “what garbage”, the answer would be the decision to keep 3-10 megs of garbage that we cannot get rid of without surgery; if we block out the section taking with it the corridors, pipe networks, points we will either crash, or be fighting dependencies and errors for days.  When the job was just a permit submittal, you Save As and fight a 10 meg sketch just to get it done.

In the example above, I needed all RELATED groups, but not ALL the groups.  I simply dropped the All Points group to the bottom; the points fell back into the organizational groups.  Now Civil can see the remaining related groups, and the application transfers them beautifully…

.. allowing me to leave a lot of trash behind.