Lately a lot of Civil 3D and Revit users have been inquiring about how to make the two softwares work together on the same projects without going through painstaking measures. With the 2011 versions of the two products, interoperability is not just possible, but it is easy to make happen as well. Civil people will actually like what can be accomplished inside of Revit to ensure that the files interact nicely. Bottom line is that if Revit users take the time to do the initial setup that is available to them, the lives of Civil and Architectural people working together on projects can be so much nicer than in the past. The phrase from an old television commercial comes to mind; “Calgon, take me away!” Ok, maybe it’s not as drastic as that, but it used to be such a pain to coordinate the two disciplines! Civil people! Gather ’round as we discuss issues we can all relate to with past projects. I remember things like, “We have to scale the Architectural stuff up to get it to come in correctly.” “Zero,zero brings the Architectural drawings in way off in East Osh Gosh somewhere!” “The building footprint from the Architectural drawing is rotated to something they call Plan North. It is not rotated for the real world.” Guess what Civil people?! It does not have to be this way if the Architectural people you are working with are using Revit! In this blog, I will point out capabilities that Revit has just for your knowledge, rather than going into technical details since most Civil people don’t use Revit anyways.
First of all, as Civil people are well aware of, Civil base drawings are usually tied to coordinates based on a survey. We tend to go nuts when these drawings are moved, rotated, etc. Guess what!? This does not have to occur when Revit users bring the Civil dwg files into Revit. They have commands not only to import the dwg file but they can also “acquire coordinates” from a dwg file as well. What does this mean? Whatever coordinate system the dwg file is set up in can be the controlling coordinates for the Revit project! No more move this, rotate this, etc. Also, Civil people can call out a known survey point or monument in their drawing with a coordinate on it. Once it is imported into Revit and coordinates are acquired, the Revit user can inquiry the coordinates of the known point and they will match!
In Revit, there are two points that the users have control over; 1. survey point 2. project point. Here are the differences; 1. the survey point is the control point from the Civil drawing file. This is something that the Architectural people have to allow Civil to maintain the control over for this to work seamlessly. That “relinquishing of power” can be the most difficult part. 2. the project point is a point that is somewhere on the building for the Revit user to use for building coordination with the other disciplines such as MEP and Structural. This could be a specific corner that is used to line up drawings on. Once all of the drawing coordination has been set up, the Revit user can export out to a file format known as an adsk file. This file can be imported directly into Civil 3D to show the building footprint in plan view, and the 3D building in a 3D view. Here’s the good stuff for Civil people regarding this adsk file; if the Revit user exports AFTER coordinates are acquired, then you will be able to import into Civil 3D using zero,zero and it will pop in where it is supposed to! Also, if they already have a known “Z” for the site, they can plug that into the export as well. And finally, if utility connections have been established (usually just a bit later in the project) that info can be exported as well.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Civil 3D surfaces come into Revit just fine. In the figure below, I imported a dwg file into Revit and merely turned off some layers to view the contours that are seen. I did not have to explode anything, or extract polylines as many people have thought are the only possible ways to bring contours into Revit. Those contours are still part of an intact Civil 3D surface.
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Civil 3D Surface in Revit
The features discussed in this blog should make the coordination of projects between the Architectural and Civil disciplines much easier than it has been in the past.
Civil 3D 2010 and 2011 have some great functionality for reporting quantities through the use of the QTO Manager. While the mechanisms for reporting earthwork and corridor quantities have been around for a few releases, the QTO Manager made it’s debut in the 2010 version of Civil 3D. For those that have not taken the plunge into the QTO Manager, it is a means to assign pay items to objects within Civil 3D and then produce a quantity takeoff report for all objects with pay items assigned. For Civil 3D objects such as pipe network and corridor sub assemblies, pay items can be assigned automatically when the objects are created in the drawing. This is something that is set up in the settings of the template. This all sounds great but what does it have to do with the title of this post? What about lines and blocks? Those are AutoCad elements, not Civil 3D objects! I will briefly go through the process for using the QTO Manager with AutoCad objects.
First, open the QTO Manager and start off by opening a Pay Item catalog. Civil 3D installs with a “Getting Started.csv” file. If you would like to bring in your own Pay Item data you can do so providing that you format the csv file in the manner of the getting started.csv file. After you open the Pay Item list you will see the categories as shown in the figure below. This list a a very abbreviated list for this demonstration.
Figure 1
After bringing in the Pay Item list, all we have to do is assign pay items and then produce the report. The first thing I will assign Pay Items to are AutoCad blocks. The drawing I have has fire hydrant blocks. I will select one, then right click and choose “select similar” to select all of the hydrant blocks. Then in QTO Manager, I will right click on the Fire Hydrant pay item and click “Assign Pay Item” Now when I hover my cursor over one of the blocks, you will see that a Pay Item has been assigned to it as seen in figure 2 below.
Figure 2
That takes care of AutoCad blocks. Next, I will assign Pay Items to AutoCad linework, or in this case, polylines. In my drawing are polylines that represent curb and gutter. Once again, I will select one of the polylines, right click and choose “select similar” to get all of the curb and gutter selected. Then in the QTO Manager, I will right click on “Curb, Concrete 6 inch depth” and choose “Assign Pay Item” and………Bingo! The Pay Items are assigned.
Now that the Pay Items have been assigned it’s time to report the Pay Item quantities. On the QTO tab of the ribbon, click the “takeoff” button. In the dialog box choose the following: click “summary”, choose “drawing” for report extents, and uncheck “report selected pay items only” , then click “compute”. In the nexr dialog box, in the lower left hand corner click the arrow down to choose the output type for the report. For this example I will use “Summary (HTML).xsl. The results are in Figure 3 below. Notice the ouput quantities. This QTO Manager rocks!
Figure 3
Have you ever created an alignment or a profile in Civil 3D and then clicked on an alignment station label, for example, and noticed that all of the station labels were selected? What if you wanted to change the style of just one label? What if you wanted to edit the text of that label and possibly add content to it? Furthermore, what if you simply wanted to put that station label on the other side of the alignment for clarity? I know, you could create a style that when the label is in it’s dragged state you could suppress the display of the leader to kind of fake it out to get it to look like what you want. But there is a better and more simple way to do all of this; the ctrl key! Yes, believe it or not the ctrl key holds the key to unlocking this ability.
All you have to do is to hold down the ctrl key and then click on the label you would like to modify. Once selected, right click on the label and notice the options as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1
After selecting to flip the label, for example, the station label will flip to the other side of the alignment as seen in Figure 2 and the other labels in the set will not be affected! Very cool! After edits have been made, if you decide that you want the label to go back to its original properties, you can ctrl select it, right click and select “reset label”.
Figure 2
There are some other things you can do if you select “label properties” after you ctrl select a label and then right click on it. Figure 3 shows these options.
Figure 3
You can change the style of that one label, you can toggle off the display of that one label, or you can flip the label from here. There is one small catch with the visibility toggle to remember though. If you toggle of the display of a label there is no way to ctrl select it to be able to turn it on again if needed. So what can you do? You can select any of the labels in the group, then right click and select “reset all group labels”. Here’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the label will now reappear. The bad news is that all ctrl select edits to labels will be reset to their original states.
So there it is! A simple yet powerful trick to try with individual labels that are part of a group.
I know that this is a Civil 3D blog but I had to post this blog regarding Navisworks. In this case Civil 3D is involved though, so I guess that qualifies. So here is the deal. I recently did a Civil BIM model to show the infrastructure on a roadway project and all of the utilities and ground surfaces were created in Civil 3D. I brought the drawing into Navisworks and did not see any of the Civil objects. Right away I thought that it had to be a Civil Object Enabler issue which is the case, but there is one “small” catch; if you are using Navisworks 2010 64-bit version, there is not a 64-bit Civil Object Enabler available! What do you do in that case? Punt? No!
I decided to try something. As you can probably figure out, I am using a 64-bit machine so I am installing 64-bit apps on it. I decided to try to install 32-bit Navisworks along side the 64-bit version and apply the Civil Object Enabler to the 32-bit install. It worked! Once I installed the Civil Object Enabler to the 32-bit install I was able to see the Civil objects in Navisworks with no problem. The results are in the picture below. You can see the pipe network objects and the surface being displayed with a transparency. We can only hope that there will be a 64-bit version of the Civil Object Enabler at least for the 2011 version if one is not going to be made for the 2010 version.
One of the most basic but useful tasks we can do with the Part Builder is to modify the part sizes of existing parts. Have you ever gone to create a pipe network and known you needed a specific part size but just did not see it in any of your parts lists? We can bring in more part sizes into our parts list by adding the part sizes but what if we add all of the part sizes and still don’t see the size that we need? This is where going into Part Builder will help us.
For this example we will modify or add to the part sizes of a pipe in the Part Builder. After opening the Part Builder and changing the catalog to the pipes catalog in the “getting started-catalog screen” interface, expand the part chapter, in this case “circular pipes”. Then, click on the “concrete pipe” part family. Either right click and select “modify part sizes”, or select the “modify part sizes” button at the bottom of the dialog box as seen in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1
After selecting the modify part sizes command, you will be brought into the source dwg file for the part. Depending on the version of Civil 3D you are using, you may be prompted with a message like the one in Figure 2 stating that the drawing was last saved by an earlier version of the software and saving will update some AECC objects to the current version and cause them to be incompatible with earlier versions. Click the “close” button.
Figure 2
Next, in the “content builder” dialog box, expand “size parameters”, right click “BdyD1″ and click “edit” as shown in Figure 3 below. This will open the “edit part sizes” dialog box. Once inside the edit part sizes dialog box, select any of the PID values to make the “new’ button accessible. For this example I want to add a new part size of 144″. The way this works in this dialog box is whichever existing size I pick on, it will make a copy of that size at the very end of the line of size entries. So, the easiest thing for me to do is to pick the last size in the list, in this case 160″, and then click the new button. You will notice that there is now a copy of the 160″ size part, so what I will do next is to modify the first 160″ entry to be the new 144″ entry that I want. Figure 4 below shows this.
Figure 3
Figure 4
After editing the PID value to have the 144″ that I want, it may also be necessary to edit the WTh (wall thickness) value as I did in this example. Notice how after entering the PID value that the PrtSN (part size name) value automatically populates? If you were to go to the top of the edit part sizes dialog box and click the black down arrow next to ‘values” and select “calculations” you will see that it is a formula to automatically populate the PrtSN value.
That’s it! No need to feel like you have to be a Part Builder expert just to add sizes!
Civil 3D 2011 comes with many new features and functionality, but if I had to nail just one down and call it my favorite, it would have to be the data shortcuts enhancements. What are these enhancements? There are basically two. The first one, is the ability to specify a Data Shortcut project folder and then specify a folder which contains drawings to be associated with the selected project. For each drawing file, the project selected is associated with the drawing. This will eliminate the issue that many have complained about in previous versions of Civil 3D; the chance to create data shortcuts form the wrong project into a drawing. Great! This will work sort of like LDT used to as far as helping the issue of wrong project, wrong drawing.
The second data shortcut enhancement is the Associate Project To Multiple Drawings command. This new feature gives you the ability to associate a default Data Shortcut project to multiple drawings residing in a specific folder on. This new command can also be used to remove the project association from multiple drawings at the same time. Great new functionality that I am sure a lot of users will appreciate.
In part 1 of this blog I discussed how to configure the FDO provider for connecting to a dgn file. Now in part 2 I will go over the actual process for connecting to a dgn file after the FDO provder has been properly configured. To get started, it will be helpful to have Windows Explorer open along with Civil 3D. Why you may ask? You will see shortly that it will make life easier. Ok, let’s get into it! First, In Civil 3D it may be a good idea to change to the “task based geospatial” workspace. You will be able to access some of the Map commands that we will use towards the end. At a minimum, you will need to have the Map Taskpane open. If it’s not already open, the way I open it is to type in “mapwspace” and choose the “on” option. It is in this palette that we will be able to access FDO.
In the Map Task Pane, click on the “data” button and choose “connect to data” as seen in the figure below.
This will bring up the “Data Connect” dialog box which is also referred to as the FDO dialog box. In this dialog box click on “add OGR connection”. If desired, type in a connection name. This step is not necessary but it makes it easier to identify multiple connections by name. In this example, I have used “Plan From DGN” as the name. Next, you will need to enter the location of your dgn file. Before you do so, there are 2 important things to note about using this FDO provider: 1. the entire path to the dgn file must be entered. This is why I mentioned having Windows Explorer open so that you can simply paste the address in. 2. this FDO provider seems to only work with V7 dgn files. I tried numerous times to connect to V8 dgn files and consistently got errors and could not connect. Paste in the address and then add the file name as seen in my example below.
Click the “connect” button. This will bring open the “Add to Map” section of the Data Connect dialog box. Click on the “add to map” button as shown in the figure below, give it a few seconds and you should see the elements of the dgn file in your drawing as Map layers.
At this point, you can either settle for using this connection to the dgn file as a sort of underlay or you can extract geometry from the Map features which means you will produce dwg linework. To create linework from Map features, you first must check out the features. This can be done by first, selecting the features that you want to extract geometry from in the drawing area, then going to the “edit feature” tab of the ribbon in the “task based geospatial” workspace. Once there select the “check out features” button as seen below. This will check the features out from the “database”, which in this case is the dgn file.
After checking the features out, go the the “modfiy” panel on the “edit features” tab of the ribbon and select the “extract feature geom” button as seen in the figure below.
This will give you linework in your dwg file that can be edited as needed. You could now delete the data connection if you wanted to. Using this method should help keep corruption from getting into your drawings when bringing in dgn data.
Do you have to use data from dgn files to bring into your dwg files? Have you ever had an issue with corruption coming in with those dgn files? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then you may want to look at an alternate method for working with dgn files in Civil 3D. What method am I referring to? FDO. For those not aware of what FDO is, is stands for Feature Data Objects and is part of the Map 3D technology inside of Civil 3D. For those that have seen the Map Taskpane and quickly closed it, you may want to reconsider that idea. Part 1 of this post is on how to set up the FDO provider and part 2 will be on the actual process of connecting to dgn files. Look for part 2 in the next few days. For those not familiar with FDO but are interested in a little more detail in how to use it, send me an email at ron.couillard@cadsoft-consult.comand I will send you a pdf of my AU class that goes briefly into the basics of FDO and other useful Map functionality.
Ok so let’s get into what we need to do to set it up for using FDO to connect to a dgn file. The FDO provider needed to do this does not come with Civil 3D or Map 3D right out of the box. We will need to download an FDO provider. The OSGEO website has free FDO providers available for download. Civil and Map 2010 are using FDO version 3.4 so here is a link to the OSGEO website with all of the FDO 3.4 providers available. http://fdo.osgeo.org/content/fdo-340-downloads . For this particular task, we will grab the OGR provider. This provider can provide the functionality of connecting to many different formats, but as I stated, we will just cover dgn for now. On this web page, there are 2 sections for downloads. One is basically for getting the provider code to copy into your providers.xml file and the other section is for getting the dll files to make it all work. For the dll files, be sure to go under the “Windows Binaries” section and grab the “OGR Provider” download. As far as the provider code for the xml file goes, I have provided it for you here:
<FeatureProvider>
<Name>OSGeo.OGR.3.4</Name>
<DisplayName>FDO Provider for OGR</DisplayName>
<Description>Access to OGR data sources</Description>
<IsManaged>False</IsManaged>
<Version>3.4.0.0</Version>
<FeatureDataObjectsVersion>3.4.0.0</FeatureDataObjectsVersion>
<LibraryPath>OGRProvider.dll</LibraryPath>
</FeatureProvider>
So with all of this being said, “what do I do with this stuff to get it to work!?” Glad you asked! Go to the following path to access the 2 areas we need to cover for setup: C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010\FDO\bin. You will place the dll files here and you will also find the “providers.xml” file as well. So, paste the dll files, then, open the xml file and paste in the OGR provider test that I provided into the xml file. Be sure to look at how it is currently set up and just match how it is when pasting the new text. *NOTE* You may want to make a copy of the original xml file before you modify it just in case you need to revert back to it. Once you have copied the dll files and pasted the provider code, thats it! You are now set up to be able to connect to dgn files. As I stated earlier, look for part 2 of this post in the next few days in which I will cover the actual process for connecting to a dgn file.
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 has some great new functionality in it. One of these new features is the ability to generate cut and fill hatching in profiles. The cool thing to mention here is that there is no need to create a proposed surface to be able to accomplish this. You do need to have a proposed profile along with a surface profile, but a proposed surface is not necessary. The image below shows an example of how this could look:
Some of us have created hatching but it comes out looking very generic; like vanilla ice cream! Ok, so if we go into the profile view we should be able to change the appearance of the hatching………..right? This profile hatching is actually controlled by a shape style. Obviously, since it is a style, this can be found on the settings tab under “general”, “multipurpose styles”, then “shape styles”. In my example I have 2 shape styles being used, “cut material” and “fill material” that are simply ANSI 31 hatches using red for cut and green for fill. You will see in the shape style dialog box that you can control hatch angle and scale as well.
Ok, now that styles are set up how do we first add hatching, and if we already have hatching, how do we change what it looks like? First, to add hatching, select the profile view, right click, and select “profile view properties”. Next, in the profile view properties dialog box, go to the “hatch” tab. Click on the “cut area” button as seen in the image below to populate the cut hatch area.
Be sure to double check which profile is set as the upper and the lower boundaries. If these are reversed, then cut and fill will be reversed. Now go over to the shape style value and choose the style you want to display for cut. Follow these same steps for the fill area and you should have cut and fill profile hatching that looks the way you want it AND is dynamic as well!
Do you have Flex LM installed on a Vista box and have tried to serve licenses and just can not? This has been an issue for some and I have a few things to tell you to look at to make this task possible. First, make sure that ports 2080 and 27,000 are not locked down and are accessible. The next thing (which really threw me for a loop) is the version of Flex LM that you are using. One of our client received a copy of a version of Flex LM that I have not seen elsewhere, version 11.4.101.2. I was told that they received this from someone at Autodesk support. They sent me a copy and I have it so for anyone interested you can send me an email and request it: ron.couillard@cadsoft-consult.com.
When we replaced the version of Flex LM with this “new” (obviously, 11.5 is the new version) one, it served licenses with no issues.
So in a nutshell, the two issues were the security of Vista which is why the ports had to be unlocked, and the fact that Vista can’t serve licenses with the latest version of Flex LM.
2011, Civil 3D | Ron Couillard | 
July 12, 2010 3:59 pm | 
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