CAD-1 Blog
The 17th Annual Autodesk University was held on Tuesday, December 1st through 3rd, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our tech support team attended the conference that week and came away with powerful information. There were hundreds of classes to choose from, all with great content. We were excited that four of our techs were selected to present a class at AU2009. With over 5,000 participants, each day was chock full of classes and activities, including entrance into the Shark Reef and Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. Autodesk University is one of the best investments you can make by sending at least one member of your team. The knowledge and networking is invaluable. You can become a member at http://au.autodesk.com . Hope to “CU” at AU 2009!
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Posted 12/9/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD
New to 2010 versions, the online License Transfer Utility (LTU) replaces the Portable License Utility (PLU) that was included with many legacy Autodesk products. Similar to the PLU, the LTU enables the transfer of the standalone license activation to another system. This transfer is done by exporting the license to an Autodesk server and then retrieving that exported license on the destination computer.
There is no computer identification that needs to take place between the two workstations, and there is no restriction on how many times this feature can be used. Additionally, there is no time restriction for the transferred license. The exported license can be imported by you to your laptop (reserved for you) or can be made available for use by someone else (“public” use) to import to their home computer, laptop, etc. The LTU is not user-specific; it is tied to the serial number of the product. Products with different serial numbers cannot share the exported license.
The LTU is located by selecting Start button>Autodesk>(the application you need the license exported from)>License Transfer Utility. The CAD-1 tech support team would be happy to assist you if you need help with this utility.
Deb Williams - Technical Specialist @ CAD-1
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Posted 12/9/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD
Engineers face a daunting task when undertaking a road reconstruction project. Reconstruction is considered a difficult type of road design to carry out. Rather than dealing with pristine geometry conditions of new construction, irregular existing conditions, and their challenges, are inherent in reconstruction. Accurate design, an accurate account of material types and quantities, along with attention to environmental impacts are all critical to the design process.
AutoCAD Civil and AutoCAD Civil 3D software (referred to here as “the Civil products”) come equipped with specific subassemblies meant for road rehabilitation and reconstruction. This results in the ability to configure those subassemblies to make design decisions more automatic—thus, realizing time and cost savings.
For example, The City of Loveland announced an intersection reconstruction project that will begin soon. The City decided to use a unique, patented, left-turn intersection design. This design is known as a Continuous Flow Intersection (CFI). There are less than a dozen of these unique intersections in the country. To name a few project locations, the CFI was implemented in Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis. Due to the increased traffic growth in a particular intersection, the CFI will allow left-turners to simultaneously flow with forward-moving traffic and right-turning traffic. This design allows for less wait time at red arrows and safely provides an alternative to the traditional left turn signals. It all adds up to greater traffic flow, less wait time, lessened business impact, and lower project cost. You can view the CFI video here
http://tinyurl.com/y8hm6km.
With just the out-of-the-box subassembly tools, The Civil products can productively, efficiently, and timely handle these types of reconstruction projects. The integrated tools will help stretch dollars further, enable methods to help optimize designs, and provide powerful Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology. The Civil products have come a long way since its baby-step inception, but each release realizes a more robust and powerful design and collaboration tool. You can view an on-demand webcast “The Road Ahead” interactive video at
www.autodesk.com/roadahead.
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Posted 10/7/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
Civil
I just wanted to share with everyone that some of the new 2010 Autodesk programs are already available for download for those of you on subscription. Just log in to your subscription center and click on "Download your product software."
As of right now, the only things available are AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD Architecture 2010 but stay tuned! As soon as something is released, they will make it available here for download.
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Posted 3/23/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD
Scenario: You tried to remove an Autodesk application through the ADD/REMOVE programs in the Control Panel; however, an error message occurs and/or it stubbornly won’t uninstall. This is due to file/registry corruption. The solution to this dilemma is to install and run the Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to remove the program. You can find this utility and related information at this link: http://tinyurl.com/45x45 The installation files will still be there and, therefore, must be deleted manually.
Happy Cadding!
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Posted 3/19/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD
The stimulus package (formally known as the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009) includes hundreds of millions of dollars for road and bridge projects and financial assistance for states struggling with bursting budgets and drooping tax revenues.
The proposed infrastructure overhaul and building alternative energy sources will help create jobs and spur economic activities. This proposal includes an infrastructure bank that would invest in roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects over a span of 10 years and includes efforts to improve water-treatment infrastructure. But it’s still uncertain how big the package will be, how much will go for infrastructure and how large the shares will be for highways, transit, water and other types of public works.
CENews.com recently published an article entitled “Congress considers economic stimulus bill” which provides insight to the investment focus and proposed overhaul.
Read the entire article here: http://tinyurl.com/ch2yum. At the end of this article is a link to read the “Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment –As Passed by the House” released January 28, 2009.
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Posted 2/18/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
Civil
In March, Autodesk will be releasing the 2010 version of Civil 3D. This is Autodesk’s solution to the Building Information Modeling (BIM) for civil engineering, which will help project teams create, predict, and deliver transportation, land development and environmental projects more efficiently. C3D 2010 will help civil engineers explore more “what-if” scenarios and optimize project performance with visualization and analysis tools such as geospatial and storm water analysis, quantity takeoff, and interactive 3D simulations. The creation of better coordinated and more reliable design information helps ensure delivery of high-quality documentation and more accurate 3D models for automated machine guidance during construction. BIM helps civil engineers minimize errors and omissions; make better design decisions; shorten production time; and gain that necessary competitive advantage.
So what are some of the new features in 2010?
BIM for Civil Engineering
§ Enhanced field-to-finish capabilities to allow survey data to be processed directly from the field without painstaking translations or conversations
§ New quantity takeoff tools
§ Revit interoperability functionality enables users to import Revit Architecture building shells directly in to AutoCAD C3D 2010
New Design and Analysis Features
§ New intersection Design Wizard
§ Enhanced parcel generation capabilities
§ Hydraflow storm water analysis extension are incorporated into the software
Improved User Interface
§ Task-oriented, customizable ribbon toolbar
§ Consistent user interface for more smooth interoperability with other Autodesk software applications
CAD-1 will begin demonstrations of this exciting release on March 25, 2009.
Click this link http://cad-1.com/Events.aspx?EventId=206 for specifics.
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Posted 2/18/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
Civil
I've had this come up a couple of times, someone wants to put a little circle at the location where the proposed contour ties into the existing contour. Well, there's no way to do this with the surface style (though it would be nice) but I've come up with a way to do it. Instead of modifiying the surface style, create a label style.
For this example, I've created a very simple surface that ties into the existing surface all around.
.png)
(Click image to enlarge)
The next thing to do is to create the block for the label style. Here I simply used the donut command with an inside radius of 0 and an outside radius of 1.
Now create a contour label style that uses just this block, no text at all.
(Click image to enlarge)
The next step will allow us to find the location where the two surfaces meet. Well, since my proposed surface ties into my existing surface all the way around, I can simply use the border of the surface (not to be confused with the boundary). From the surfaces menu, select Utilities->Extract Objects From Surface. This will bring up the Extract Objects from Surface dialog box. Simply uncheck everythin except for border (make sure you are using a surface style that displays the border) and hit OK.
(Click image to enlarge)
Now it's time to label the surface. In the Add Labels dialog box, set the feature to Surface, the Label type to Contour - Multiple, and the contour label styles to whatever style you created that uses the donut and click Add.
(Click image to enlarge)
Now, watch your command line. When asked to select your surface, select the existing ground surface. Now the command line will display this, "Specify first point or [Objects]:". Well, we have an object that we can use for the labeling, the border we just extracted. Type O for Objects and select the polyline.
(Click image to enlarge)
And there we have a beautiful surface with markers at the tie in location.
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Posted 2/10/2009 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
Civil
I recently had a great tip from a client. You know how all the annotation scales display as ghosts when you click on the annotative object? There is a system variable to turn that ghosting off. SELECTIONANNODISPLAY – set variable to “0”. True—you would want to see those scales so when an object is selected, you can tell where it will be displayed and at whatever scales are assigned to that object.
But it is nice to know you have the option to toggle them off and on. This system variable was available in the 2008 version—not new to 2009.
Happy scaling!
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Posted 11/12/2008 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD
Do you find that all of a sudden your drawings get bogged down and are running very groggy? Maybe it’s time to do some basic drawing pep-up. A great tool that is not well-known is the (minus) – PURGE at the command line. This allows for one additional selection than what is included with the basic PURGE option—RegApps:
(Click image to enlarge)
Type “R” to select just the registered applications option. This will cleanup any unnecessary registered applications associated with the drawing. Many drawings received from outside sources contain Reg Apps (third-party applications) that may not be necessary to your firm. These can sometimes add up to over a hundred apps that are cleaned out.
Along with the basic PURGE and AUDIT functions, the scale list may sometimes get cluttered with Xref scales. If you select the down arrow for the annotation scales and see something like this:
(Click image to enlarge)
there is an easy fix for this known bug. At the command line, type
–SCALELISTEDIT (make sure to use the minus sign before the command). The options to select are Reset>Yes>Exit. This will remove all those extraneous Xref scales and reset them to default. These basic tips should help speed up caching and regeneration of your drawing files.
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Posted 11/12/2008 by Brian Hailey |
Category:
AutoCAD