Most folk who are new to Survey in Civil 3D love to hate the Figure Edit engine in Civil 3D. Both the old COGO editor and the new and better Traverse Editor also share this strange virtual lines interface in Civil 3D. Employment is simple. Zoom to Selection skill is what you need to practice. There are lots of posts about those and even a video or two on Figure Edits here.
Go Speak Figure
Someone called yesterday and asked why there were no Figures appearing in their new Survey Db. Right click on the Import event and pick Process linework. The results of the Process linework command of course depend on your Figure Prefix Db and other Civil 3D Set up things. I never initially automatically process linework in a Survey Db. There are points to check first for code errors via our raft of supplied Framework Description Key Sets that help you do that. Here’s our infamous Civil 3D Setup video link.
Connected Lines From Points
We have customers who really get civilized in Civil 3D. They regularly employ a Survey Db, or two, in their civil engineering design process too. Huh?
Come on people.
At least you have to seriously consider a Survey Db for labels and notes? You get more flexible location annotation in any project drawing AND they are tied together and always remain the same.
Figure segments can be Parcel segments which can be Surface breaklines which can be pretty useful in Civil 3D site design. Supplemented and/or Weeded Figures to your surface model can be just what the engineer ordered. They can also help make your surface model sample and publish better too. Who knew?
Just sayin’. A lot of people seem to miss these not-so-obvious connections at first. Go figure.
Innovate and Live Free
You can manually create Figures by point to point and more. Certainly Figure creation doesn’t even require direct connections to Survey points at all, but you can also fix that after the fact. Add COGO points. Export Points. Import event. Delete the old named non-pointed figures. Process Linework to get your new named and point connected figures. Move on.
Just sayin’. More is possible if you use all the tools.
Stinkin’ Figures
But in the end, Survey or not, that CAD user client doesn’t want your useful stinkin’ Figures.
Did you know the Framework for Civil 3D ships with a Survey Figure Prefix Db spreadsheet tool? This generator allows you to craft Survey Prefix Dbs outside of Civil 3D. This answers the client demand,
“We want all the linework on these Layers or Levels.”
Want to change the Figure Style Layer assignments instead. There’s also a Layer spreadsheet tool for that in the Framework for Civil 3D. Handle all the various client export demands in a single pass to help build your publish on demand template. The Spreadsheet tools already include the Layer rename script code too. Imagine that.
Dumb Down Civil 3D Figures
“Dave? Can our Civil 3D Templates and Styles do that?”
Nice and easy in Civil 3D appears to be more than hair color. The way I figure it there’s no reason to go gray or lose your hair in Civil 3D in the first place…