Red Transit Consultants, LLC now has two apps available on the Autodesk Exchange store. The Civil3D Copy, Raise/Lower Profile app helps to speed up your daily workflows when having to copy, raise/lower existing dynamic profiles. The app saves you about 15 clicks through several dialog boxes. The Civil3D Set Multiple Object Styles app is also an efficiency workflow app when dealing with objects styles for alignments, profiles, and surfaces. When having to set object styles, the app can save you countless clicks and dialogs reducing all operations to one dialog window.

The 2013 version apps are available for purchase here (Copy, Raise/Lower Profile) and here (Set Multiple Object Styles). We also have 2011 and 2012 versions of both apps available, just send a request.

Red Transit Consultants, LLC has one other app, the Civil3D Find and Replace, seen on this blog that is currently in the review process with the Autodesk Exchange team. That app should be available in the next couple of weeks.

Subscribe to the Red Transit Consultants, LLC blog here!!

Autodesk Exchange Store

If you haven't heard about the new Autodesk Exchange store, take some time and go check it out. There are a lot of apps for AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Map, etc. If you're looking for tools to help you through projects, you can find them here. Civil 3D and Map were just recently added (I believe earlier this year).

With the development of the Autodesk Exchange store, I have decided to start my own app development business and offer some of the commands I have created and posted on here. Feel free to go and check out Red Transit Consultants, LLC. The apps I post will have YouTube videos and links to the store where you can download.

Civil3D Large Object Support

Today I have the joy of designing a 4.5 mile roadway. I thought, no big deal, until I received a message I hadn't seen before.

The blog, Being Civil, has a good explanation of what happening with this message, should you ever be as lucky to me to receive it.

Convert C3D Surface to DEM File

Ran into this issue today and found out some interesting things... DEM files are only in metric, and thought C3D looks like it will convert on the fly, it will not. Found this blog for a solution.

Civil 3D Find and Replace

Have you have had to rename a lot of different objects in Civil 3D? Or even have to change the descriptions?

For instance if you grade in a channel, you might make an alignment called Channel 5, which will also have a profile called Channel 5, which is on a profile view called Channel 5, which has an assembly called Channel 5, which all makes up a corridor called Channel 5, which has a corridor surface called Channel 5, which is pasted in a surface with a name reference to Channel 5. Then the engineer decides to renumber the channels... now your channel is Channel 100. Oh and there are about 15 different channels like this in your drawing. Good luck making sure everything reads as it should for the next person who uses the file.

This drove me to write a new command... C3D Find and Replace. I mean we can do a find and replace on regular text, why not on names and descriptions of objects???

Here are a few screenshots and a video showing the command in action.















You can watch the command in action here.

Copy Surface Profile and Perform Raise/Lower Command

For those of you who read my posts, you probably have realized that I am all about less clicks and less menus. Civil3D can get somewhat confusing with the hidden operations to perform specific tasks. One of those very tasks that is somewhat hidden is the copy profile from surface procedure. There are a number of dialogs that you must go through and change a setting from static to dynamic, then get into the profile geometry editor, make a copy of the profile, go back and change the original profile's setting back to dynamic. You can find more detailed explanation of how to do this here and here.

In order to save more clicks and to speed up the process, I automated it programmatically. In this first image, the code begins with prompting for a selection of a profile. The 'prmpt.AddAllowedClass' line tells the software what type of object we are looking for. Anything other than a profile will return the reject message listed above. Next, this command was built for copying surface profiles, thus we perform an if/then statement on the selected profile type to verify the type is EG type. Note that the EG type stands for existing ground, though the user could create a profile on a proposed surface, and that would perform the same way.

Next we prompt for a raise or lower value. Upon copying, the command will adjust the PVI values automatically. This command also places a corresponding name and description on the profile, thus you'll see the if then statement checking the value of the typed in distance. If it's negative, it will display LOWERED, if it's positive it will display RAISED.

See the first image below.




The second image we arrive at the TRY statement, we have to gather information about the selected profile. So we store data about the profile in 'alignment', 'layerId', 'surfaceId', styleId' and 'labelSetId'. Note that these are all the items a profile requires to create from a surface. After gathering the previous profile information, I set the new profile name and the new profile description. I have set mine up to read as the following:

SelectedProfileName [COPY - RAISED/LOWERED XX'

The description will read something similar. Next we create the new profile as an ObjectId with all of the gathered information of the selected profile. Then we need to open that newly created profile and make sure the program knows to select it. Then I set the update mode to static and the description from the string above.

Now to adjust the PVIs. Here we perform a ForEach loop to check through all the PVIs in the new profile. We gather the current PVI elevation, add that to the selected value of offset (+/-), then change the PVI elevation. Finally we close the initial If/then statement with some kind of error message should the user pick a FG (finished grade profile), and commit the transaction.

See the second image below.



I'm fairly new to VB.net and the Civil3D API, so I don't know if this was the best method for this operation, but it definitely works!!

Eric Chappell's Blog: Upright Linetypes - Gotcha!

Here is a great post by Eric Chappell about 2012's upright linetype feature. Too bad I'm using 2011. So ready to switch!!

Eric Chappell's Blog: Upright Linetypes - Gotcha!: Recently we upgraded to Civil 3D 2012 and one of the things I was really excited about was actually an AutoCAD 2011 feature that enabled tex...