Many, if not most, of our Civil 3D Projects will involve multiple Reference Replacement processes and workflows. Many of us in Civil 3D Land employ the classic AutoCAD-based External References (XREF) basemap strategy in our plan set publications. We publish a stack of separate drawings to better separate and effectively manage the content of the…
Read more
Posted by
Tench Tilghman
May 22, 2025
Tags XREF, DREF, IREF, Project Management, Data Shortcut Manager, Data Shortcut Editor, Reference Explorer, video, DWF
Sometimes a broken Reference problem in Civil 3D will stare us right in the face and we still miss and/or cannot find and/or see the reason why. Been there. Done that. Got my T shirt. How can this be? Out here in Civil 3D Land every day we use this vital and basic file Reference stuff like our lives depend on it.
If you tell me that the…
Read more
Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Oct 10, 2024
Tags DWF, XREF, IREF, TREF, project template, Data Shortcut Manager, Reference Explorer, Project Management
Let’s have a Happy New Year with Civil 3D. Should we wrap up the calendar year 2023 and unwrap a collection of the Top Ten Civil 3D Production Tips? Why not. Everyone loves a top ten list. I used the production word here not the productivity one even though both do apply in this context.
This post has a decided Civil 3D management and implementation bias…
Read more
Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Dec 27, 2023
Tags tips, productivity, implementation, project template, TREF, DWF, DREF, Project Management
This time of year those of us who customize Civil 3D are head down and hard at work with the latest release of Autodesk Civil 3D 2024. If we keep up with the normal Civil 3D Update parade and maintenance, our Civil 3D Templates, Civil 3D Style libraries, and Civil 3D resources will only need minor improvements. OK. Maybe we want…
Read more
Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Apr 26, 2023
Tags Civil 3D 2024, Insights, markup, DWF, pdf, AutoCAD Profile, Project Management, video
Most of us who employ Autodesk Civil 3D in production environments are familiar with the mechanics to replace External References (XREF) in our working and/or publication drawings. The Survey dept updates the existing annotation for the proposed project’s Parcel map. Survey may overwrite the previously shared XREF drawing. They may provide a separate and differently…
Read more
Posted by
Tench Tilghman
Feb 15, 2023
Tags DREF, XREF, IREF, Project Management, Data Behind, data reference, data shortcut, video, DWF, iPOD