Lazy Drafter

Digging Into Civil 3D

Written by Josh Jones on October 22, 2009

I started reading a new blog called Digging Into Civil 3D by trainer and author Rick Ellis.

Rick has been involved with the Civil/Survey/Mapping industry and Autodesk products since the early 90s in a variety of roles ranging from a Civil designer and CAD Manager to a trainer, consultant and author.

I’ve taken a number of Civil 3D and Map 3D classes taught by Rick including one at Autodesk University 2008. He is an excellent teacher and writer.

Check out his blog at diggingintocivil3d.blogspot.com.

Yes, I Want to Turn It Into One!

Written by Josh Jones on August 11, 2009

Comments(2)

I’m lazy so I like less keystrokes. For example when I am running the PEDIT command on an object that isn’t a polyline, I don’t want to be prompted with this every time:

Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>

Managing Fonts Used in Tables Linked to a Spreadsheet (AutoCAD 2008)

Written by Josh Jones on July 22, 2009

Comments(5)

I love that you can link an Excel spreadsheet to an AutoCAD table. This is a very powerful tool, but I quickly discovered a problem: you can’t use .shx fonts an Excel spreadsheet.

Our CAD standards dictate that we use a .shx font but since it cannot be used inside Excel the AutoCAD table takes on the same non-standard font used in the spreadsheet. All of my AutoCAD tables linked to a spreadsheet were coming in with a non-standard font and it was a pain reformatting each and every cell. That’s when I discovered this little secret. Read more »

Modeling Swales & Ponds in Civil 3D 2008

Written by Josh Jones on June 24, 2009

Comments(1)

Civil 3D has some great tools for creating 3D models of ponds and swales. This document will show you how to use many of the tools provided in Civil 3D to create ponds/swales in 8 basic steps.

Download Tutorial (PDF – 3.66 MB)

3d-pond

CompliCAD

Written by Josh Jones on March 30, 2009

Comments(2)

For all you lazy drafters out there, CompliCAD offers, “a few tools to help make CAD & BIM a little less complicated.” These tools are some useful unit-conversion & scale factor tools.

Check them out…

Create a Bearing Label Block in Degrees/Minutes/Seconds

Written by Josh Jones on March 26, 2009

Comments(6)

At the request of Murph, I will show you how to create a block that will display the bearing in degrees, minutes, and seconds (DMS) using an AutoCAD Field.

It’s actually very simple. Let’s get started. Read more »

Create a Northing & Easting Block With Fields

Written by Josh Jones on March 25, 2009

Comments(9)

Recently I was asked to create a grid that labels the Northings & Eastings on a map. There are a couple of ways you could do this: 1) If you have Civil 3D, create a point style that labels the Northing & Easting. 2) If you have AutoCAD create a block that displays the Northing & Easting with fields.

If you have Civil 3D, the point-style method works the best but today I am going to show you how to use fields to make this happen. Read more »

Delete Layers

Written by Josh Jones on March 18, 2009

Comments(3)

You may have noticed that when you attempt to delete a layer that is being used by entities in your drawing you will be denied.

There is, however, an easy way to delete layers that are being used by entities. Read more »

Voting Begins for AUGI Wish List

Written by Josh Jones on February 23, 2009

Comments(0)

This just in: “It is time to cast your votes for your favorite Autodesk product improvement wishes for the February 2009 cycle. The ballots, populated with the wishes submitted by your fellow AUGI members, are live and awaiting your votes.” Read more »

Autodesk on YouTube

Written by Josh Jones on January 29, 2009

Comments(0)

I just found out from @MisterAU on Twitter that Autodesk has a channel on YouTube. Looking over a few of the videos it looks like a lot of marketing promos and videos showing overviews of various Autodesk software. Read more »

Reconcile New Layers

Written by Josh Jones on January 22, 2009

Comments(4)

According to the AutoCAD help file, “Reconciling new layers is the process of manually reviewing new layers so that you can avoid potential errors before plotting your drawing or when restoring a layer state.” Read more »

Digging Into Civil 3D

Yes, I Want to Turn It Into One!

Managing Fonts Used in Tables Linked to a Spreadsheet (AutoCAD 2008)

Modeling Swales & Ponds in Civil 3D 2008

CompliCAD

Create a Bearing Label Block in Degrees/Minutes/Seconds

Create a Northing & Easting Block With Fields

Delete Layers

Voting Begins for AUGI Wish List

Autodesk on YouTube

Reconcile New Layers

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