Tips from Experts

Connected to Alignments in Civil 3D

6/4/2020

Kyle Groves, a Technical Specialist at ATG, delivers a detailed review and demo of Connected Alignment functionality in Civil 3D.
From the ATG YouTube Channel.

Comments

Connected Alignments are one of the best and most useful design things in Civil 3D. Without them you are basically toast.
Kyle delivers both good reasons why and how to employ them to a classic intersection problem.
He includes some great intructional Alignment fundamentals and some intermediate to advanced Connected Alignment tips and tricks along the way.

See the previously mentioned recent Marked Point video - Median Design with Corridors

See Kyle's earlier Modeling video - Model with Offset Alignments and Profiles

Faster Parking Lots from Widenings

5/28/2020

Jim Coppinger of ZenTek Consultants explains how to inventively employ Offset Alignments and Widenings to perform parking lot layout design in Civil 3D.
From the ZenTek Consultants YouTube Channel.

Comments

Old school AutoCAD Design layout with polylines, line, and arcs is not only tedious it is far less flexible than the well-developed intermediate and advanced skills for Alignments and their important children in Civil 3D.
This is the best short video I've seen in a long while than makes this excellent point about Civil 3D functionality that often gets lost to our old work habits. Thanks Jim. You made my day.

We do have to practice at these Civil 3D create and edit skills to get good at them. Grips skill and other edit skills do not come by seeing but by doing.
The positive results will be more design optionality and new and improved design heuristics.

Power Grips and Civil 3D

5/21/2020

Autodesk's Jeff Bartels covers a detailed review of the Grips tool functionalities in Civil 3D and AutoCAD.
See the Jeff Bartels YouTube Channel.
and the Civil Immersion blog.

Comments

You will learn something important in this video. Many of the Grips interface nuances are personal productivity game changers. What we don't know...we don't know.

Jeff still tries to wear out his Esc key. He doesn't turn on Shift to Add in the Selection Tab of Options.

I am biased. I consider Grips the best edit and create tool improvement that ever happened to AutoCAD. Grips skill is worth hours of your work week.
I contend that watching for the use of Grips skill in Civil 3D remains one of the best ways to quickly evaluate user skill.
The Grips control and capability for Civil 3D Features is far deeper the most users learn to employ. That shows quickly.

If you want to get good at all the Ctrl Shift and Alt key and Dyn Grip interface nuances, you must practice and drill.
5 minutes a day for a week twice a year works for me. Ok. I try do this when a new Civil 3D Update occurs to keep it simple.