Symbol Sets and Blocks in Civil 3D

Systematically managed blocks and symbols can make our Civil 3D Standards more flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing demands of our customers. These simple AutoCAD graphics have a significant impact on our daily civil engineering and survey project work. Case in point - If we change the block representations in a project drawing by redefining all the block graphics, our familiar work can become unrecognizable and even incomprehensible.

That’s Uncomfortable

The graphic representations that are sexpressed in our AutoCAD block libraries employed in Autodesk Civil 3D are important to both our quality control processes and the final, published deliverables of any civil engineering or survey project.

If you’ve been in a CAD Standards committee meeting about the topic, you probably understand what we are talking about.

There are usually some Preference challenges to face in Civil 3D customization and implementation.

In The Pony Car Paradox and Civil 3D post we learn that because something was or is a classic and worked great in the past doesn’t mean that the surrounding environment doesn’t require that we change things up today.

Too much, too little, and just right for me aka - Goldilocks Decision Making - is not always the best way to the mission critical path to implement a tool successfully.

A Faster Critical Path to Manage Civil 3D Symbology

The Framework for Civil 3D’s Jump Kit product supplies a huge library of graphic symbols that we call a Symbol Set. From a System Management perspective, the actual graphic content of a particular symbol or block is unimportant. What?

Our NCS Symbol Set’s Key-based naming convention establishes a consistent namespace that we can propagate into any collection of Civil 3D Styles and Sets. More about that in a bit.

That said...

People Do Ask

If it’s one or two blocks,

• Edit them in the supplied Civil 3D Design and Survey Templates
• Wblock out the edited blocks to a separate resource folder
  • You’ll need the different graphic contents for later updates

Create Multiple Sets as Easy as One

You might want to make many graphic changes.
The Framework products are designed and built to allow us to manage and do this.
The Framework for Civil 3D is a Standard to Build Standards from.
See the US Country Kit for Autodesk Civil 3D post.

A golden oldy Civil 3D Symbol Exchange post covers the core technical details of swapping groups of block definitions by employing an AutoCAD script and multiple scripts with the SCRIPTCALL commands. The Excel cell formula code is included and detailed there.

The Symbol Maintenance Spreadsheet Tool supplied with the Symbol Set and included with Jump Kit will generate all the scripts and command line semantics to modify a bunch of blocks at once as well.

Register, login, and review the on-line Spreadsheet Tools in Documentation and Help. Details of the mechanics outlined below in this post can be found there.

We supply a ton of symbols in the Symbol Set. Many would be very hard pressed to find graphics and standardized graphic prototypes we don’t supply. If you want hexagonal meters, or filled light poles in multiple sizes no problem and on and on it goes. Lots of drag and drop and even pre-scripted load and update options are supplied.
A downloadable PDF with pictures of the Symbol Set is available here.

We already said that what a specific Symbol Set block looks like isn’t the critical path issue anyway.

The Civil 3D standards issue at hand is a matter of management perspective not preference or jurisdiction requirement.

The Concept is Upside Down

Our Symbol Set technology is based on the Power of Names.
This is discussed in detail in the Civil 3D and the Power of Names post.

Most of us know that the Named Reference is a fundamental reality in all AutoCAD/Autodesk based products. We could argue that the concept of named style is fundamental to all modern software.

This is probably not the common perspective that most AutoCAD folks approach the customization problem from. In our daily Civil 3D user experience, our names must be singular in content and perhaps even unique to us. As users we focus on the more obvious errors that occur. We know the message – “blah blah name already in use”.

We advocate…

If you already have a consistent block naming convention, you can technically convert the Framework resources to employ it. That is not the topic of this post.

Productivity Not Promises

We’re going to need a Symbol Legend result anyway.
We can kill multiple birds at once.

Hey? Isn’t that nonlinear thinking?

You bet.
More output than input is exactly the kind of results we like.

More Skill = Less Work

Our Legends and Lists Spreadsheet Tool supplies simple Excel tools to make the process work. True. We do have to know Civil 3D fundamentals and a bit of Survey in Civil 3D to make the process work. Anyone can learn…watch the instruction video …See the AddOn videos page.

We do have to know how to copy Excel formulas around in an Excel Sheet in a workbook.

We do have to know how to employ an ASCII editor like Notepad++. The stock Windows Notepad app cannot cut it. The app cannot successfully replace quote characters with nothing among other issues.

We routinely tell principals, project managers, and CAD Managers never to perform this actual work.
Test the process. Check the results.
Leave the nuts and bolts to others who are accountable to complete the entire process of uninterrupted work in a reasonable amount of time.

Concentration and attention to detail without making assumptions regarding the specific content is vital to success. It is way too easy for regular Civil 3D users to get lost fixing or improving graphic details.

Custom Symbols in Civil 3D - How It Is Done

List It

• Create a list of all the blocks employed – from drawings that actually plot from real projects
• Use –INSERT command and the ? option to display a list of all the blocks in the ACAD text window
• Copy paste the list into an ASCII file and clean it up – only block names in quotes allowed
• Create a sheet in Excel that generates a prototype script to WBLOCK the named blocks all out to a folder
• Copy these calculated cells from the Excell Sheet into another ASCII file – this will not generate a functional script
• Search and replace to get a functional AutoCAD Script
• The quote (“) characters must be moved around
• Most folks usually have a folder of their standard blocks
  It is generally a safe bet this is not the same as the block list above.
• Resolve the conflicts, omissions, etc. and create ONE folder of block drawings.
• Create an ASCII version of the directory listing – A print to file from the command line in Windows works and there are freeware tools
• This exercise is practice for doing and making directory lists later

Make Sets

This directory folder of drawing file blocks is your existing Symbol Set.

• We don’t care about the block names
  We don’t care about the graphic content of these blocks – Keep your hands off
  We will need graphics in Civil 3D that we DO NOT HAVE in a block list if we are upgrading from a CAD legacy application
  Repeat the process above using one of the supplied InstantOn Templates
• The resultant ASCII list is pretty much what we have to match our Symbol Set list to.

Since our interns are practicing…

• Repeat this process with the project drawings done for significant clients who REQUIRE standardized graphic output and maybe even specific block/cell names
• We can work in the consistent Framework Names, publish and then rename to anyone’s name list

Minimal Windows and Office Skills Required

No ACAD or Civil 3D skills are required to perform the next step.
The skills:

• Only basic Windows Explorer skills
• Ability to visually match pictures
• Keep accurate book in our spreadsheet while we do the matching

The work.

• Create our NEW Symbol Set in Windows Explorer – No ACAD or C3D skills required.
• Create a folder for New blocks
• Optionally create directory folders for client’s specific symbols

• In the Framework Symbol Set find the blocks that exactly/closely match our existing graphic content
• Drag and drop matching symbols from the library to YOUR NEW Symbol Set folder
• Note down in an Excel Sheet
  • Old to NEW block name and graphic changes in the list
  • Missing NEW blocks  - Can we find a generic prototype block in the ASYM folder
  • Remove Duplicate old blocks
  • Clean, delete, etc
• In raw AutoCAD (not Civil 3D) modify the identified NEW blocks
• Use the block proto.dwg we supply at the root of the Symbol Set
• Use ONLY supplied textstyles – no Annotative textstyles are necessary
• Every graphic thing (primitive) on Layer 0
• Force graphics by plotstyle as needed.
• The Invisible Ink plotstyle works great for masking solid fills
• Create Missing blocks for YOURS and/or Client lists
• The ASYM folder in the supplied Symbol Set includes prototype graphics
• Use the NCS-like Key-based naming rules for these Missing blocks
• Create the symbols in a one generic unit format
• Obey rules in the step above

Now we have matched and completed list(s) of the symbols with the Names we will use connected by drawings in a Symbol Set folder to the “right” graphics.

• Create an INSERT script formula column in the sheet
  We supply that formula in our Symbol Maintenance Spreadsheet Tool supplied in Jump Kit.
• Copy the column
• Paste to an ASCII file
• Clean up as before – we are rearranging Quote Characters again

If we employ the Legend builder script and method it will generate a points file to location the symbols as COGO points for us to wrap a Civil 3D Points table around.

This is a good QAQC test to make sure we got it all right

Now we have the basics of a standard Legend

• Create a Template with the new symbols.
• Create a drawing from the NoStyles template
• Run the generated script from the sheet in AutoCAD to insert the symbols
  • If we’re cute we can build the ERASE ALL into the script
• Erase the inserted blocks (or C3D COGO point objects)– We don’t need them

By now we also recognize that we have a list of symbols that are not in the Legend but we KNOW that we need in the Tmplate.

• Insert that list
  Note that this is the only way to change the look and feel of some “built-in” Civil 3D blocks/markers
• INSERT EXPLODED either the Design or Survey stock InstantOn Template
• The Symbols we did not replace remain the same
• Carefully check the Styles collection for blown and broken Label Styles –
  We can assume this ALWAYS happens
• Mostly this happens with new Label Styles added in the release you are working in.
• You can use Style Import and Drag and drop to fix broken Styles
• All Design Criteria Styles usually need to be redone – includes Grading ones
• Description Key Sets may need to be manually added back in in some releases
• In Drawing Settings for the Template
• Reset the Design (Proposed) or Survey (Existing) Object Settings per the values supplied in the documentation or from the Templates themselves.

We never get everything perfect the first time through.

That leaves us something good to improve upon.
Civil 3D customization and implementation is really like a 12 step program after all.

If this seems like a lot of work for something that seems simple on the surface, you’re correct.

• First, the process only seems complex because we haven’t done it.
• Second it’s a repeatable manufacturing process that constructs assemblies of reusable parts.
• Experientially, there is also nuance in the process.
• The results are often extra ordinary – Freedom to do more in Civil 3D.

Final Remarks

Is this result a publishing Template? Or a working production Template?

Good question.

Should we recognize that we also built a Block Tool Palette constructor at the same time as our Legend, Abbreviation list, and a brand-new, customized set of Autodesk Civil 3D Templates?

The Power Beyond the Code
Get the Framework for Civil 3D