Eric D. Colburn, PLS

AutoCAD Civil 3D With Two Drawings Open

In today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I will show you Using Layer Source From Other DWGs When Creating Styles. This technique helps you speed up the creation of AutoCAD Civil 3D Styles by using already created layers from your other AutoCAD Civil 3D drawings and templates.

The Problem:

You are creating new styles in an AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing or template and in doing so you want to speed up the process of assigning Layers to the new point style; let’s say for display, for example. If the layer is not already in your AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing or template you have to create that layer (and its settings), which is either cumbersome through the Style Editor, or you need to exit the Style Editor to do it using the Layer Manager.

Either way, it requires a certain amount of manual input and risks inconsistencies between drawings and templates.

Two things we’re trying to accomplish are:

1. Work faster by select an existing Layer from another AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing or template to use in creating Styles.
2. Maintain Layer consistency.

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AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks: How To Setup and Use Surface Styles To Edit Surfaces Efficiently

In today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I will show you How To Setup and Use Surface Styles To Edit Surfaces Efficiently. This technique increases your CAD drafting and AutoCAD Civil 3D Surface creation and editing productivity by employing proper template setup and reducing switching between Toolspace Tabs and drilling down through what can be a rabbit-hole of options and settings AutoCAD Civil 3D uses to do the voodoo that it do.

This really leads to an important note: The overall techniques and processes that I’m showing you here are specific to setting up Surface Styles in your AutoCAD Civil 3D Templates so that you can Edit Surfaces Efficiently, but if you concentrate on the bigger picture, that of setting up your AutoCAD Civil 3D Templates with preset Styles to increase your productivity, then this is really what this post (and more to come) is all about. In fact, using the techniques that I describe below is really just one small part of a mindset and process which will allow you to take many small efficiencies and accumulate them into big increases in productivity, efficiency, and profit.

Two things we’re trying to accomplish are:

1. Have a preset Surface Style setup for editing AutoCAD Civil 3D Surfaces in your Template Drawing so that you only have to do this step once, saving you time from this point out.
2. Speed up the AutoCAD Civil 3D Surface editing process, reducing the need to switch back and forth between Prospector Tabs, find an appropriate Surface Style, and then drill down to switch on the Surface Style Components you’d use for surface edits, like Points, Triangles, and Border, for instance.

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New Professional Land Surveyor Learning Center (PLSLC) Course: AutoCAD Civil 3D Basic Units Settings

New Professional Land Surveyor Learning Center (PLSLC) Course: AutoCAD Civil 3D Basic Units Settings

Yesterday I announced the new online Professional Land Surveyor Learning Center (PLSLC) I’ve created for professional land surveyors, AutoCAD Civil 3D users, and designers.

Today I want to let you know about the first available course called AutoCAD Civil 3D Basic Units Settings. Here’s a little information about this online course:

C3D-101: AutoCAD Civil 3D Basic Units Settings

This course discusses the processes and procedures to setup your AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing Basic Unit Settings to eliminate mistakes due to inappropriate and inconsistent settings.

Specific AutoCAD Civil 3D Basic Units Settings covered in this course are:

1. Units and Zone Settings.
2. Survey Database and Survey Database Zone Settings.
3. LandXML Data Imperial Units Settings.
4. Angle Format Settings.
5. Drawing Scale Settings.

This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials. This course cost $19.00.

For full access to this course you’ll need to take a minute to create a new account for yourself on the Professional Land Surveyor Learning Center (PLSLC) if it is your first time.

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AutoCAD Civil 3D Drawing Scale Settings

This is the fifth AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks expanding upon a previous article I wrote outlining the 5 AutoCAD Civil 3D Settings Professional Land Surveyors Need To Know.

The fifth of the five AutoCAD Civil 3D settings Professional Land Surveyors need to know was, “Drawing Scale Settings“, which is explained in today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks.

To be specific, this AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks shows you how to set the Model Space Drawing Scale. While easy to do, more than a few AutoCAD Civil 3D users, particularly if they’re new to AutoCAD or the newer interfaces, have asked me in frustration where one does this – I’ll show you two simple ways to set the Model Space Drawing Scale. Of course, you need to set the scale in Paper Space, too, but we’ll leave that for another day.

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AutoCAD Civil 3D Angle Format Settings

This is the fourth of five AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks expanding upon a previous article I wrote outlining the 5 AutoCAD Civil 3D Settings Professional Land Surveyors Need To Know.

The fourth of the five AutoCAD Civil 3D settings Professional Land Surveyors need to know was, “Angle Format Settings“, which is explained in today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks.

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Select Edit LandXML Settings

This is the third of five AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks expanding upon a previous article I wrote outlining the 5 AutoCAD Civil 3D Settings Professional Land Surveyors Need To Know.

The third of the five AutoCAD Civil 3D settings Professional Land Surveyors need to know was, “LandXML Data Imperial Units Settings“, which is explained in today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks.

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Select Edit Survey Database Settings

This is the second of five AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks expanding upon a previous article I wrote outlining the 5 AutoCAD Civil 3D Settings Professional Land Surveyors Need To Know.

The second of the five AutoCAD Civil 3D settings Professional Land Surveyors need to know was, “Survey Database Units and Zone Settings“, which is explained in today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks.

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AutoCAD Civil 3D Drawing Units and Zone Settings

Last week I wrote an article outlining the 5 AutoCAD Civil 3D Settings Professional Land Surveyors Need To Know.

Because these are important settings I’ll write an AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks article weekly about each of those five settings.

The first of the five AutoCAD Civil 3D settings Professional Land Surveyors need to know was, “Units and Zone AutoCAD Civil 3D Drawing Settings“, which is explained in today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks.

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Quick Access Toolbar

In today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I’m going to show you how to Add Ribbon Menu Items To The Quick Access Toolbar.

This technique is very useful when you want to have easy access to a favorite AutoCAD Civil 3D menu item but don’t want the hassle of switching Ribbon Panels (particularly if you use that menu item often but don’t use or have its Ribbon Panel open for much else).

I must have discovered before how to Add Ribbon Menu Items To The Quick Access Toolbar and forgot about it, because I apparently did this to place Copy With Base Point on my Quick Access Toolbar sometime in the past. However, I “rediscovered” how to do this recently from another CAD blog. Unfortunately I don’t remember which one. I thought I had bookmarked the site, or added it to my Twitter Favorites, but when I started to put this Quick Tips and Tricks post together I couldn’t find or remember the source.

So, if it was you who recently blogged about the Add Ribbon Menu Items To The Quick Access Toolbar, where I got the inspiration for this post, please let us know in the comments or contact me so I can give you the credit you deserve!

Now on to the AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks to Add Ribbon Menu Items To The Quick Access Toolbar: Read the rest of this entry →

In today’s AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I’ll will show you how to Create a Surface From a Point Group. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to how to create a Surface in AutoCAD Civil 3D which is a task you will no doubt use often in your professional land surveying practice.

There are many methods and types of surface data you could use to create a surface in AutoCAD Civil 3D. In this AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I will concentrate on what I think can become your most used workflow in creating surfaces, and in the next AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks I’ll give you a few extra tips and tricks to automate surface creation, save time, and get your project out the door more quickly.

In general, what we will be doing is:

1. Creating a Point Group for project surface points.
2. Creating a Surface.
3. Using the Point Group to define the Surface.

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