The Joys of Parcels in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010

Hey everyone! I had the pleasure of doing a "What's New in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010" webcast this morning. I was pleased with the turnout, considering that this was my first attempt at this type of webcast. One thing that I was not so pleased with was the fact that I couldn't see the attendees. For what it is worth, I think that face time is better than computer time. But, with the state of things being what they are, we too are trying to be more frugal.

Anyway we discussed the new Ribbon Interface and the Contextual Ribbons that are exposed when you select a C3D object on the screen. We looked at the Quick Access Tool bar quickly and the and the Application Menu too. The meat of the presentation centered around the new design and analysis functionality that is included in C3D 2010.

I want to take a moment or two to talk about one of these features. Most of you that have met me know that my background in Civil Engineering is in subdivision design. I am not sure why I fell into that category, but it seemed that every consulting firm that I worked for put me into that position. Oh well.....what will be will be! So, for all of you subdivision folks out there, what was the missing link in lot layout using C3D? That's right frontage offsets!

C3D 2010 has you covered! Parcel layout is much better now with the addition of frontage setbacks and minimum widths for lots, as well as minimum and maximum depths as design criteria. The commands for laying out lots have been revamped a little also. In the past we have used the "Slide Angle - Create" command to create or lots with a particular angle at the ROW. This command has now been renamed to "Slide Line - Create." It is the same command, just renamed, as far as I can tell. The neat thing about the updates to Parcel creation is obviously the fact that we can specify a minimum lot width at an offset distance and a minimum width at the ROW. This is functionality that I have been looking for since I began using C3D 2006.

Keep an eye on the ALACAD website. A link to the recording of today's webcast should be posted in the next couple of weeks. While you are there check out the list of other upcoming webcasts for the 2010 products.

Now that my presentation is out of the way, I plan to be adding a few posts on C3D 2010 in the coming days.

Rehab this Rehab that

Hey everyone. In this post I want to talk about something that a customer of mine ran into a while back using some of the rehabilitation sub-assemblies in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009. The particular project was a widening and overlay job. So, we started looking at the available options. We put together our assembly and created the Corridor model along with our top and datum surfaces. Completing the process, we cut cross sections and created the section views.

Upon inspection of our cross section data we noticed something strange. The datum surface followed the points and links that we expected it to until it reached the inside of the widened section. Then it shot straight across the section to the inside edge of the widened section on the opposite side. This made for an area that the program considered a cut volume when we created our quantities.

I tired everything that I could think of to change the assembly and corridor properties to rid our cross sections of this cut area. Everything that I tried failed miserably. So, I posted a support request with Autodesk. I got a call on Friday of last week from the Support Technician on the case. He had found the answer to our problem. He started explaining a couple of things to me and then it happened, on of those "Eureka!!!!!" moments.

The solution was simple, but I am afraid we all tried to make it a lot harder than was necessary. All we had to do was go back to the surfaces tab in the Corridor Editor and add the Overlay Link to the datum surface, rebuilt the corridor and everything was depicted as it should have been.

I want to thank the folks at Autodesk for helping on this one. They did an outstanding job!