It happens. You’ve got your head down banging away on your latest Civil 3D project. Maybe this is even your first real attempt at an AutoCAD Civil 3D project. We certainly provide real world Civil 3D template and Civil 3D Style solutions that many folks think help a lot.
You find you’ve created and checked a surface from survey data, actually managed to build Best Fit Alignment and Profile for that local road rehabilitation project, or found an inventive way solve that intersection design problem that involves a complex corridor and the use of a bunch of related alignments and profiles.
Odds are you’ve got a drawing with a mess of intertwined Civil 3D features to sort out. You are not alone. This happens all the time.
Maybe you work like me and often organize after the fact. Maybe you realize that you’ve got stuff in that drawing you need in this drawing. You’ve forgotten to keep all the parts nicely separated. There is indeed added value in the Separation of Powers.
It happens. As we like to say in the Civil 3D world…
A Dynamic Model Trends to Spaghetti
Of course, we normally won’t revert to Italian except in polite company.
Potty speak aside, this is no big deal.
All Civil 3D users must submit to the small disciplines of the Managed Dynamic Model. That involves Civil 3D projects (and Civil 3D project templates) and the interplay between the following terms that are oft confused and misspoken:
o Civil 3D Data Shortcuts - the not-so-dumb links and
o Civil 3D Data References -the model data held in external Civil 3D Features
Like I said in the last post, the DS (dis) is simple and resultant DREF is powerful, but I admit there’s an Art and Skill to Data Shortcut formation.
The following video covers Data Shortcut creation in a model drawing where things are a bit mucked up. There are already intertwined Civil 3D Features that reference each other all in the current drawing. The video includes some tricks and subtleties I use all the time when I need to dig out of this proverbial "spaghetti".
