It goes without saying that I ended up neglecting my blog during vacation but alas – I’m back. Since I haven’t necessarily had a chance to prepare a substantial blog entry I figured I’d share some of what I have been reading since my return from vacation.

Standardizing Your Company - Part 3: Start at the Top (Eric Chappell @ civil3d.com) – Part 3 in a series of posts talking about how to successfully standardize your company.

A word cloud resume? (Robin Capper @ RobiNZ CAD Blog) – A fun little discovery that creates a word cloud of a web page.  Major geekiness here!

Autodesk Design Review 2009 SP Update (Volker Joseph @ Beyond the Paper) – A service pack for Design Review has been released.

Autodesk and Bentley Systems on Interoperability in AEC (Shaan Hurley @ Between The Lines) – Pretty substantial announcement between 2 of the CAD industry leaders.

Google Releases 3D World Lively (Google Blogoscoped) – Google launches a new 3D chat program/interface.

Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools (Adam Pash @ Lifehacker) – 5 intriguing downloads to keep your machine running on all cylinders.

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Format Differences

A DEM or Digital Elevation Model stores this information using a predefined grid of squares.  Thus imagine a piece of graph paper; at each point two graph lines intersect, an elevation will be assigned.  This format is an effective way of representing surfaces, but due to it’s rigid nature isn’t necessarily the best choice for civil engineering design.  And it is with that we have our second format – DTM or Digital Terrain Model.  Unlike a DEM, a DTM captures a surface through the use of a triangular irregular network.

In essence, rather than using squares to capture a surface, a DTM uses triangles.  At the corner of each respective triangle, an X, Y, & Z elevation is captured and stored.  Since the triangular network is irregular, the TIN is generally better at capturing things like flow lines.

Overcoming Format Limitations

Although Civil 3D’s native modeling format is DTM, it does have the ability to export a surface to a DEM file.  In addition to the architectural differences between DEM and DTM surfaces, the DEM format only accepts metric coordinate systems.  International users don’t necessarily have to worry about this detail, but those using imperial coordinate systems will need to convert their surface to a metric coordinate system.

As we’ll see later the “Export to DEM” command within Civil 3D lists both the source coordinate system, and the coordinate system to the to-be-exported DEM.  Generally speaking whenever Civil 3D lists both an input and output coordinate system, you can assume Civil 3D will do the heavy lifting of converting from one system to another.  Unfortunately the “Export to DEM” command is an exception to that rule.  As stated in the Civil 3D help file:

With that said we’ll have to perform the coordinate conversion manually.  For purposes of this post I am going to use the LandXML format as a carrier to convert from one coordinate system to another.

Conversion Procedure

1. Right-Click on the surface name and select “Export LandXML”
    
2. Since all we’re interested in is our surface, accept the defaults and press [Ok] to save your XML file.
3. Create a new drawing (File > New), and select a Metric drawing template (ie. _AutoCAD Civil 3D (Metric) NCS Extended.dwt)
4. Set the datum of your new DWG file

1. From the Civil 3D Toolspace select the “Settings” tab.
2. Right-Click on the DWG name and select “Edit Drawing Settings”
   
3. Select an appropriate metric coordinate system
   

Import your XML surface by going to File > Import > Import LandXML.  Selecting your XML file from the resulting dialog.
 

From the “Prospector” tab of the Civil 3D Toolspace, Right-Click on the surface name and select “Export to DEM”

Generally speaking you can accept the defaults from the resulting “Export Surface to DEM” dialog.  One setting you may experiment with is the “Grid spacing”; the larger the number the less accurate your DEM.  Aside from that, simply specify an output file name and press [Ok].

Read more about using AutoCAD Map 3D to analyze DEM surfaces in my September / October 2007 AUGIWorld Article “Finding the 3D in Map 3D: Surface Visualization”

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Back towards the beginning of February I made a post “Bring All Text To Front and a Wii Tip”.  Long story short I brought my Nintendo Wii along for evening entertainment during a ski trip, and well forgot the sensor bar.  I know – stupid me.  All hope wasn’t lost however as we were able to geek out and discover that our gas fireplace would work as a sensor bar.

I have to admit, when I made that post it was meant more as a joke.  Afterall this is a CAD blog, not a Nintendo Wii blog.  However this morning I saw a strange post come up in my feed reader – Scott Sheppard over at the “It’s alive in the lab” blog made a post “Wiimote Navigation Add-in for Autodesk Design Review Now Available”.  All of a sudden that post back in February about Nintendo Wii didn’t seem so foolish.

For those unfamiliar with the technical abilities of the Wii Remote – it is both an infrared and Bluetooth device. The guys over at Autodesk Labs have figured out a way to capitalize on the Bluetooth abilities of the Wii Remote, and allow it to interact with Autodesk Design Review.  Using the Wii Remote you can navigate your DWF inside Design Review without a mouse!

To perform this ultra-cool marvel you will need a few things:

• Autodesk Design Review 2009 SP1
• Computer with a Bluetooth connection
• Wii Remote (just the Wii Remote, the Wii Gaming System is not needed)
• Wii Remote add-in for Design Review

Read more and download this add-in over at the Autodesk Labs site: http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/wiimote_adr/

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There’s no two ways to say this, other than the economy is nowhere near what it was just a year ago. Companies are looking for ways to save money and streamline workflows. As CAD Managers we look at inefficiencies in workflows and solve them with technology. CEO’s and COO’s will oftentimes look at the same inefficiencies and solve them with staffing/manpower. But why this separation?

The Players

Let’s start by taking a look at your typical CAD Manager. Not only do they feel comfortable with technology – they embrace it. Their comfort zone quite simply rests in technology, and this is where they have built the foundation of their career.

Now let’s shift your attention to what makes a great CEO/COO. The most valuable skill such individuals possess is their unparalleled interpersonal skills. They are able to network and create a strong rapport with key business contacts, which then affords the firm golden opportunities to land that next big project. More importantly managers are very analytical and want (need) to quantify things.

For a business manager – risk is ok so long as it’s a calculated risk. Given the current economic forecast, managers are especially sensitive to things like % utilization (billable). Consequently progressive thinking has been replaced with a safer and more conservative rationale. For a manager whose strongest skill are people, what’s safer – people or technology?

Dealing With Failure

What do you do with an employee with repeatedly fails to meet the expectations of their job? It’s an unfortunate side of doing business, but at some point you let them go.

Now consider a piece of software which has cost your company thousands to purchase and hundreds if not thousands more to train a workforce to use. What do you do if like that underachieving employee, that piece of software underachieves? Unlike an underachieving employee, it’s much harder to let a piece of software go and shift an entire workforce to yet another piece of software.

This is a fact business managers know all too well. They’d rather use what works today rather than take the risk on something that might work tomorrow. For that reason, your job as a CAD Manager has to shift away from a dog & pony show focused on new features, and onto quantitative figures which will prove a calculated fact like Civil 3D will save your firm money. Building such a calculated portfolio of reasons to upgrade is the very reason why implementation formalities are actually implementation necessities.

Making a Bulletproof Pitch

If I had to identify the single most important piece to a successful Civil 3D implementation it would be a properly executed pilot project. A successful pilot project will achieve more than the breath of this post.  However, as a CAD Manager that pilot project will allow you to open meaningful dialog with your users about topics such as styles. More important to this discussion is the message you will be able to deliver to management. Will you deliver a speculative numbers to management or numbers from the here and now of your firm?

Speculative numbers are what the early adopters of Civil 3D banked on, and in my own opinion have won on. Firms looking to migrate to a product such as Civil 3D today need not deliver speculative numbers to management, but rather hard numbers from the here and now of your firm. Such numbers are going to help prove to management that a Civil 3D migration can be seen as a calculated risk, and subsequently one your firm is willing to stomach.

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While I personally thought Autodesk would announce next (not this) release would be the final release of Land Desktop, the announcement itself really comes as no surprise. Since the Technology Preview release of 2004, Civil 3D has evolved from a really cool new technology to a technology now able to sustain real-world design. For firms still using Land Desktop, switching to Civil 3D has less to do with the technical abilities of the software, and more to do with the cultural paradigm and the raw cost.

Civil 3D is not an incremental upgrade to Land Desktop; it’s a replacement for Land Desktop. For that reason many firms still have weighed Civil 3D vs LDT, and simply decided to stay on LDT subscribing to the notion “if it aint broke, don’t fix it”. More often than not that argument is code for, we’re not willing to commit to the hours upon hours of training our staff will need to be productive on Civil 3D. While Civil 3D certainly has the potential to save lots of time [money] in the long run, it’s difficult to convince management to forgo the necessary cost of training.

News of a reseller offering training is far from monumental. Something monumental would be a reseller offering unlimited live training to their customers. That’s exactly the announcement Engineered Efficiency recently made. EE CivilAccess and EE GuidedAccess customers will have the opportunity to enjoy unlimited free access to an impressive curriculum including; Core Concepts; Residential Design; Site Design; Transportation (local roads); Survey; Styles; Data Management; and Workflows.

Something especially appealing to those migrating from Land Desktop is the other services included in the EE CivilAccess and EE GuidedAccess portfolios. In addition to unlimited instructor led training, EE customers receive their impressive ProPak Base [Express Tools for C3D], access to an exclusive knowledge base, and support tokens. Their GuidedAccess offering provides a 5-step implementation, including the all important pilot project mentoring. The folks over at Engineered Efficiency have all but ignored the conventional reseller model, offering their clients premium services at an affordable price.

To learn more about EE’s impressive offering check out their website at www.eng-eff.com.

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Two roads diverged on a yellow truck,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

It’s been the announcement all of us in the civil engineering industry knew was coming, but we just didn’t know when. Today that announcement has come, and the roads have diverged; the king, Land Desktop has passed its crown to the new, more agile Civil 3D. In short, Land Desktop 2009 and Land Desktop Companion 2009 will respectively be the last version.

Each is expected to be available for subscription until the first week in July, and finally be removed from the price list by spring of 2009. Although the reign of Land Desktop has effectively ended, Autodesk plans to make Land Desktop available for download by subscription customers for as long as there is a sufficient demand.

If you so happen to be among the firms who still see Land Desktop as your primary design package, than the recent announcement by Engineered Efficiency may be of interest.  They just introduced a program where they will offer unlimited free training to their customers.  I must say, their offer is rather admirable as it’s a vast departure from the common reseller model of sell software, and then sell training.

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Creating your Assembly

For those transitioning from LDT to C3D, Assemblies are what would otherwise be known as Templates in LDT. It should be noted that not all Subassemblies can transition. Consequently, as you construct your Assembly you’ll want to be sure to select an Assembly which can transition. For today’s discussion I am going to choose the “BasicLaneTransition” from the “Imperial-Basic” Tool Palette.

Just as not all subassemblies can transition, those that can don’t have to. By default the “BasicLaneTransition” is not set up to transition, and effectively works the same as a normal (non transitioning) lane. To configure the transitioning of our “BasicLaneTransition” subassembly, select it within your assembly and right-click to select “Sub Assembly Properties.

Once within the Subassembly Properties dialog you will want to go to the “Parameters” tab. Under the “Input values” heading you will find a parameter titles “Transition”. Clicking on it will being up another dialog where you can choose how you want your transition to interact with your Feature Line (or Alignment if you so choose). For today’s example I want to use the grade from my Subassembly, and my Feature Line simply define the point where I would like to stretch my Subassembly. Given those parameters, I am choosing the “Hold grade, change offset” option.

TIP: I personally find it easier to keep things straight when I name my transition entities to reflect which side of the road they are. So I’ll name my left-side subassembly “-LEFT” or some other variation.

Creating your Feature Line

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 allows us to create Feature Lines one of three separate ways; Draw (from scratch), From Object (already in my drawing), or Alignment. In my particular drawing the road EP has already been drawn, and so I can simply convert it into a Feature Line. The transition I am building is for some parking stalls to the side of my road. So Civil 3D treats my parking stall as a single linear entity, I am going to first make a polyline of the EP in my transition area.

After creating a polyline of the EP within my transition area, I am now ready to convert it into a Feature Line. This can be done by going to “Grading > Create Feature Lines from Objects”. After launching the command, select the polyline you just created from your EP. Even though we’ll graphically select our Feature Line, I personally prefer giving Feature Lines being used for transitions a logical name. In this case I will name my Feature Line “7+50 EP Transition”. Doing this doesn’t change how the software functions, rather helps me when I come back to the drawing in 6 months.

Making the Transition

For the purposes of this post I am assuming you have already created a corridor to include your roads Alignment, Profile, and an Assembly. Once you have done this, select and right-click on your Corridor to select “Corridor Properties”. Go to the Parameters tab within the resulting Corridor Properties dialog. From here we’re going to create a region to represent the area of our parking stall.

The parking stall I am about to create is around station 7+50. Within this drawing I have a region spanning from station 6+29.72′ to 12+76.28′. We will split that region into a total of 3 regions. Those three regions will be the road up to the point my parking stall begins, my parking stall, and the road after my parking stall. To break this region use the “Split Region” function by right-clicking on the region you would like to split. This will return you to the drawing screen, where you can use your OSNAPS to split the region

After creating a region to represent your parking (transition) area, we now need to tell Civil 3D how to transition. This can be done by selecting the “Target” column from the row representing my parking stall region. The Target Mapping dialog will then appear giving you control on how your corridor will behave within the specified region.

In this case my parking stalls are on the right-side of my road. As mentioned within the subassembly portion of this post, I find it easiest to decipher which Transition Alignment to define when I name my subassemblies Left/Right. That said I can now select the Transition Alignment for my Right Subassembly.

This will bring up the “Set Width Or Offset Target” dialog where you will want to click the [Select from Drawing] button. You can then select the Feature Line you created earlier to represent the Road EP. After selecting the Feature Line you should see it displayed under the “Selected entities to target” heading within the “Set Width Or Offset Target” dialog. At this point we’re done, and you can [Ok] out of each dialog currently open. Upon returning to the drawing you should see your corridor update to reflect the transition you just configured.

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We have the super-firms out there, with Architectural, MEP, Structural, and maybe even Civil out there, but in that mix is also smaller firms. Maybe you work in a smaller MEP or Civil/Survey firm. Regardless the firm size, the challenge is the same, referencing another department’s work and plotting it is flat out difficult. Doing this typically means going through some sort of rogue procedure just to make the plan look good.

While there is some credit to be given in making plans look good, doing so in a non-standardized way is never a good thing. But when your Mechanical department needs to draw proposed duct work Green and your Plumbing department also needs to use Green for proposed piping, what is one to do? Well the long-time answer to such a riddle is, if you need to show it in your plan set, reference it and override the color to something that looks good in your plan set. And with that Bob ‘makes it look good’ by changing things to color 130, and Joe ‘makes it look good’ on another project by changing things to color 85.

If that describes the way your firm references work between departments you’re likely saying something like “well yes that’s a pretty cruddy way doing things, but what else are we to do?”

My answer to that is a lesser-known plotting option introduced in AutoCAD 2000 called Style Based Plotting. I’m assuming everyone is familiar with the concept of the defacto standard of Color Based Plotting. In essence we have a pen table in the form of a CTB file that says Color Green plots slightly bolder than Yellow, and Yellow plots slightly bolder than Red. However you have your CTB configured, the point here is a change in color translates to a change in the way a drawing plots.

Conversely, with Style Based Plotting (STB), color doesn’t matter. Think about it, do you spend more time drafting your plans or printing your plans? In all likelihood you spend more time drafting your plans not printing them. So why is it we assign colors based on what “looks good” when plotting, and not what is intuitive to us when drafting? Using CTB files we really are enslaved to the way drawings look when plotted, not what intuition tells us. On the other hand using STB files we can have the best of both worlds.

Perhaps my plumbing department wants to show their proposed water pipes Blue. Well additionally my Mechanical department wants to show their cold water lines Blue. Both want to use Blue, but both also need Blue to plot differently. With a CTB file, that’s a problem, with STB files it’s no problem whatsoever. This is because with CTB files Color controls the display of my layer in my drawing, and also the way it’s plotted. With STB files I have a second property called “Plot Style”. Thus Color only affects the appearance of layers within a drawing, whereas the Plot Style is what determines how a given layer will plot.

With CTB files we’re limited to the standard 255 AutoCAD colors. STB files on the other hand have no real limit. You define their names affording you the ability to assign logical names like “thin” and “bold”. The Starbuck drinkers out there may prefer to name their plot styles something like “tall”, “grande”, and “venti“. Whatever the case, you choose the way your plot styles are named. But still, in-and-of-itself doesn’t help with the need to share drawings between departments.

With a little smoke & mirrors style based plotting can be configured to make sharing drawings between departments a breeze. For instance in a MEP firm, you could create a series of plot styles for your Mechanical Department, another series for Electrical, and yet another for Plumbing. Any Mechanical entities would consequently use a Mechanical plot style, say M-Venti. Plumbing would assign the “P-Venti” plot style to their layers.

In addition to having a series of plot styles for M, E, & P, you would also have corresponding STB files. One would use the Mechanical.stb when plotting a Mechanical plan. Within that STB file, all of your electrical and plumbing plot styles would be configured to plot out screened. This effectively translates to each department being able to reference each other’s work, and more importantly not having to make any changes to ‘make it look right’. Now not only is referencing work easier, it takes less time, and both Bob and Joe’s plans are consistent.

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Task & Project Organization: Mindjet MindManager ($)

Admittedly the influx of mind mapping software isn’t for everyone.  I personally have found it to be quite beneficial for me as I embark on a quest to see a snapshot of a project at a glance.  I keep track of who is working on, and who has access to projects, who I have chatted to, what I need to do on the project and more.  I have also found it to be a stellar tool for taking notes in meetings.

Instant Messaging: Digsby (FREE)

No Digsby isn’t a new instant messaging platform, instead it’s a single application for all of your instant messaging needs.  Most of my friends are on AIM, and so I have an AIM account to keep in touch with them.  Additionally I have a personal Google Talk account, and a business one as well.  I also use Twitter to make notes to myself, and track what I have done all day (so I can fill out my timesheet).

Digsby does more than instant messaging though, it also can also integrate into your e-mail inbox, alerting you of new messages.  MySpace and Facebook are also integrated, making Digsby your one stop shop for communication.

Application Launching: Launchy (FREE)

Personally, I try to limit the number of icons on my desktop (sometimes I’m not incredibly successful, but I try).  From just an AutoCAD perspective, I have icons for Map 3D, Land Desktop, Civil 3D, Civil 3D as AutoCAD, Raster Design on LDT, Raster Design on Map, Raster Design on Civil 3D, etc.  Point is AutoCAD alone inundates me with icons. Launchy on the other hand makes it so I can keep a clean desktop, and when I want to open Civil 3D, I just type ‘Civil 3D’, and it launches.  If you’re not a keyboard warrior, than this application is not for you, but if you’re quick at the keyboard than you will want this little program!

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In the past speakers submitted their course ideas, and Autodesk essentially made the call as to the courses to be offered during the conference. This year Autodesk has chosen to do things a little differently. Since AU is in fact a user conference, our friends at Autodesk have put much of the course selection in your hands (the users). You have until this Saturday, May 3, 2008 to cast your vote for the classes you would like to see at AU 2008!

To that end I chose to submit three proposals for AU 2008. As you’re making your selections, I’d appreciate your vote for any number of my proposals:

• CAD Management and IT - Human Management: A Non-Technical Approach to CAD Management:

  Looking to the psyche of engineers, and how to overcome CADD; Computerized Attention Deficit Disorder 

• Civil Engineering (AutoCAD Civil 3D) - Power to the Parcel:

  A hands on start-to-finish lab on how to take a boundary survey and turn it into a finished parcel layout.

• General Design Sessions (AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT) - 2008 AutoCAD Bloggies:

  All the excitement of the Grammys, just without the expensive wardrobe, and flash bulbs. We’ll take a look at some of the best blogs from the past year.

AU 2008 VOTING SITE

Polls close Saturday, May 3, 2008

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