Volume Dashboard Extension for 2012

A few months ago, Autodesk released the Volume Dashboard Extension for subscription customers.  The volume dashboard is a more compact way of tracking multiple volume surfaces, bounded volumes, and finally generating reports within or outside of the drawing.

You should now see the dashboard under the extension manager.

After you right click and select execute, the new volume dashboard should appear.

The new dashboard allows you to keep track of all the volume surfaces created.  The boundary option is similar to the bounded volume tool that currently exists in the software.  As seen in the capture below, the dashboard boundary allows for tracking bounded areas within a given volume surface.

Finally, the dashboard allows for creating a volume report, or inserting a table into Civil 3D respectively.

Users will be now be able to calculate, report and visualize surface volumes very quickly and all in one location.

Added Data Band Labels Along Vertical Curves at Incremental Distances

Over the last two weeks, I have had two separate clients ask if there was a way to add additional labels in the profile data band where a vertical curve is present.  Also, besides adding labels, they would also like them at a given increment such as 25 feet.

After giving this question some thought, I arrived at two possible solutions.  The first solution is to create an additional data band below the profile view at the appropriate increment.

The new data band will be similar to the other with the exception of the dragged state being set to as composed.  Also, you will need to add a line component to the data band so as to mimic the line that currently separates the existing and proposed elevation.

As you can see from the screen capture above,  the new data band allows for dragging the label. 

Finally, we can drag the labels that we need from the extra data band from below into the data band in the profile view.  The second solution is to create a profile view label that extracts both the existing and proposed elevation at a given station value.

As seen in the screen capture above, the profile view label is meant to mimic the data band labels.  It is important to note that the profile view label seen above is created from two reference text labels and a line component.  The reason for the reference text is to hold the existing and proposed elevation at a given station despite dragging it up or down in the profile view.  A normal profile view label will change elevation as it is moved about the view.