What goes around comes around. For reasons that are a mystery I’ve recently received a bunch of questions about the Export of Civil 3D project stuff in digital deliverable form. In other words, the folks want to publish digital copies of the Civil 3D data behind in their projects without the Civil 3D objects themselves.
“We want the results only” – whatever that means.
Put yet another way – How do you dumb down Civil 3D to raw AutoCAD, DGN, or for use in other CAD or GIS software?
I’ve done a couple of series on most of the key issues as the tech inside Civil 3D has changed. The latest shorthand version I named…
The Civil 3D Export Cheat Sheet
If you Register and become a Member there’s an entire Export to Civil 3D page of listings.
Here is a partial and pertinent selection set of listings for The Civil 3D Export Cheat Sheet:
Export from Civil 3D Cheat Sheet Posts
Advanced Civil 3D Publication
- Why Intelligent Publish on Demand is both Mission Critical Skill and Procees
Performance Amnesia and Invisible Civil 3D
- Prepartion for Publication and/or Export often requires we systematically manage the invisible data behind
Export Civil 3D to DWG and DGN
- Detailed overview of the two forms of Export from Civil 3D challenges, requirements, and processes.
Civil 3D Works Like Water
- Why and How Style and Set standards and Layers States work together and must be in phase.
Faster Civil 3D Standards with UL
- A brief but important review of DWF publication tools and useage.
Export from Civil 3D Cleanup Arts
- Detailed review of the Export from Civil 3D AutoCAD Clean-up tools, mechanics, and methods
Fonts and Special Characters
The unwary exporter needs to also understand that Fonts and Special Characters in text can create major headaches in work that must be converted to other CAD applications. Why the NCS and the ISO are specific about the rules for the same.
There’s a recently updated page for that:
Members>>Documentation and Help>>AutoCAD in Civil 3D>> Textstyles and Fonts
A list of those Special Characters comes in handy. There’s a table version and a trick of two to make the use of Special Characters a bit more Civil 3D user and Label Style friendly available from the page above. Seek and you shall find.
Intelligent Publish on Demand
Frankly, most folks discover that it pays to recognize that at some point in the project lifecycle a published digital deliverable might raise it’s head. It is not really any more difficult to do this in Civil 3D. We build this into our projects so they can perform under that form of pressure.
Intelligent Publish on Demand (iPOD) is only better managed engineering inside Civil 3D.
There’s a video course or two about that here somewhere.
Get the Framwork for Civil 3D
Innovation Beyond the Code