I’m an avid proponent of the use of AutoCAD Civil 3D Survey Dbs. If I need to track and annotate location in its many forms, I use them. We have multiple in-depth video series our Members can watch and learn about how to do that in your own projects. Productive stuff like how to get Survey data related to Alignments.
I’ve said before our old school ACAD habits can be a stumbling block when we have to deal with Civil 3D forms of data.
We expect that if I can see it on my screen everything is OK. Civil 3D’s take on data takes precedence over our more primitive ACAD misconceptions.
A Case in Point
Survey Points sometimes seem to mysteriously become disconnected Civil 3D COGO points for no apparent reason.
“What? These Civil 3D kinds of points are different things? That’s stupid.”
It isn’t actually. Welcome to the bigs. That’s topic for other posts.
Your Survey Db connected Figures also seem to suffer from this same chronic form of detachment.
At times the current drawing representations of either or both your points and figures somehow become separated from their referenced Survey Db.
“I didn’t do a thing.”
Lost to the Survey Db
Survey Db connections to their Civil 3D Feature representations can get lost because of both AutoCAD UNDO and OOPS commands.
For example: you ERASE connected Points or Figures and immediately or later reconsider the decision and try to reverse your actions. Our AutoCAD habit kicks in.
The points or figures return to the screen.
Half an hour later you might notice things have changed or, maybe worse, you do not. Ouch.
We expect the connections to the Survey Db to get automatically restored too after the AutoCAD UNDO because of what we see.
This is reasonable from our AutoCAD perspective, but it’s simply not true.
AutoCAD doesn’t know a thing about the Civil 3D Survey Db connections. The connections are a Civil 3D thing and AutoCAD has no built-in way to repair the connections up to this point in time. This is a good news bad news thing.
Survey Wisdom
If it is a Civil 3D thing, use the Civil 3D interface tools to get things done.
Put another way…
Always Select things from the Toolspace not the screen and you’ll soon discover that more is possible and better Civil 3D skills are a click or right click away.
But? How to I fix it if it’s broken? Trust in the Survey Db. It’s your only hope. That may require you to redo work you thought you did. If things are really far gone, you can also consider this…
Need a Copy?
Then again maybe this seemingly bad Civil 3D Survey point and figure behavior is another undocumented AutoCAD Civil 3D product feature and benefit that we can take advantage of.
Disassociating data from one authority to place the data in another separate authority can be very useful.
No one said you can't overwrite from a drawing to a SurveyDb with some care. Data is data. Now isn't t that beautiful?
The Hidden Promotion for Surveyors
I call this process “the hidden Survey promotion” in AutoCAD Civil 3D.
I explain Civil 3D Survey works this way because many survey folk don’t want to be promoted out of the field into the office full time anyway. The software behavior simply mimics their own avoidance behavior (grin). People seem to remember that.