Autodesk Civil 3D Styles and Label Styles reference, or employ, the AutoCAD named parts like Layers and Textstyles to express themselves. Civil 3D Style tools just look for and match the right names that we have agreed to. Change the meaning of the property definitions connected to those agreed on names and we can change anything.
In Autodesk Civil 3D we employ the formal practice of Style Management to abstract (make relative) the details of the visual Style Representation from a Civil 3D Feature’s data behind. A Civil 3D Surface Feature is not the contour representation of that Surface. An Alignment Feature is not a group of lines and arcs displayed on our screen.
The artful usage of names hopefully doesn’t happen by accident.
Maybe every Civil user should have a drawing like this?
We call this fundamental property and benefit built into Autodesk Civil 3D the:
Power of Names
All AutoCAD users understand the fundamentals of the Power of Names. We depend on it. We use Layers. If we employ Layer States (and we should), we get this even more. The name of the Layer references a discrete set of properties that make stuff look (and print) this way not that way.
The use of Layer States teaches us this collection of layer properties is a current and transient state – Something temporary and malleable. This becomes something we have the power to manage and change. How do we manage that?
This Old Name
Older drafting-based CAD Standards by definition must be focused on these CAD primitive publishing specifics: Layer, Textstyle (height), Block graphics standards, etc. In raw AutoCAD and other AutoCAD based drafting and design software the only way to manage all that ACAD primitive stuff was to be specific about all these details all of the time. CAD Standards become very important. They become our focus by necessity.
The CAD drawing we create and check things in becomes the drawing we publish.
My Drawing
If we publish work out of design or quality control drawings in Civil 3D, this is a sign we may be missing some of Civil 3D’s time saving and competitive advantages.
We can miss the forest because we only see the trees. Style abstraction in Civil 3D means that the tree specifics don’t matter so much until they do. Say what?
The process and timing details matter to us.
While the old computer-aided-drafting and design process works, it requires that a lot of man-hours dedicated to maintaining and checking these publication details.
Clearly one of Civil 3D’s mission critical design development goals is to rid organizations and Civil 3D users of this expensive man-hour burden and cost.
The idea here is to put the man-hours into iterative engineering processes and the data quality control processes instead. The design quality control processes are therefore different and more about checking data behind contained the drawing(s) and not necessarily about checking the drawings themselves.
We certainly have to learn how to do both and work differently in Autodesk Civil 3D.
Properly employed and managed Civil 3D Feature (the stuff in the Toolspace>>Prospector tab) data and Style make this possible.
“We already have a CAD Standard.”
This statement may mean that we may attempt to run different water through the same old pipes maybe like Flint, MI. It works, but there will probably be unexpected and unforeseen consequences and hidden costs downstream.
To attempt to replicate our existing CAD Standards may be the first and worst Civil 3D customization mistake a skilled AutoCAD user or organization can make.
We can literally poison our Civil 3D productivity.
The odds are the CAD Standards we previously employed do not take into account the data centric, behavioral, and model-based methods that Civil 3D employs. They cannot and don’t recognize the data behind. They do not recognize the managed behavior the drives Civil 3D Features. Why should they?
The Civil 3D Features didn’t exist in older software. It is way too easy to miss what the Civil 3D Features can actually do.
Simply put - Civil 3D is all about creating and managing the "data behind". C3D then manages how things appear and how things behave by Style and in the Civil 3D Feature collections.
Primitive-based ACAD Standards only control rudimentary forms of style. Those forms have no collections. Often these may get in the way of the collected model-based way of doing things.
I hope you didn’t miss that sneaky behaviorial aspect of the Civil 3D model. Old school AutoCAD is not like that. No wonder Civil 3D customization can be disconcerting and painful.
Of course, Civil 3D Styles and Label Styles do employ the classic AutoCAD Layer, Textstyle, and Block references that AutoCAD customizers are used to. For a long time the software was called “AutoCAD” Civil 3D after all.
Our AutoCAD customization skills do still apply. However, we must apply those skills differently and much more systematically. Our Spreadsheet Tools for Civil 3D available in the Jump Kit product help us all manage that.
A Higher Power of Names
The Power of Names is larger and we all know by now, more complex in Civil 3D. The complexity is partly a numbers game. There are force multipliers at work. That is what the word power means. It is partly because of the behavioral aspects of Civil 3D Features and Style and user interactions with those things through the Civil 3D interface.
Everywhere in Civil 3D there are names. They are unavoidable. They are built-in by design.
Civil 3D Buckets
In training we use the term “bucket” to talk about Civil 3D Feature creation, management, and maintenance. When we give something a name in Civil 3D we are naming a bucket of data express as properties. The collection of properties is not the representation we see on the screen. It is what manages and controls what we see on the screen.
A Civil 3D bucket can, and usually does, contain other mini-buckets. There are What, When, and How behavioral buckets in addition to the Model bucket that we expect when we create one. Some of these other buckets we get to name. The Profile and Sample Line Group buckets in Alignments are an example. For many folks the concept of the bucket helps clarify mission critical things that make Civil 3D difficult.
Here are two important posts about Buckets in AutoCAD Civil 3D that you and the Civil 3D users around you may find helpful:
Civil 3D Production Buckets
- The simple and user friendly way to see data in Civil 3D
- The importance of What, How, and When buckets
- Buckets in Civil 3D and their critical relationship with Names
Civil 3D Bullets in the Buckets
- The reason and usage of Placeholders in Civil 3D Projects
- Why the Name Templates in Civil 3D matter to us all
- "I read this article and Civil 3D suddenly made sense."
Civil 3D names must be managed in a systematic and structured way or chaos and user confusion results.
The Power of Names means that no matter what we want or expect in Civil 3D, we end up with a System of Naming Rules or not.
The illusion of our historical preference can again be a trap here.
Civil 3D Features are not CAD primitives even if we can reduce them to that.
We have to ask,
“Do our Naming Rules work with the way Civil 3D works?”
Dynamic Models depend on Dynamic Namespaces
That sounds dynamically scary, but it isn't really. If we manage the dynamic, it can be liberating. In programming speak, the Power of Names concept and its practical execution is formerly called a namespace.
For our purposes - a namespace defines a managed uniqueness of names.
We see namespace expressed to us in Civil 3D everywhere and every day. The Civil 3D commands must have unique names that are different from AutoCAD and AutoCAD Map 3D commands. Civil 3D Features must have unique names too. The Power of Names (namespaces) list is huge and central to Civil 3D user’s ability to employ the software successfully.
Get Real
We pointed out previously that a prioritized stack of Description Key Sets behave like a namespace. Such a dynamic namespace definition answers the question – in this current context does “DI” means a “drop inlet”? Does the point get an abbreviation of “DI” and get a graphic representation of that symbol not this symbol?
If the current stack of Desc Key Sets resolved differently, we might get another result.
Practically our Survey Codes (Design Codes) are connected to a plethora of Keys in different Description Key Sets to accomplish different tasks in our workflows. Survey point QA (quality assurance) is not surface building or surface QA nor is it Corridor QA.
These QA processes are not optimized for formal deliverable publishing for reasons that are obvious.
Dynamic Namespaces and Style Together Do the Work
We must have…
Dynamic and Adaptive Standards in Autodesk Civil 3D
What we do to help.
- We publish Open Standards for Autodesk Civil 3D that include documented, pertinent details our Civil 3D Style naming conventions that address the complexity of real-world productivity that effect Civil 3D users in the Civil 3D interface.
- We employ recognized and functional National CAD Standards naming rules throughout the Framework products. We are consistent. We publically document how, when and why those rules work.
- We publish an Open and rich set of Standard Keys that work in civil engineering, survey, infrastructure design and even GIS contexts. The Standard Keys work in cross-platform contexts.
- The free Member section of this website includes hours of video, multiple in-depth production video training series, and written detailed help for the details and execution.
Register. - We offer a working trial product with working detailed examples at a price anyone can afford.
Get Templates Only
Employ the Power of Names
Get the Framework for Civil 3D
The Civil 3D Buckets
Updates, additions, and fixes to the posts in this series are on-going.