Change Multiple Layers in Style in one hit

Always learning something in Civil3d to change multiple sub component layers for example in the an alignment style to a no_plot layer.

1. Click the Name of the first component and hold the shift key.
2. Still holding the shift key click the name of the last component.
3. Now all component names are highlighted blue
4. Select the layer cell and select the layer you want all the components on.
5. All the layers are changed at once.

Updating old Title Blocks to Work with SheetSet Manager

Just a reminder to myself to update and old title block with Sheetset Manager fields

1. Open the Titleblock in Block Editor .
2. Go to the Block Attribute you want to link to the Sheetset field.
3. Right click in the Value textbox and choose insert field

4. Go to CurrentSheetSetCustom and type in the custom property name exactly as it appears in the sheetset manager as shown both. Remember to map the connect field to the right attribute in the block

5. Save the changes to the titleblock.
6. Insert a new copy of the block in the drawing and it should update with the sheetset fields if the layout in in a sheet set.

7. Use to use express tools->block replace with the new title block with a different name but for some reason it does not update the block fields ever with ATTSYNC on not sure what going on here.

Adding Scale and other Fields to Title Block

Been updating the old title block to be a bit more automatic to save sometime I insert fields into the block attributes to give me the data I wanted as follows

Insert Copyright Year

Insert Drawing Name 

Inserting blanks as per link

Inserted Drawing Scale as per this video

Updated the scale bar values to update based on the scale as well

 

I did look at using a diesel expression first for the scale calculation but this did not work as the object ID is turned to a number straight away and the link to the viewport is broken here are some links on diesel for future reference anyway

http://civil3d.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/quick-to-the-diesel/

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%202010%20User%20Documentation/index.html?url=WS73099cc142f4875513fb5cd10c4aa30d6b-7b3c.htm,topicNumber=d0e393837

http://www.cadforum.cz/cadforum_en/qaID.asp?tip=3676

Drawing Path and Name

Once and a while I want to copy a drawing path and name into another document such as a word report or excel spreadsheet this is to let others know where a model drawing is that has certain information I have used.

If you use the “dwgprefix” and “dwgname” commands the information is published to the command  line and you can copy and paste it from here to your document.

Add suffix to layers names

Reminder to myself to add a suffix or prefix to all layer names in a drawing use the rename command with the settings as follows

 

Map Book Template Location

Just looking into mapbook for a project the shipped templates are in the following folder on my vista machine

C:\autodesk\AutoCAD_Civil3D_2012_English_Win_32bit\x86\en-US\C3D\Acad\UserDataCache\Template

Heres the link to the online help discussing the version templates

http://docs.autodesk.com/MAP/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%20Map%203D%202010%20User%20Documentation/HTML%20Help/files/WS73099cc142f487553b93539f117fa9a937a-1aa2.htm

Old fashioned Linetypes with text, unreadable when given Lineweight

Been doing some water connection blowups, lately and I wanted to have a linetype with a thick lineweight in plan
and in the blowup viewport use the viewport layer lineweight override to have a lineweight a bit thinner.
But I came across an issue with our old style linetype that if you give them a lineweight the text becomes unreadable. So Googled the
problem and found these two helpful posts. Basically you have to create a linetype with the text as a true font type text object.
Note also make sure in your  .ctb file for the color that the use object lineweight is set to yes or the line will still appear thin on the print.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-2007/Printing-lineweight-linetypes-text/td-p/1831207
http://thecadgeek.com/blog/2010/07/linetype-text/

Came across this two helpful posts that helped me fix the problem

Civil3d Button Icons Missing

When creating an enterprise.cui remember to make a copy of the c3d.dll file and rename it with the name of your company enterprise.cui and store it on the network at the same location as the enterprise.cui file. Other wises your Civil3d buttons will lose their icons and you will have lovely question marks.

See this link an answer thanks to Matt

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=117679

Updating Old Textstyles to annotative Textstyles in xrefs

In working on projects that go on for a long period of time you will end up wanting to xref in some old services as builts into new design drawings. Depending on the age of these as built dwg’s they will probably not have text objects created with annotative textstyles.

If you have solid company standards and textstyle naming conventions that have been in use for same period of time you can just update your textstyles in your template to be annotative and then create a new standards file and run the checkstandards command to update all the old textstyles to be annotative.

If you do not have standard textstyles create some I typical have styles name txt2,txt3,txt5,txt7,txt9 where the number is the height of the text in paperspace in millimetres.
Now you have to update the text objects in the drawing manually to the correct annotative textstyles. To do this:-

1. Do a purge to purge all Textstyles not in use in the drawing.
2. Press Ctrl+2 to open design centre import the annotative Textstyles from your template file.
3. Determine the predominate scale in use on the drawings by looking at what scale the viewports are using in the drawing. Also check the viewport annotative scale is the same as the viewport scale.
4. Change the annotation scale to the predominate scale.
5. Select a text object press Ctrl+1 and look at the text height determine the height in paperspace

Height in Paperspace = Text Height   x 1000
                                           Scale
6. Determine the Height in Paperspace 2mm = a Textstyle = Txt2 for example.
7. Right click choose “Select Similar” this will pick all the text objects of the same height and layer goto the properties window and change the textstyle to the correct Txt style.

Drawing Cleanup and Standards

For those that have little experience with autocads built in standard controls check out Helen’s blog for cleanup and standards tips
http://helengorina.com/category/autocad/cleanup/

The Standards Police for civil 3-D Standards and Layers

Before you start getting into civil3d you really have to have your layer standards under control. All users or companies have some sort of default standard if only really basic. If you have no standards I suggest you create two sets of standards one
company standards and layers.dws (used for non-civil 3-D drawing)
This file contains the basic companies layers that have been traditional used and another the.
company civil 3-D layers.dws (used for civil 3-D drawings)
This file should contain the layers that follow the AIA layer naming convention as shipped from autodesk adjusted to have your correct company colour and line types for each layer.
Store the files on the network at the read only location such as "F:\Civil3d\Template\Drawing Standards"
Now you can assist drawing standards to a drawing by typing "standards" at the command line and browsing to each file and adding each file.
By default the standards files should be attached to the company template files and then will be present automatically when you create a new drawing based on company standard template .dwt. Some custom code can be written to check each drawing that is opened to see if the correct standard files are attached to catch those who buck the system or update old drawings to have standard files attached.
By having standards files attached to a drawing and setting the "StandardsViolation" system variable = 1 the user will be asked to pick a layer/textstyles from a standards file when they create a non standard object. To ensure that this variable is always set to one have the setting of this variable added to the acad.lsp file so on startup it is set automatically.
Note: On creating a new non standard layer an error window will now be displayed if the layer does not exist in the standards files the error message does not display until you press enter after typing in the name of the new layer when creating the layer in the layer manager. But by typing -la new and the new layer name at the command line the violation warning pops up straight away.
By having this variable set if you drag a style in civil 3-D from one drawing to another and the styles contains non-standard layers you will be asked to update them to standard layers.
Now you can import non civil3d standard layers into a civil 3-D drawing and as we have keep the shipped AIA layer naming convention in the civil3d file you can separate them out with filters if need be.
To filter layers to give everything but AIA civil3d layers that start with c- and v- typically create a layer filter with the following text
[~C-,V-]*
and you will be left with your old company layers or any layers that have been imported into the drawing that do not match the shipped AIA standards shipped with Civil3d.

Managing Civil3d Styles

Since I started used Civil3d back in 2007 the styles management and updating of your main template as you evolve styles on the job has been a completely inefficient process with the lack of built in tools. I have wrote my own vba code in the past to use the api to automate the process but have given it away now having found quux softwares tools in sincpac http://www.quuxsoft.com/. Check them out you get a free trail of all tools in the pac for 28 days and at $150 per module thats very cost effective. Compared to updating and writing  you own code or just wasting time drag and dropping styles.

Layer Filters writing and the Ribbon

First a bit of a reminder to myself. To filter out all layers that you know in a drawing that start with certain characters write a filter like this

This filter will leave in the xref layers for some reason (adding *|* to the first filter does not work) however to remove xref layers write a subfilter below the first filter with the following criteria

If you start working with a lot of layers which is typical with Civil 3d you can apply a change to the registry explained here
http://www.civil3d.com/2008/10/restoring-classic-layer-filters/
to have the filter export button appear in the layer manager this means you can build up your filters over time and import your standard filters into new and old drawings. Also if you have progressed to using the ribbon you can add the layer filter combo control thru your cui to the ribbon so you can access your filters direct from the ribbon and turn layers on/off and freeze/thaw them in logical groupings. Much quicker them picking one at a time in the layer dropdown control.

Sorting Objects off layer 0

Putting objects on layer zero and depoints is bad news when you start using those drawings as xrefs as those layers are common across all drawings.
To sort things of the these layers isolate them and then open the properties window ctrl+1 and select the object to move to the correct layer in the drawing
then select the layer dropdown in the properties window click it to open the dropdown and then start typing the full layer name. Note that the dropdown box will recognise the text as you type and not just the first letter like the layer manager and will go to the exact layername you type. Good for dealing with all those long AIA layer names.

Civil 3d restore layer filters

To restore the layer filter import and export buttons see the following website
http://www.civil3d.com/2008/10/restoring-classic-layer-filters/
Once you have setup the setting on one pc’s registry right click the setting and go export to create a .reg file.  Save at a common location (F:\CIVIL3d\LAyerfilter) now go to another PC double click on the file on the other PC’s to import the setting into that PC’s registry. Network deployment maybe add to a batch file?