Happy 4th of July from Autodesk! AutoCAD Civil 3D users now can enjoy a totally new form of design freedom. Today , July 7, 2011, Autodesk releases the SubAssembly Composer for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011& 2012. Yeah...so maybe that's a little late.
SAC is Great and SAC is More
The Subassembly Composer or "SAC" is a structured Visual programming interface that allows Civil 3D users to construct their own distributable AutoCAD Civil 3D Subassemblies for use in Corridors models in Civil 3D. Autodesk's "build your own" approach for parts of cross sections that can applied to ANY linear geometry promises to unleash the full potential and many new possibilities for the Corridor engine at the heart of Civil 3D.
Almost any cross section you need can potentially be constructed inside SAC and applied to a Corridor Model. Berms, weirs, local standard curbs, channels, retraining walls can now created in SAC and applied to Corridor models.
You can be More detailed. You can be less detailed (sometimes that helps too). SAC even allows the stuble details like smoothed curved daylights (multiple types of curves) and much More.
SAC was previewed and tested in Autodesk Labs for quite a while. If you took a peek at the Labs release previously, don't be surprised to see a more robust and useful final release product. Good job dev team!
SAC is only available to Autodesk Subscription customers.
Here are the instructions how to download products from the Autodesk Subscription site.
More about SAC later...
But here's my first SAC user tip to further Make Your Day.
Remember to go find the default codesets file for Civil 3D and try to use the CODE names in there. It will make your life a little easier and save you typing too.
If you use the same "default" Civil 3D CODE names in your new "better" subassemblies, then you don't have to rebuild and/or fix all of your Code Set Styles too.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's Ok.