The latest issue of the AUGI AEC Edge news emagazine is out and has an entire section focused on Autodesk Civil applications. The timely issue also includes a feature article on Civil 3D Styles that gives the Autodesk USCA Country Kit and the Jump Platform a rave review.

Read it here...

GET CIVIL 3D ROLLING WITH STYLES—
OVERCOME ADAPTATION INERTIA  is on page 39

Thank you to the author Michael Partenheimer for his kind and honest words. Thanks to the editors and staff at the AUGI AEC Edge magazine for making the entire Autodesk world More aware of the Autodesk USCA Country Kit and open Jump Platform. It's good to be appreciated.

It's More Important that More People Get the Jump.

You can Work Less and Do More.

The simple BEDIT graphic clean-up of your blocks to make Symbols for Civil 3D needs to include some careful and meticulous work. Here is the Short Seven Steps list for block clean-up: 

1) It is much simplier practically to deal with graphics that are constructed in a 
    1 unit square than try to maintain a variety of sized graphics in many Symbol Sets
    that appear in many Styles. 
    The fact that in Civil 3D you can deal with differences misses the point.
2) There ARE exceptions to the above rule. But the Why is important to consider.
3) Can the graphics be simplified? Do newer ACAD primitives do a better job? 
    Is a hatch really necessary? Are you using Color forced primitives or other weirdness?
4) Rid yourself of nested blocks as much as possible. It's almost always possible.
5) A Ruthless PURGE of all unused references of any type
6) A name change and PURGE of textstyles and unused Attributes
7) A 2010 (or the latest release) AUDIT and manual SAVEAS overwrite of each and every block drawing and block library drawing that you construct and edit. Yes, you need to do every single one.

Your blocks may not throw a single AUDIT error in an earlier release and yet squeal like a stuck pig in the latest. You may not run into any AUDIT problems in your blocks. I really hope not, But if you do, you'll be ever grateful for performing #7 in the latest release even if you are using an earlier one. SAVEAS AutoCAD works fine to move the blocks back. They are just graphics. Right?

More than Graphics in There

You may have a registered application buried away in your blocks and not know it. Regapps (registered applications) get into drawings through Autodesk apps, third party apps, Autolisp, .net, etc… and when the connection to the apps is severed, you are left with a nasty Regapp headache.  The problems these orphaned or unregistered applications can create include corrupt drawing files, sluggish drawings or ballooning drawing file sizes to name just a few of the potential ill effects. 

2010 may spit out unreferenced code errors when you open a drawing or AUDIT a drawing. The PURGE command was modified in 2009 and then again in 2010 to allow you to get rid of these "bad" actors.

This slightly obscure issue of code references buried in blocks (and worse - nested blocks) may or may not be a problem for you. However, since you are doing the CLEAN UP it's a good idea to make sure.

Frankly, I'm probably posting this becasue it became a real headache for me personally doing the 2009 to 2010 port of the Jump Platform and the Autodesk USCA Country Kit.

Is There Old Code in there?

Why does this happen?...It is possible to reference to Autodesk, third party, and other customized code in a block. It was and is possible to in code make nested "hidden" blocks to serve many useful purposes. The AutoCAD based Leader functionally from a few releases ago employed this. Things change. What worked five years ago can become a problem as the AutoCAD and Civil 3D object models evolve over time.

After a bit of squawking Autodesk has also released a utility that will batch process drawings so you don't have to manually reconstruct the graphics in blocks that contain these bad boys. The Regapp ID Cleanup Utility is now available from the Autodesk website. It will not only clean up one file, but will purge files or unneeded Reapps in bunches. See this post on the Welcome to Bedrock blog for the details. WhoRA! 

Therefore, even if you are in 2009 and not planning on 2010 for a bit it is still important to test your blocks for this in 2010 as part of your clean up.

The shipping versions of the Jump Symbols included in the working templates for 2009 and 2010 do not have this issue. We had to QA them out the hard way...That was no fun. We would have rather produced More sets of cleaned Symbols.

Maybe More next release...

The first symbolic brass tacks were committing to the clean-up of your blocks and identifying what you really need. On a practical level, an Excel spreadsheet will do fine to make and manage your plan. You just need a column and a corresponding Blocks drawing for each variation of the Symbol Set that you plan to publish in.

Remember that the Block and Style Names stay the Same and just your pictures change. Think carefully about what the KEY ID column is going to be in your spreadsheet - Maybe your Description Key? Maybe not.

While we're on the subject of documenting and writing things down...

Why TEXTSTYLES Matter

The Jump's Symbol Set intentionally employs ONLY two textstyle references. One for existing conditions and one for proposed. They are used in ALL the textual and symbol annotation of every Civil Feature. All the other Feature Label Styles in the Jump also ONLY employ these same two textstyle references.

The default textstyles are named "arial" and "oarial" to conform to the worldwide Windows standard True Type fonts that they intentionally reference. How many fonts do you really want to have to pass around? Contrary to a popular myth you may have heard, Windows True Type fonts work and perform fine on most reasonably current output devices. Without delving into all the arcane specifics of font graphics:
    The arial font conforms reasonably well in its graphic specifics of the Simplex font
        that many ACAD using agencies, jurisdictions, etc do accept as a de facto standard.
    Arial's graphic specifics also map acceptably to New Time Roman and
        the Roman shx fonts that are also commonly employed. 

Point Elsewhere

Whether you actually USE this specific font as a reference is NOT the key issue. You can change the references to ANY fonts you want or a jurisdiction/client requires in your production/publication templates.

Size Rightly

You can size annotation by making adjustments in your production/publication templates by specific Feature, Label Style Type, Parent or Child Label Style because the Jump Label Styles do conform to Civil 3D's structured hierarchical model.

The model is built to work when Label Style Defaults (LSD) are applied from the top down. Drawing LSD>>Feature LSD >>Label Type LSD >>Parent Label Style>>Child Style. This is indeed a strange trip. As human beings, we tend to think Label Style specifics first. Don't do that. It makes you work too hard. 

If you do lots of different projects with lots of differing scales, sizes, and jurisdiction specifics using Project based template may make More sense. Remember to keep the production and publishing templates in a project specific resource location. You do the set up work down the Toolspace Settings tree for the project template(s) at the setup start from a generic project template(s).

Do you Need the Old Attributes?

Getting rid of unneeded Attribute references whether the attribute visible or not in your Symbols is also important. Recognize that Civil 3D will produce almost all the annotation you need directly from the Feature's data. In the case of most Features, the Table Styles will also produce ID and/or Named-based data tables of the data directly from the Civil 3D Features too. I hope that Autodesk continues to make this data export easier in future releases via improvements to LandXML, but even a Windows Copy and Paste works in a pinch.

Practically moving from attributes to this Label and Table Style approach results in fewer man-hours invested to unique object maintenance while producing More useful results with less customized code in the long term.

I will admit that this does takes a significant leap of faith especially if your organization is really good at the task workflow, particulars, and specifics and have therefore probably customized and programmed your LDT/ACAD to the max. In that case, you may need and want some expert help from your Autodesk Reseller and/or a skilled Autodesk consultant.

Civil and GIS/BIM

If you have to publish to a GIS or BIM, the really good news is that getting there is probably easier from Civil 3D because of the Dynamic Model's built-in data capabilities. Civil has a More structured and complete database than LDT or AutoCAD. However, all your existing methods and processes, if they are based on old school ACAD attributes, are going to change. The good news is you do NOT have to do it tomorrow or wait to put Civil 3D to use.

Remember that Save to AutoCAD is going to be part of your publishing process. Remember that Civil 3D is built on Map and that Map also has Features. These Map Feature you can even build into your updated templates.

Next time a clean up thing or two that might getcha...One bit me.

But More Help is Here