Being Civil

Product Support at AU

2009-11-25T18:00:14+01:00

I will be travelling next week to Las Vegas for Autodesk University 2009. Come join me Wednesday morning for my class on getting the most bang for your computing buck and throughout the week at the AEC Lounge. If you spot me, come up and say hi! I’ll be blogging throughout the week with news from AU – stay tuned for more!

How to extract MSP file and apply it to the Admin Image

2009-11-19T18:50:20+01:00

Knowing that many people do not read readme file with whom I can totally relate for the most part… But, trust me, I’m getting better. Nice thing about re-designed installation wizard that now you can include Service Pack (Update) from Autodesk.com (if available). That is in my opinion the easiest way to do it. But in case if you for any reason would like to test drive it before installation or if you would like to install it from a local copy of the Update you know you have to create MSP file. This procedure sounds harder than it really is and it's also applicable to older versions of Civil 3D, too. Creating (extracting) MSP file is pretty simple. To read about it click continue reading...

1. From the Autodesk Product Support website, download C3D2010SP2.exe to your local computer. We recommend saving EXE file to the root directory to avoid possible issues due to long file names. C:\C3D2010SP2.exe would be good.

2. On the Start menu (Windows), click Run. (/e switch extracts the Microsoft Patch file (MSP) from executable (EXE)). Enter the following information, and then click OK

<local drive>:\<patch name> /e <local drive>:\<patch name.msp> i.e. C:\C3D2010SP2.exe /e C:\C3D2010SP2.msp

3. This will create patch file in the root directory called C3D2010SP2.msp

4. On the computer where you created the original AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 deployment there is a Tools folder with " Create & modify a deployment" shortcut. Double-click this shortcut.

5. In the Begin Deployment dialog you may select one of the available options depending if you wish to create new deployment or modify the existing ones as well as to create one from template.

6. Go through the several steps of the wizard and when you got to the “Include Service Pack“ screen you should select “Include Service pack(s) from local driver or local network”.

The rest is easy. For more information of this see the excellent post that Justin wrote while ago called “Deployment Basics” that covers in-depth of deployment creation. Enjoy!!!

Where to find coordinate system False Origin

2009-11-16T19:28:11+01:00

The other day I had a customer asking what the False Northing and Easting was for a specific coordinate system in Civil 3D. Not knowing off the top of my head, and with some help from the Map Team (thanks Doug!), I discovered that this is fairly easy to find within Civil 3D. First we start off with the command ADESETCRDSYS, this will launch the Assign Global Coordinate System dialog which will allow you to select a coordinate system. Clicking on the Select Coordinate System button will launch another dialog which will give you the options to pick your category and the coordinate systems available in that category. For my example I selected NHHPF HARN (HPGN datum) New Hampshire State Planes, US Foot. You just need to select the coordinate system, and click on PROPERTIES in the lower left hand corner of the Select Global Coordinate System dialog box. The False Origins as well as the Projection Parameters will be displayed on the PROJECTION tab of the Global Coordinate System Properties dialog.

Sharing Pipe Network Parts: 101

2009-11-12T20:02:00+01:00

As is the case with other objects or files that are shared between users, (Hint: Xrefs, Data Shortcuts, Images, etc.) the drawing does not store these files/objects inside but rather remembers where are they coming from by using paths. It is important to know that Parts Catalogs are external to the drawing, too. By default all pipes are stored in this location: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2010\enu\Pipes Catalog.

This Catalog Manager (a person assigned to manage parts) can use different location and you, as user, can manually point to that location. That way you will always have updated version of catalog files. This task is easy to do. All you need to do is to select Set Pipe Network Catalog from Home ribbon.

Another thing that's important to note is that in multi-user environment it's easy to create unwanted changes and that also affects other drawings that referenced part catalogs. In that case, too, Catalog Manager comes handy. When the drawing is opened on a different computer, by default program looks for parts at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2010\enu\Pipes Catalog. That can cause that some parts are not found or that some parts look different in the drawing.

So when there are some catalog changes this Catalog Manager can distribute them or just manage it in the central location. As you can see there are many reasons to assign one person to act as Catalog Manager.

Off course, there are situations where user creates or receives new part and would like to share it. Then that part can be sent to Catalog Manager to be added to catalog.

If you, however, decide not to utilize Catalog Manager you must know that there must be lot of good communications between engineers-which is sometimes hard to do since some of them are in and out of the office all the time.

What if users do not want to change this default location? Some people prefer not to change this location, then Catalog Manager can distribute these parts to all users to be copied in the default location on their C: drive. When sharing a drawing with other users set part catalog to the same location to prevent unwanted part changes. If you happen to have part that's used in the drawing from your own catalog and then you send that drawing to other users they will be able to open that drawing but the parts that don't exist in the other users catalog will be replaced by the closest part Civil 3D can find. I have seen too many of these issues.

So solution to all of these issues can be a Catalog Manager!

Advanced Daylighting Design and a farewell...

2009-11-10T09:32:17+01:00

Hi all - this design scenario came up a few weeks ago, funny enough from two different sources, in Europe and North America. How do you design an Assembly that in cut conditions daylights from the hinge point and has two parts (see below); first a variable dimension (x) and then a second part with a fixed dimension (y)? As you may know, at first glance Assemblies can only have a variable dimension on the "last" daylight portion, where you just tell the Subassembly to find the surface wherever it is. This seems impossible - how could we achieve this?

To understand the solution we will quickly review the definition of a parallelogram. It is a rectangle in which the opposing sides have equal length, like this:

Look at the X and Y portions in the first graphic and compare - any ideas? We DO need to start with a fixed variable and end with a link to find the surface, but here's another hint - you can create Links as construction items and use the "Omit Link" property. Stumped? Let's take the design criteria and combine it with the parallelogram concept to get a solution!

Part 1

Use a LinkWidthAndSlope to create a fixed daylight offset
Then add a LinkSlopeToSurface

This is exactly opposite of what we want, right? On to Part 2...

Part 2 - now we are going to go "backwards" to get the links we actually want.

From the daylight point at the surface, create the same LinkWidthAndSlope, but in the opposite direction
Then add a MarkedPoint to the end (give it a name when creating)
Now from the original hinge point, attach a LinkToMarkedPoint and provide the MarkedPoint name

See what you have done, you have created a parallelogram! Now you need to go back to the two subassemblies you created in Part 1, right-click and Edit Subassembly. In the Subassembly Properties, just turn the "Omit Link" property to "Yes." Now those subassemblies are just construction pieces and will not be drawn when you create your corridor. Perhaps now your horizons have opened up to other possibilities - my thanks to Tomas Lendvorsky, Autodesk's Solutions Engineer from Prague (he's a whiz with Expressions too!).

A farewell: this will be my last post on the BeingCivil blog, as I have accepted the position of Social Media Manager in Product Support. I would like to thank you all for joining us here on the BeingCivil blog, following us on Twitter and YouTube. BeingCivil lives on, with the critical support of our other great authors: Almas, Jason, Justin and Seth. My congratulations as well to Joshua Coombs, who takes over as the Technical Lead for Civil in Product Support. I wish you all success and happiness in the coming holiday season and beyond, and finally, don't forget to "Be Civil"!