Civil 3D 2009 Update 2.1 now available

Civil 3D 2009 update 2.1 is now available to download here. Wondering why 2.1? Update 2.0 was released in January however users reported problems with the program after installation and was then pulled out of the Autodesk website days after.

Happy St David's Day!

Filter command

From time to time I'll be posting some Autocad tips and commands that some of you might have forgotten or don't even realise they exist.

FILTER (filter or fi on the command line) is a useful command that lets you select a set of object properties for inclusion or exclusion to/from a selection set. Similar to Quick Select (qselect) but easier to use, with an option to save the selection list and can be used as a transparent command.



On my next post, see how you can use Civil 3D on traffic management schemes.



Have a good weekend!

Autocad 2010 Product Launch

Take a peek at the new Autocad 2010 portfolio of design software here. You can view a webcast of the virtual press conference held last week and download press materials for each software.

90 degree road bend

There recently was a topic in the Civil 3D discussion forum on how to model a corridor that have a 90 degree bend alignment (no curve at all). The problem when modelling this is the inside lane of the corridor will have overlapping corridor links. This post will discuss a workaround on how to achieve this. Please note I am using Civil 3D 2009. This still can be done in earlier versions but would take longer though.

Assuming horizontal alignment and vertical profile already exist, create a feature line from alignment, use the designed profile and untick "Create dynamic link to alignment box". Click OK and accept the defaults in the Weed Vertices dialog box.

Create a stepped offset from the centreline featureline to desired road cross fall slope for both sides. In this case I used -2.5% slopes and 3m offsets.

Add a free curve with radius value of the half lane width which is 3m and create the road assembly.

Create a corridor with tangent frequency set to 5 and curves set to 2. Set the offset featurelines as horizontal and vertical targets. This feature is new in 2009 and makes the task easier to do.

Add an extra chainage to define the outer corner.

The corridor surface needs a few editing to run the crown along the centreline corner and not along the centreline curve. Create a surface from the corridor and set the style to show the surface points. Delete the points along the curve and add a point at the centreline corner with levels taken from the converted centreline featureline.

Finally, to add the earthworks, create grading using the road edge featurelines and use the existing ground surface as target. Add the new grading to the corridor surface by right clicking on the grading featureline and “Add surface as breakline…”. Select the corridor surface in the next dialog box and accept the defaults in the “Add breaklines” box.

My first post!!

This is my first attempt at blogging. I have long been thinking of putting this up but I knew there were already a couple of blogs on Civil 3D that I thought it is not worth adding one. Being the "Civil 3D man" at the office, a colleague suggested to document tasks we use Civil 3D on and step by step procedure on doing such tasks so when they come up again, they can refer to it and not bother me. Sounds a good idea to me!

Instead of creating it for work, I decided to create a blog for everyone to read and hopefully in a way help others too. So here it is.

Now for some boring bits -a few info about me. I'm originally from Manila, Philippines, moved to Wales, United Kingdom in 2003. I am a Philippine licensed civil engineer, worked with a land development company in the Philippines for 4 years and currently working for a multi-disciplinary consulting company based at the Cardiff office for their highways skill group for 6 years now. I have been using Civil 3D since its release and previously used Softdesk and Land desktop.

I am hoping to update and add posts at least every month time permitting. In the meantime, stay tuned!