There have been a number of object and feature enhancements made to Civil 3D 2013, but not all of them have gotten as much attention as Pressure Pipe Networks and Railway Alignments.
In today’s blog post, Application Specialist Matt Miyamoto takes a look at some of the less known new features of Civil 3D 2013 related to Assemblies and Corridors.
The first enhancement that has gone relatively unnoticed is the new Automatic Side Detection feature that is now coded into the stock SubAssemblies in the Toolpalettes. This new feature allows users to quickly add components to both right and left sides of their Assemblies without worrying about switching the Side Parameter in the SubAssembly Properties. It also avoids inadvertently adding a right-side component to the left side of your Assembly.
With Automatic Side Detection, once the initial components have been added (right lane and left lane); the corresponding SubAssemblies automatically conform to match the side they are attached to. You can now build the right and left sides of your Assembly simultaneously with relative ease.
Another enhancement made to 2013 is the Simplified Corridor Modeling Workflow. In previous releases of Civil 3D, there were always two options for creating a Corridor object; Create Corridor and Create Simple Corridor. Regardless of which command was used, the same type of Corridor object was generated.
In 2013, the process has been reduced to a single Corridor command, and the command dialog has been enhanced to allow users to directly specify the Alignment, Profile, Assembly and target Surface in one place. This process previously involved a series of Command prompts and selection either from the drawing or from lists. Having everything in one dialog simplifies the process, makes it more efficient, and helps to reduce errors encountered when target surfaces are not selected in the initial process.
Although these aren’t the biggest features added, they are definitely worth paying some attention to when you’re working in Civil 3D 2013.
Ideate AEC Application Specialist
Matt is a licensed Civil Engineer in the state of Hawaii. Matt obtained a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has 7 years of private sector design experience which he applies in his role as an application specialist with Ideate, Inc. His project experience includes residential and commercial site development, private and public sewer, water and drainage systems, harbors improvements, and roadway improvements. While in Hawaii, Matt was involved in multidisciplinary projects for City and County agencies, State Departments, the Army COE and private developers. @MattM_PE
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