More New Features in Civil 3D 2012

In some of my previous blogs, I talked about a handful of new features to take advantage of in the 2012 product.  Today, I would like to talk about three additional tools that at your disposal.

The first tool I will talk about is creating cross sections that can sample multiple corridors at the same time.  In the past this wasn't possible because the corridor was ultimately tied to the alignment and corresponding sample line group.  As you can see in the screen capture below, you can now have more than one corridor selected when sampling sources.

The second tool I will talk about is tangency check.  Like other design checks that are currently available, you will now notice an option that checks for tangency as shown below.  I think lots of times we take for granted that an alignment was created properly since most of them were created from polylines. 

The last tool I will talk about is the new catchment tools that have been added to the software.   Rather than use a combination of the water drop and catchment area, this new tool allows to organize them by groups, and also allows for changing the surface type, flow type, and time of concentration method.

Here again is a sample of some of the improvements that have been in the Civil software.

Banding Together in Civil 3D 2012

As most of you know, the elevation analysis is very useful tool for showing high or low water ranges on a surface or even cut or fill areas for contractors as seen in the capture below. 

In the past, we were only allowed to divide elevation ranges by a specified number of intervals.  New to the 2012, you are now given two additional options.  The first option we will take a look at is range interval.  Range intervals allows us to divide the elevations values by a specified interval such as 5 in the capture below.  The option also allows for setting an elevation at the low end of the first range.

The second option that has been added range interval with datum.  This option allows for setting a datum elevation, with ranges going both up and down by a give interval.  In the capture below, I set the datum elevation to 3, with elevation increment range set to 5.

These new options in the elevation analysis will eliminate the need for manual adjustments between ranges.

Giving Parcel Lines a Width

During a client visit this past week, an engineer explained that he used parcels to show drainage breakup areas on his siteplan.  He asked if there was an possible way to give the parcel lines a width similar to the options we would get with polylines.  He was looking to make the parcel lines standout from the rest of the data on the page.  Traditionally in parcels, the only way to make them stand out was to simply change the color to plot with a thicker lineweight.  After thinking about what options are available, I decided to look further at the settings in parcel styles. 

Looking a bit further at the design tab, you will notice the fill distance option as seen in the screen capture below.

I decided that since we can't give parcel lines a width, why don't we make a solid hatch and use the fill distance to replicate a line with a width.

Sometimes a different approach is required to get us to the solution.

Label Flexibility in Civil 3D 2012

The idea of being able to rotate labels in Civil 3D has been a feature that we have been waiting a long time for.  In the past when we created a template, we would have labels set to different rotation angles.  Notice the screen capture below, we are now given options whether we want to rotate the label or label and marker. 

This option now allows us to accomplish in one label what many labels in the past would have done.

The other new feature that has been added to labels is the maximum width option in the style composer.

 

The maximum width allows us to get text wrapping in all of our labels, so instead of getting this.

You will now get that.  Again, flexibility in labels will allow us to have less labels in our template and more ability to control what those styles do.

"Stylin" in Civil 3D 2012

Civil 3D 2012 has some new style features designed to improve the transfer of styles from one drawing to another.  If you look on the mange tab of the ribbon, you will see the following panel.

Upon selecting the Import option, you will then be asked what template you would like to acquire settings and styles from.  After selecting the appropriate template, the following box will be displayed.

If you select a given subheading such as surface styles, you will be give an option of what styles or setting you wish to bring in to your current drawing as seen below.

The purge styles option works similar to how the AutoCAD purge command works.  If a style is in use, we cannot purge it.  As seen in the capture below, the pop up box displays all styles that are currently not in use.  It is worth noting, that you will have to run this command more than once to ensure that you purge child styles as well.

The final feature that we will take a look at today that was added to the 2012 is the replace with option.  This option allows for the replacing a given style with another one on the fly.  

With the addition of these new added features, we will be allowed to manage our styles and setting more efficiently than in previous versions of the software.