Jump On Civil 3D Blog

We say that Civil 3D requires you have a viable working Civil 3D Template (.dwt) that includes a library of Civil 3D Styles when you start a drawing. I might argue that we should consider this dubious advice to be a bit of a deception for the unwary. I certainly don’t want it to be a stone that causes others to stumble. Like the Accuser’s three temptation questions…

  Read more

Over time Civil 3D became more flexible about how we can store and manage our project work. That flexibility can make the whole Civil 3D project creation and setup process confusing. Let’s call project creation and the Data Shortcut setup flexible and adaptive and a bit non-intuitive.

The project folder structure you employ is totally up to you. Be aware that project folder structure should…

  Read more

Too often our AutoCAD tool user perspective tends to get in the way of productive work. Let’s put the issue in frank terms. People think we use AutoCAD to draw pictures. Well, don’t we? But AutoCAD employs data to create pictures. This is something entirely different. Civil 3D employs an even more structured form of data than raw AutoCAD. I like to call this…

The Civil 3D Data Behind

That…

  Read more

There’s a sophisticated simplicity to Data Shortcut and Data Reference (DREF) functionality inside AutoCAD Civil 3D. To achieve a more powerful Managed Dynamic Model inside Civil 3D long ago Autodesk built a simple XML-based website to manage and control the interactivity of the data behind for many Civil 3D Features as shared Data…

  Read more

You could argue that all of the consideration of workflows in Civil 3D is merely a result of the considerable depth of function built into the software. Civil 3D does have a virtual feast of inherent capability for civil engineers and surveyors.

You could also argue that this attention is unwarranted. The emphasis is only necessary because of the strange mix of old and new interface design…

  Read more