What the heck is a Civil 3D Implementation Project? An Implementation Project sounds like a term that an expert might make up to sell us something. OK. I get that. What if we rename it to Our Civil 3D Project That Works? We must admit that we need our Civil 3D projects to work. Civil 3D projects quickly get personal too.
The personal aspect of a project is a good news bad news thing. It depends on whether today we get to work on Bob’s project or on my project. If I say “Bob’s drawing” and “My drawing”, maybe that makes our use of personal clearer. Just sayin’.
Our Civil 3D Project That Works
Some folks say that the key to success in Autodesk Civil 3D and a Civil 3D Project That Works are the Civil 3D Template(s) we employ to start drawings.
We must all agree. Consistent, robust, and adaptive Civil 3D Templates, Civil 3D Style Libraries, and Civil 3D resources are mission critical for the work of all civil engineers and surveyors.
Try Templates Only.
We understand the Civil 3D Template is not the entire story.
[Que the Rod Stewart bumper music – a song about our hubris makes some sense]
Every Picture Tells a Story Don’t It
Our Civil 3D Project That Works requires a broader perspective.
Our Civil 3D projects must have structures. Projects must support varied existing condition and multiple design workflows. Civil 3D projects support and manage lots of references. Those references change.
See the recent The World of Data References in Civil 3D post.
The mission critical point is:
A Civil 3D Project exists in time. Dooh.
Time After Time
On reflection the temporal constraint is all too obvious, but it is way too easy to miss the important point that Our Civil 3D Project That Works must always survive multiple Civil 3D Updates and perhaps a Civil 3D Release Upgrade or two.
Autodesk Civil 3D evolves faster than some of our projects do.
This all explains why I continue to rant about our need to actively customize and tweak our Civil 3D Project Templates.
Why I say that Our Civil 3D Project That Works (our Civil 3D Implementation Project) must be a real project with real data.
The best Civil 3D Style tools in the world do us no good if our Civil 3D Project cannot survive the next Civil 3D Update or, God forbid, a new Civil 3D Release.
Maybe you can do the Matrix slow motion special effect and dodge the bullets? I cannot.
When Civil 3D Changes Be Ready
We must be proactive, and only prophylactic, about the facts of life in Civil 3D Land. These are not quite the same thing. We know Civil 3D behaves somewhat like a virus, but that doesn’t mean it is an STD either.
The new Civil 3D Update or Release code is always better. The problem for us is what that new code will do to our on-going projects.
Our Civil 3D Project That Works is a functional working Civil 3D project with real data behind that are separate from our current working projects. We employ Our Civil 3D Project That Works to develop and test our Civil 3D resources, Civil 3D new Releases, and each Civil 3D Update.
The employment of Our Civil 3D Project That Works is proactive and not prophylactic. We employ it as the basis to improve our Civil 3D Project Templates and all the many forms of resources required to make Civil 3D perform better.
We do the reps here or those new Release or Update days are something we always want to avoid. Sadly, if we avoid this issue, the problem gets worse in the long run.
Our Civil 3D Projects exist in time.
What about a way to time travel?
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility (BS) is one of those Civil 3D tool treasures that can remain hidden, ignored, or forgotten.
The Civil 3D Batch Save Utility is purpose built to help us update, cope with, and see the effects of the latest and greatest Autodesk Civil 3D code on our projects and working production environment.
Batch Save does the same for projects, but only if we know what Batch Save does. The mechanics are not complicated but so require some practice to understand how Batch Save works, and exactly what the tool does.
New updates to the latest and greatest code with Batch Save (BS) are simple. The basic scripts are supplied. Albeit we might want to make some changes in them. We must to do the do with the BS tools a few times. We need to do the reps on a regular basis to master the tool.
Ok. We might discover the new Update exposes some failures in our customization resources and/or how we manage them. We may even have new things to build. Oh. Bother.
If I Wish Upon a Star
Many of us just want to see what the latest Civil 3D code will do to us.
We copy some drawing/template stuff and start stumbling around trying to figure out what Civil 3D did to us this time. I call this Prophylactic Think.
We need Proactive Think.
One problem is that recent forms of Civil 3D use references in resources in our Civil 3D projects at ever deeper levels.
Does the structure of Our Civil 3D Project That Works cope with the newer Reference complications like Corridor DREFs successfully?
If we take a manual upgrade approach, that may mean that some tested resources and references run in different versions of the Civil 3D code. Experience says that this rarely works out well.
This problem alone should speak to the need for us to employ Our Civil 3D Project That Works properly processed with the Batch Save as a better initial new Release or Update workflow.
We believe strongly in this Autodesk Civil 3D Upgrade and Update reality.
The Framework for Civil 3D product, Jump Kit, always includes Civil 3D Implementation Projects. We supply more than one of them.
Why would we do that?
The Power to Make Civil 3D Work
Get the Framework for Civil 3D