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Revit Architecture Fundamentals

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Two Powerful Updates to Corridors in Civil 3D 2017

While teaching a Civil 3D 2016 class one of my students asked “Can you create a corridor from a feature line?” At the time, the answer was “No, you can’t.” In order to create corridors in Civil 3D 2016 and earlier releases, an Alignment and Profile were required for the horizontal and vertical geometry information. In Civil 3D 2017, the answer is absolutely “Yes, you can," no Alignment or Profiles required. If your feature line has elevation data you get a corridor from that. Yes! And not only can you create a corridor from a feature line, you can also share it across the project team by creating a data shortcut. 

If you have been waiting on the sidelines, wait no more – these two productive corridor updates are enough to justify upgrading to Civil 3D 2017.

With the ability to create data shortcuts for corridors and use them in multiple drawings you can split a huge corridor into multiple drawings and get a performance boost, resulting in a huge time saver; you can create a corridor in one drawing and use it in another.

This does change the workflow of creating cross sections from a corridor. Prior to this, you had to XRef the corridor drawing – that lead to a performance lag because you ended up working with the whole drawing even though you just needed a corridor. With this shortcut you load only the corridor, which is huge in terms of productivity gains.

The pre-2017 workflow would be to create an Alignment and then a Profile view. You had to make sure the Profile view displayed the right elevation so you could create a layout Profile, and only then would you be able to create the corridor (assuming you did not create an existing surface Profile).

The 2017 process doesn’t replace Alignments or Profiles because you cannot create data shortcuts for a feature line, yet. But this new method does gives you an option other than projection grading, aka grading object. Meaning, this will work great for parking lot grading, which has many feature lines for which creating an Alignment and Profile for each feature line is too time consuming and impractical.

So, create a corridor from a feature line and share it using data shortcuts – two powerful corridor updates that save a ton of time and easily justify upgrading to Civil 3D 2017.

Watch this video to get started!

Don’t forget to look through other great features our Ideate Technical Team has found in the new 2017 releases for Civil 3D, Navisworks, Revit Architecture, AutoCAD (and more) on our Ideate Solution Blog.

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Guarav Bagga

Senior Application Specialist Infrastructure 

Gaurav is a Senior Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 18 years of experience in construction and related software industry. With this extensive design technology background he helps engineering and surveying companies, federal and state government agencies, and ENR 500 firms critically analyze and improve their construction drawing production process. He implements Civil infrastructure design technology led by InfraWorks and Civil 3D and has helped Ideate grow Civil Infrastructure Services. Being an industry recognized speaker he has presented cutting edge design technology at several industry conferences such as Autodesk University. Find Gaurav on Twitter.

How to Superelevate a Planar Roadway in Civil 3D 2016

Recently, One of our customers called looking for Ideate technical support on a project where the planar roadway was sloping towards a detention basin. The issue was that the superelevation tool kept giving them the wrong cross slope for areas outside the curve. Good news: all they needed to do was change one setting.

Superelevating a crowned roadway in Civil 3D is common, and you may have used this option in the past. But if you have never superelevated a planar roadway in Civil 3D, there is one trick you'll need to know to make it work.

Keep reading.

As per the figures below, we have an alignment with direction left to right, superelevation diagram and the typical section. 

In this simple assembly, with just two lanes, the important thing to note is that the high side is right ETW.

The trick is to specify the high side in the Calculate Superelevation dialog box > Roadway Type tab > High Side Location drop down. (Refer to the figure below.)

The reason this becomes so important, is if you do not tell Civil 3D where the high side is, Civil 3D will not assign the right lane slope in areas where there is no superelevation. All in all, it works as it is supposed to only when you specify the high side, but if you miss this setting you very well could see problems.

And that’s all you need to know about superelevating planar roadway.

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Guarav Bagga

Senior Application Specialist Infrastructure 

Gaurav is a Senior Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 18 years of experience in construction and related software industry. With this extensive design technology background he helps engineering and surveying companies, federal and state government agencies, and ENR 500 firms critically analyze and improve their construction drawing production process. He implements Civil infrastructure design technology led by InfraWorks and Civil 3D and has helped Ideate grow Civil Infrastructure Services. Being an industry recognized speaker he has presented cutting edge design technology at several industry conferences such as Autodesk University. Find Gaurav on Twitter.

Autodesk Webcast Series: The Evolution of AutoCAD Civil 3D - Part 1

Are you still using Land Desktop every day or are you working in a previous release of AutoCAD Civil 3D thinking "there is no need to move to the current release"? Maybe you are contemplating making the move to AutoCAD Civil 3D? In this webcast series, we will trael through time and show you the ease of bringing that Land Desktop data forward and how to use it once in AutoCAD Civil 3D. We'll have a conversation about styles - what and how many you actually need to get that company template rolling. We will progress through the release from 2010 to 2016 and show you all the great reasons to move forward to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2016 and not look back.

Date: Wednesday October 28, 2015
Time: From 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time)

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For more information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

Classroom Training - Open Revit Architecture, AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D Classes

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Revit Architecture Fundamentals

10.13-10.15::San Francisco
Revit Architecture Fundamentals

10.14-10.15::Seattle 
AutoCAD Beyond the Basics

10.20-10.22::San Jose
Revit Architecture Fundamentals

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Civil 3D Fundamentals

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Civil 3D Fundamentals

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Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics

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Revit Architecture Fundamentals

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AutoCAD Fundamentals

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Civil 3D Fundamentals

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Revit MEP - Electrical Fundamentals

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Webcast - Part 3 - The 124th Avenue Extension Project

In this 3rd and final webcast of the series, Dan lliyn reviews the current state of the 124th Avenue Extension project. He'll dive into the process flows between InfraWorks and Civil 3D. He will also delve into what's in store for DEA as they continue to enhance their implementation of BIM workflows in their projects. Dan will briefly discuss the new tools and services that DEA are considering and talk about how they could benefit the 124th Avenue project. He'll discuss how he sees InfraWorks 360 being integrated more broadly into their project workflows, beyond visualizations for planning purposes and proposals.

 

Date: Thursday September 17, 2015
Time: From 10:00 am to 11:00 am (Pacific Standard Time)

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Navisworks Fundamentals

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Revit Architecture Fundamentals

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Revit Architecture Fundamentals

9.21-9.22::San Francisco
Revit MEP - Mechanical Fundamentals

9.22-9.24::Seattle
AutoCAD Fundamentals

9.29-10.1:San Jose
Civil 3D Fundamentals

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Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D Country Kits

As the ENI Team Lead at Ideate, I had the opportunity of attending Autodesk Technical Academy in Texas earlier this year.  Not only was it a great opportunity to meet and network with the Autodesk Team, but also a chance to find out what tools and tricks they use when assisting customers.

One of the great tips that we received came from a Civil 3D troubleshooting session that was hosted by Jason Ferrelli of Autodesk.  Along with techniques for troubleshooting common issues, he also brought up some frequently requested features that customers are asking for.  Some of these features happened to be available already, but only with the added installation of a Country Kit.

For those who are not familiar with Country Kits, Autodesk releases additional tools and utilities that were created for specific workflows or tasks from different countries around the world.  At last count, 22 of these were available to download for free from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.  Although they are referred to as “Country” Kits, they are not restricted to use in that country, or with that version.  Anyone can download and install a Country Kit to gain access to the tools and features that are included in it. 

We looked at some of the tools in the Australia & New Zealand Country Kit, and that’s now something that I personally have added to my Civil 3D installation.  Some of the tools that are included with this kit are:

•  2D to 3D Contour Conversion 
•  Surface Analysis Import/Export from a File (this is awesome if you’ve ever spent time setting up a Surface Analysis only to realize it’s only for ONE surface in ONE drawing)
• Surface Analysis Copy to another Surface (also a great way to apply the same analysis settings to a second surface in the file without having to manually set it up again) 
• Convert Blocks to COGO Points
• The download links and instructions for installing the Country Kits (along with detailed ReadMe files explaining the features) can be found below...

Civil 3D Country Kits
 

As of May 29, these have also been updated for the 2016 release of Civil 3D.  Once the Country Kit is added to your installation, it appears under the Toolbox tab of Civil 3D’s Tool space. 

If any of those features were ones that you’ve been looking for, or if there are others that seem like they should already be around, maybe they are… just not in your country.  Take a look at the Country Kits to find out if one of those as the tools you’re looking for.

 

For information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com



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Matt Miyamoto, P.E., ACI
ENI Manager and Senior Application Specialist
Matt is an ENI Manager and Senior Application Specialist in Ideate, Inc.’s Seattle office. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and is a licensed Civil Engineer. Prior to joining Ideate, Matt worked as a civil engineer, using Civil 3D on a variety of projects including site development, roadway improvements and infrastructure design. With over 10 years of experience in the civil engineering industry, Matt now provides training, consulting, technical support, and implementation strategies for organizations transitioning to Civil 3D. Matt is an Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI), as well as an Autodesk Certified BIM Specialist: Roads and Highway Solutions. Additionally, Matt is and Autodesk Certified Professional for AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Civil 3D. He can be found on twitter as @MattM_PE

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Civil 3D Point Labels for Manholes With Multiple Pipes

While at the CLSA/NALS Surveyors conference this year, a surveyor presented a challenge she was having in creating a Civil 3D point label style for existing manholes with multiple connecting pipes. The goal was to use a single point label style with five label components (one component each for up to 4 incoming pipes and 1 outgoing pipe) that only displays a line of text for pipes that have invert data.

At first thought, this may be an easy fix if the Text Component Editor - Contents only contained Properties. However, the typical invert data label needs to show pipe direction, diameter, invert elevation, and possibly material. The contents for each component must include text entities besides extracted properties. The undesired result are lines of text displaying even when there is no pipe data. Not only do we want unused lines to not display, we want the invert out component to move up the list.

 

After poking around a bit, I consulted with Jeff Mishler of Quux Software who has taken on continued development and support of Sincpac-C3D. His answer was an elegant use of Expressions for the Label Component Text Height.

 

 

The point label expression uses an IF function to test whether there is any data in the User Defined Property, UDP, for pipe diameter.  If the test is true (a non-zero value), the tru val is returned and used for the Text Height, 0.07/12 (works out to .07”).  If the test is false, the false_val of 0 is returned.  Note that there is a separate expression for each component/pipe.  Each expression tests its corresponding UDP for pipe diameter.

 

 



When a label component text height is 0, the entire line does not display regardless of whether there are text entities in the contents.  So, the next label component with data moves up the list giving us a label with no gaps or empty text strings.

 

 



An expression for the Component Text Height eliminates the need for multiple point label styles and point groups to address manholes with two, three, or four connecting pipes. Having one Point Label Style for surveyed manholes will save the technician time when importing hundreds of points. Thank you Jeff.

For information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com



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Daniel Armstrong, P.E., LSIT
ENI Application Specialist
Daniel is an Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at the Ideate Sacramento office. He is a California licensed Civil Engineer and LSIT with over 9 years land development design experience and 6 years Civil–GIS software consulting. Additionally, he provided 6 years of engineering support at a municipal public works department. At Ideate, Daniel assists Civil Engineering and Surveying firms in maximizing their utilization of AutoCAD Civil 3D through consulting, training, mentoring, and technical support. He conducts standard classroom and custom training on AutoCAD, Map 3D, and Civil 3D. 
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Draping a Bing Map Image over a Civil 3D TIN Surface

At Ideate, we strive to bring you tips and tricks to aid you in your workflows.  One you may find useful is draping an image brought in using the Geolocation function.  After setting an image using the Geomap or Geolocation functionality within Civil 3D, users may want to drape that image over a Civil 3D surface.  While this may seem like a logical next step, it is currently a limitation of the software.  There is no direct way to do this.

There are two main work-arounds, however.  One way is to create a screen capture of the area that you want using a third party software.  You will then need to insert the image into the drawing.  You can then select the Drape Image button on the Surface context tab.  Remember that in order to see the image draped in 3d, you need to have the surface style that shows triangles in model view.

If you do not have a third party software to capture a screen shot, the second way is to plot to a Raster format using one of the following commands: PNGOUT, JPGOUT, TIFOUT.  You can then insert this image and drape the image as described in the previous paragraph.

For information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com.  Also check our blog for continued solutions as we encounter them.

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Kate Ming, P.E.
Ideate AEC Application Specialist

Kate is a California licensed civil engineer with a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley. Prior to Ideate, she worked at a multinational company for four years doing general civil design on large infrastructure projects. She is versed in roadway, rail, utility design and site development. She also has experience with utility demand analysis and Low Impact Development plans. As a Civil 3D Autodesk Certified Professional Kate provides training and support for Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and InfraWorks.

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eLearning - Upcoming Ideate Software, Revit, and AutoCAD Civil 3D Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning – live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

5.7::Ideate Software:
Revit Project Management with Ideate BIMLink

5.8::Infrastructure 201:
Data Shortcuts

5.12::Ideate Software:
Ideate BIMLink for Revit MEP Projects

5.14::Revit 201:
Revit MEP and Low Voltage Systems

5.15::Revit 201:Getting Started with Presentations in Revit Architecture

5.20::Revit 201:
Revit Import to 3ds Max Design

5.21::Ideate Software:
Introduction to Ideate Sticky

5.21::Ideate Software:
Introduction to Ideate Sticky

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

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eLearning - Upcoming Ideate Software, Revit, and AutoCAD Civil 3D Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning – live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

4.28::Revit 201:
Stairs and Railings in Revit

4.30::Revit 201:
Section Sheets and Code set Styles

5.7::Ideate Software:
Revit Project Management with Ideate BIMLink

5.8::Infrastructure 201:
Data Shortcuts

5.12::Ideate Software:Ideate BIMLink for Revit MEP

5.14::Revit 201:
Revit MEP for Low Voltage Systems

5.21::Ideate Software:
Introduction to Ideate Sticky

5.21::Ideate Software:
Introduction to Ideate Sticky

6.4::Ideate Software:
Revit Auditing with Ideate Explorer for Revit

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

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Ideate, Inc. Expands Tech Expert Team with Hiring of Daniel Armstrong

 

SAN FRANCISCO, California, 02/24/2015–Ideate, Inc., an Autodesk Platinum Value Added Reseller, today announced the Ideate Tech Expert Team has been expanded with the hiring of Daniel Armstrong, P.E., LSIT – ENI Application Specialist. Ideate is also currently seeking qualified candidates for additional positions.

Daniel is an Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at the Ideate Sacramento office. He is a California licensed Civil Engineer and LSIT with more than 9 years land development design experience and 6 years Civil–GIS software consulting. Additionally, while attaining his B.S. in Civil Engineering at San Jose State University, he worked 6 years for the City of Morgan Hill Public Works Department. 

At Ideate, Daniel assists Civil Engineering and Surveying firms in maximizing their utilization of Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D through consulting, training, mentoring, and technical support. He conducts standard classroom and custom training on AutoCAD, Map 3D, and Civil 3D. His varied skills are currently supplementing the ENI Team’s Civil 3D training support of Caltrans at various Northern California district offices.  Prior to joining Ideate, Daniel worked for Open Spatial Inc., an Autodesk Independent Software Vendor located in Rocklin, California where he lives with his wife and son.

“Our Tech Experts are key in our mission to help our architectural, engineering, and construction customers achieve their greatest possible success through application of advanced design solutions and expert training,” says Bob Palioca, President. “Daniel Armstrong’s skills and experience are a welcome and vital addition.”

To support the Ideate mission, the Ideate team of technical experts is a unique blend of architects, designers, and civil engineers; professionals with years of experience in their respective industries.

Ideate is growing and looking for talented qualified candidates to join the Ideate Tech Expert Team. Complete details on job descriptions and application process can be found on the Ideate, Inc. Careers page.

 

About Ideate, Inc.

Ideate, Inc. is a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer with 25+ years’ experience in software development and specific focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM). As an Autodesk solutions provider, Ideate has offered quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in California, Oregon and Washington, Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Platinum Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, Autodesk’s highest level of authorization.

Autodesk and ATC are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates, in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.