Test Template 7

Most of the time, you’ll be the one providing the information for a drawing. Sometimes, however, you need your drawing to tell you something. That’s where the Inquiry Tool comes in. The Inquiry Tool is a separate window whose sole purpose is to give you information about things in the drawing. There is a long list of drawing items from which to choose, and beneath each item is a list of things that you can ask about (see figure).

To try the Inquiry Tool, follow these steps (you should haveUser Interface.dwg open from the previous exercise):

The word object is usually considered pretty generic, but in the world of Civil 3D it means something very specific. A Civil 3D object is an intelligent piece of your design model that stores information about itself and has the ability to interact with other objects in the drawing. Another characteristic of a Civil 3D object is that it is affected by a Civil 3D style. A Civil 3D style is a collection of settings that control the appearance and behavior of a Civil 3D object.The relationship between objects and styles is one of several key relationships that you must understand and be able to take advantage of when using Civil 3D. Here are a few examples of Civil 3D objects that you’ll encounter in this book as well as in a production environment:

Each of the objects listed previously can be controlled by styles. For example, surface styles can be used to show a surface in many forms, including contour lines, a 3D grid, a series of arrows pointing downhill, shading representing different elevation ranges, and many more (see Figure 1). In addition to changing the overall appearance of an object, styles can control specific details that differ slightly between similar configurations. For example, in one case there may be surface contours that need to be shown on an existing layer, while in another case the same contours are shown on a proposed layer (see Figure 2). The configuration is the same (contours), but the way that configuration is displayed (which layer) is different between two different styles.

To use styles to change the appearance and behavior of Civil 3D objects, follow these steps:

As you worked through the previous exercise, did you notice that no extra steps were required to update or redraw the surface when a new style was assigned or the style was edited? The effect was immediate—as soon as you modified the assigned style or assigned a different style, the appearance of the surface changed. This is because of a dynamic relationship between the object and its style, a relationship that is honored throughout the software.

The most important type of relationship that you’ll see in this chapter is the one between objects. A typical land development project is a collection of dozens of mini-designs that often tie in to one another. For example, a road is designed first by drawing the 2D path of its centerline, then the proposed changes in elevation along that centerline, and finally the lanes, curbs, and sidewalks extending outward from that centerline. To provide drainage during a rainstorm, ditches must be installed along the sides of the road. The location and depth of these ditches can be traced back through the design process the entire way to the layout of the road centerline. If the layout of the centerline needs to change for some reason, that change must propagate downstream through the design process, ultimately changing the location and depth of one or more ditches.

In Civil 3D, these connections between elements of the design are present regardless of the tool that is used. Before Civil 3D, these connections had to be managed manually by engineers and designers, and every aspect affected by a design change had to be fixed manually. With Civil 3D, these connections can be built into the design by establishing relationships between the road centerline, the roadside ditches, and everything in between.

To see how object relationships are leveraged to make design changes in a drawing, follow these steps:

This simple exercise illustrates the power of relationships between objects. The ease with which you just updated the design may cause you to take the underlying processes for granted; however, there is a lot happening behind the scenes. The following is a general account of the events that took place when you changed the location of the triangular grip:

• The slopes of the lines leading into that triangular grip were changed to match the new location of the grip.
• The parabolic curve geometry at the location of the grip was updated automatically.
• The corridor object, which represents a 3D model of the road, was automatically rebuilt and updated to match the new profile geometry.
• A surface representing the pavement, concrete, and earthen embankment elevations of the corridor was automatically rebuilt.
• The storm drain updated its top elevation to match the surface in the previous step.
• The 3D representation of the storm drain was automatically updated (bottom-right view).
• The profile view representation of the storm drain was automatically updated (top-right view).

A simple grip edit triggered a chain of events that might have taken an hour or more to update manually. In addition to all of this, there were other changes that took place that did not affect the design of the storm drain. This is the power of the Civil 3D dynamic environment. You should know, however, that the existence of these relationships is not necessarily automatic. They have to be considered and at times consciously built into the design by the Civil 3D user.

Panorama is a multipurpose window that is used to show and/or modify many different types of information. It works by displaying a tab for the information that you or the program has called for. For example, the Events tab (also known as the Event Viewer) will show up when Civil 3D needs to tell you something about the drawing. In another example, if you launch the command to edit the geometric details of an alignment, the Alignment Entities tab will appear. As shown in Figure, while Panorama displays information for one task, it also displays tabs for other tasks that you can access with a single click. This enables you to multitask within the same window.

To get a feel for the Panorama window, follow these steps (you should still haveUser Interface.dwg open from the previous exercise):

The drawing area is where you can actually see and “touch” the design model you are creating. The design model is most often viewed from above, referred to as plan view, but it can be viewed from any perspective. For example, because Civil 3D specializes in representing designs as 3D models, you may want to display your model using a 3D view. Figure shows a model in both plan and 3D views.

Think of the command line (see figure) as a “chat window” where you talk with Civil 3D. Nearly everything you do is reported on the command line along with the response from Civil 3D. A response can be a request for more information, reporting of a result, or notification of a problem. It’s good to get into the habit of always watching the command line because it often tells you what to do next. You can also launch commands from the command line, but you will likely find it much easier to use the visual interface provided by the ribbon and other tools.

Think of the Toolspace as the Civil 3D “command center” where all Civil 3D data and settings are laid out in a nice, orderly arrangement. It has several main functions that are represented by the different tabs it can contain. Altogether, the Toolspace can house four tabs: Prospector, Settings, Survey, and Toolbox.

Prospector Tab

Prospector is arguably the most important part of the Civil 3D user interface. As you build your design, Prospector arranges the different components of your design in a tree structure (see figure). Why a tree structure and not just a list of items? Later in this book, you’ll study how Civil 3D creates relationships between different parts of your design. In some ways, this tree structure helps represent some of those relationships as a hierarchy. Another, more practical reason for a tree structure is that it’s an efficient way to show a long list of items in a relatively small area—the branches of the tree can be collapsed to make room to expand other branches.

Another way to think about Prospector is that it arranges your design categorically rather than spatially. In other words, in your drawing area, you might see road centerlines crossing through parcels, which cross through contours, which cross through survey points. Everything is in the right place spatially, but from an organizational standpoint, it’s kind of a mess. Prospector sorts out this mess and puts all of the points in one place, all of the parcels in one place, and so on. Prospector also knows exactly where those objects are in the drawing. You can right-click an object in Prospector and use the Select command or Zoom To command to locate that object within the drawing.

To explore the Prospector tab, follow these steps (you should still have User Interface.dwg open):

It’s important to point out that Prospector isn’t just a place for viewing your design; it’s also a place where you can change the appearance of your design, create new components for your design, edit your design, and so on. These types of functions are accessed through contextual menus such as the one used in step 5 of the previous exercise. A good rule of thumb when using Prospector is, “When in doubt, right-click it.”

Settings Tab

Civil 3D has a lot of settings that control nearly every aspect of how the software behaves. In fact, one of the things that makes Civil 3D so powerful is that you can customize its settings to accommodate nearly any type of design, company standard, or any other factor that defines the environment within which you use it. The Settings tab is where these settings are managed; however, you won’t be spending much time here in the early part of your Civil 3D career. This area is more often the territory of a CAD manager or Civil 3D guru.

To explore the Settings tab, follow these steps (you should still haveUser Interface.dwg open from the previous exercise):

Survey Tab

The Survey tab is specifically designed for working with survey data. You could call it “Prospector for surveyors” because it serves the same functions and works in much the same way as the Prospector tab. It displays survey data in a tree structure, and it allows you to launch commands through contextual menus.

Toolbox Tab

As if Civil 3D didn’t have enough stuff packed into it already, the Toolbox is a place where other add-ons can be plugged in. Your company may have some custom programming that is designed to run in Civil 3D, or some add-on modules provided by Autodesk. This is the place where you can load and run these additional enhancements to Civil 3D.

The ribbon is located at the top of your screen, and it is the launching pad for most of your Civil 3D commands. The commands that it contains are organized into groups through the use of tabs and panels. The ribbon itself is divided into a series of tabs that include Home, Insert, Annotate, and so on, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Each tab is divided into panels. For instance, the Home tab shown in Figure 2 includes the Palettes, Create Ground Data, Create Design, and Profile & Section Views panels.

Because Civil 3D groups the commands in this way, you never have to choose from more than a handful of commands once you’ve taken your best guess at the correct tab and panel. Also, you’ll find that the more you use Civil 3D, the better you will get at knowing the location of the commands. It’s not so much memorizing their positions as it is learning how Civil 3D “thinks,” that is, the way in which it relates commands to one another and categorizes them into tabs and panels.

One other thing you should know is that most panels expand downward to show you the less frequently used commands in a particular category. You’ll know that they expand when you see a downward-pointing black triangle next to their name. For example, Figure 3 shows the Home tab’s Create Design panel expanded with more commands. Don’t forget to look on these hidden panels when searching for commands.

One of the best features of the ribbon is its ability to respond to what you select in the drawing area. For example, if you click a Civil 3D alignment, the ribbon changes and serves up alignment-related commands on a special tab. The same is true for surfaces, parcels, and so on. These special tabs are referred to as contextual ribbon tabs. They are a huge help when you’re first learning Civil 3D and a huge time-saver even after you’ve become a master.

Follow these steps to familiarize yourself with the ribbon’s tabs and panels (User Interface.dwg should still be open from the previous exercise):

If you’re new to the AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software environment, then your first experience has probably been a lot like staring at the instrument panel of an airplane. Civil 3D can be quite intimidating, with lots of buttons, strange shapes, and strange icons—all packed into a relatively small area. In addition, you may be even more intimidated by the feeling that there is a lot of power under the hood.

To begin learning about the Civil 3D environment, let’s take our airplane analogy down a notch and think about this as learning to drive an automobile. When your parents first sat you down at the wheel and talked about the car’s controls, they probably didn’t mention the air conditioning or the radio. Those, of course, are important parts of the driving experience, but I’m betting they started with the most important parts, such as the steering wheel, gas pedal, and most important of all, brake pedal. We’re going to approach your first experience with “driving” Civil 3D in much the same manner.

There are many, many parts to the Civil 3D user interface. For the purpose of this book, I’ll cover just the ones that will be most important in enabling you to navigate the software effectively. The figure below shows the major components of the user interface.

The application menu (see figure) expands out from the square AutoCAD Civil 3D icon located at the top left of your screen. Here, you’ll find commands for creating, opening, saving, and printing your drawing files.

To use the application menu to open a file, follow these steps:

As you may already know, civil engineers and surveyors draw things a little differently than architects or mechanical engineers. They use things such as bearings, curve deltas, northings, and eastings to define geometry. The Transparent Commands toolbar enables Civil 3D users to draw things based on the special geometric concepts that are unique to civil engineers and surveyors.

For example, when drawing a line, you can use the Northing Easting transparent command to specify the first point and the Bearing Distance transparent command to specify the endpoint (see Figure).

To practice using the Transparent Commands toolbar, follow these steps (you should haveUser Interface.dwg open from the previous exercise):