Eric D. Colburn, PLS

Survey Database Point Groups-AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 Professional Land Surveyor Video

In this installment of my Professional Land Surveyor Video series, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 for Land Surveyors: Survey Database Point Groups, I will show you how to:

1. Create Survey Database Point Groups.
2. Select Survey Database Points to populate your Survey Database Point Groups.
3. Use Survey Database Point Groups to filter points you insert into and remove from your AutoCAD Civil 3D drawings.

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In this installment of my Professional Land Surveyor Video series, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 for Land Surveyors: Create a Surface From a Point Group, I will show you how to:

1. Create a Point Group specifically for project surface points.
2. Create a Surface.
3. Use the Point Group to define the Surface.

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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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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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Multi-National Division Baghdad

Story by 1st Lt. Michael Lind

Engineer Troops Survey Liberty for New Maps

Old Map of China

As reported by China’s Xinhua, there is now a ban on topographic map trading, both online and offline, of classified topographic maps in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This is according to said northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region authorities in a joint notice according to local officials.

” topography map entitled “classified”, published during the Culture Revolution (1966-1976), was discovered trading in a collection market in May, which triggered the joint notice by five regional departments, including the bureau of surveying and mapping, civil affairs department, administration for the protection of state secrets and communication administration.”

Professional Land Surveyor Source – Xinhua

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The GeoInformation Group Announces UKMap Programme

New large-scale mapping for the UK

Cambridge, 1 June 2009: The GeoInformation® Group today announces a ground breaking and innovative new mapping programme. UKMap® is the UK’s first commercially funded, large-scale topographic mapping and address database created completely independently of the Ordnance Survey®.

Started more than two years ago, the GeoInformation Group can reveal for the first time the full scale of the UKMap Programme. Employing more than 100 people across three continents, UKMap forms part of an ambitious five-year programme to map over 500 towns and cities covering all urban areas with a population greater than 10,000 — some 24,000 square kilometres throughout the UK. Read the rest of this entry →

The price of the popular USGS 1:24,000 scale topographic quadrangle map – often called a “topo” or a “quad” – will go up $2 per sheet to $8 beginning today March 16, 2009. Larger format (“poster”) maps will go up $3 per sheet to $10. These prices were last increased 7 years ago.

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