The process of the massive rebuild, update, and many MANY new Civil 3D Style additions for the Jump 4 AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 is often mind numbing and at times a frustrating task.
All software as complex and ever-changing as AutoCAD Civil 3D has it's "issues" and bugs. I have the unfortunate knack at stumbling upon More than a few that bring the code to its knees. What was the tag line for the movie, Aliens?
In Space No One Can Hear You Scream
For development and quality assurance reasons our Style development processes puts Civil 3D through its paces in places where most of you wouldn't ever want to crawl. My honest, and truly heartfelt advice to Civil 3D template constructors and CAD Managers...
Get InstantOn Basic and The Jump Kit 4 2012 and
Stop the Screamin’
If you have to make a lot of complex Label Styles in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 you will sooner or later run into hard crashes when you use Style Copy Create in 2012. The Good News it doesn't happen all the time. The crash will occur when you attempt to Copy a Child style under a Parent Label Style.
See, it really wasn't you this time.
The workaround is "simple" but it
Will Make U Scream
Create a New Child directly from the Parent and make all the detailed changes in the new Child. Sometimes when you need to Get 'er Done yesterday only the Hard and Slow Way Works.
Will This Happen to Me?
Not unless you seek out punishment intentionally.
Let's suppose you build a nifty new Profile Curve label style that annotates vertical curves across Profile splits and/or across (not simpler) hand-constructed multiple Profile Views. To do this sort of magic you need to know the difference between In View Dimension Anchors and regular Dimension Anchors (There are even new Anchors in 2012). You need to be careful to arrange the many potential Profile Label Style components together properly to get the desired results.
That process takes awhile even if a Project Manager or your boss is breathing down your neck. Construct, Test, and then you shout, "Victory."
Not Done Yet?
Now you may need to build variations that display different annotation for the different TYPES of Vertical Curves, the different data they might contain, and other differences in Crest and Sag curve data too. Yes. That's all in there in Civil 3D.
You just need a bunch of variations of a Parent Label Style.
It is Simpler to Edit than Create
Essentially, if you constructed my Parent label style well, you just need to change the Feature data contents of a couple of components to deal with Crest and Sag, Asymmetric Parabolic, Symmetric Parabolic, and Circular Curve data differences. No Problemo. You Copy Create and Bang You are Dead.
Please submit your CERs.
Your organization also might want variations that "push" the Label annotation to different Layer schemes. You work in the NCS Layer scheme, but publish a lot of roadwork to a State DOT DGN Levels scheme. Those publish Styles would just be another set of simple Copy Style Edits.
OR
Simpler yet and to avoid the Style edits altogether - Devise a Layer Rename Script run on a completed Civil 3D publishing template. Yeah. Isn't it amazing how often the past creeps into the present and helps us maintain the future.