No Plan View Feature

I do promise to get back to Layer Standards mechanics and the NCS. CAD Standards can be befuddling mostly because they’re all about boring consistency and repetitive validation. Your brain goes numb. My mind goes numb. I’m not sure if that’s why I’m a numbskull, but this rant is more fun for the moment.

Ages and ages ago when Autodesk first introduced the Plan Production Tool I asked a silly question,

“Why didn’t you make a Plan View Feature?”

People tilted their heads and looked at me like I was a little nuts. “Why would people need that?”
The implication is that everybody KNOWS how to publish in Plan. Of course we do.

My somewhat cryptic answer, “People want to be lazy. That’s what they pay us for.”

I guess my answer didn’t cut it even though I think I explained the following in detail.

I doubt a Plan View Feature makes the Civil 3D wish list. I recognize that Site Parcel topology Styles won’t either, but if they existed it might change what you think Civil 3D can do.

People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

Autodesk did some of the work in a ViewFrame and then quit. Enough is enough. There’s rarely a need to solve a problem differently, if you solved it already I suppose.

• People might want a grid they can control and label in Plan.
  That might make your day….Look for Topo grids here for some answers
  There’s a YouTube video too
  But if you give the mouse a cookie
• They surely might want the ability to label things on the edges of a Plan View frame
  • Alignment geometry points
  • Secondary alignment geometry points
  • Crossing infrastructure features
  • Yada yada yada
    You can hack this with tricky labels and extension anchors, but it’s no fun son.
    Too much manual silliness for my taste. Hence the rant.
    The mouse will want a glass of milk
  • Does the concept of a Description Key Set tied by scale and rotation to the ViewFrame onlymake sense to me?
    • Point Groups don’t even have a rotation property Arrrgh!
      OK - you did promise not to get all pointed about points didn’t you.
    • Does corridor Code Set Styles and point output which is like the above make sense to anyone but me?
      You can think differently about that problem.
      Point output is Point Feature controlled after all.
    • Don’t even get me started on Pipes and Pressure Pipes

Rats

Autodesk did bring back referenced Surface labels in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2015 after too long an absence.
Yep. The unexpected occurs all the time. We do have to pay attention.

If you ask me,

There is hope for the impossible.