Tips from Experts

The AutoCAD Group in Civil 3D

1/31/2017

How to Employ the AutoCAD Group commands in Civil 3D

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Jerry Bartels of Autodesk covers the quick and dirty basics of the AutoCAD Group commands.
These include GROUPEDIT, GROUPDISPLAYMODE, CLASSICGROUP, and UNGROUP.
From the Jerry's YouTube Channel.
and the Civil Imersion blog.

AutoCAD employs the drawing ObjectIDs to collect the entities in a Group.
Obviously if these are things like a Survey point (not a COGO point) the IDs will change with Survey Insert and Remove Point commands.
The same warning applies to Civil 3D Data References if they are deleted and referenced again.
The Selectable option can be useful if you need to make sure you don't bash things accidentally.
The backside is that in an XREF Bind or Insert-Explode situation the properties of the Group still apply.
If you employ GROUP, the others who work with you need to know. It adds AutoCAD collection behaviors where people may not expect it.

A Road Assembly with Offset Assembly

1/9/2017

How to Employ Some Lesser Known Civil 3D Subassemblies

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Shawn Cox of Pacificad covers the basics of Assembly Offsets, the Marked Point, and generic Link subassemblies
You have a roadway and a bike path and want to deal with the two Assemblies together here's the how to.
From the Pacificad YouTube Channel.
and the Pacificad website.

Map 3D Labels from Data

1/17/2017

How to Create Map 3D Object Data Labels from SHP Data

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Jerry Bartels of Autodesk covers the quick and dirty basics of the creation of Map 3D Object Data Table templates and Labels in Map 3D.
He demos how to use the MAPANNTEXT command to generate data driven labels from an imported SHP file.
Jerry employs typical parcels in the example. This process in pretty simple given you have the data table and the SHP data.
From the Jerry's YouTube Channel.
and the Civil Imersion blog.

Seriously left unsaid is that you might actually want to build Civil 3D parcels in a Site Parcel from this sort of data.
This is certainly possible, but you'll have more serious work cut out for you.
Often the SHP exports are quite often really dirty with buried segments and bits and pieces.
You'll need to learn about the great Map Cleanup tool which every Civil 3D user must master.
Autodesk could automate this a bit, but don't hold your breath.

ESRI topologies are not Map 3D topologies. This is a good thing, but not the issue.
No. There isn't a Map topology employed in this example.
Civil 3D Site Parcels (a topology too) are a different beast yet again from both of the above.
Discover more than you want to know about Civil 3D Parcels in this series of posts.
After a decade+ nothing has been done to fix even the Autodesk integration.
So in the end Jerry's tip is valuable when push comes to shove.