Reminder to myself if you want to load a .dll you have made that is stored in a network location you will get the error
unless to get around the error you have edited the acad.exe.config text file in the autocad installation directory and added the following line in orange.
Thanks Alfred for the suggestion in the Civil3d forums.here
Reminder to my self once you have set up Acroplot as per the following instructions to save common settings on a network location
You can export the settings from the registry from one machine as follows to import on another machine.
Yesterday I had to add some extra drawings to an existing job by putting extra layouts in the middle of some existing ones in one dwg.
Once you have added the new layouts to the drawing and Sheetset Manager (SSM).You can not just start renumbering drawings in SSM.
Say for example you have the layouts numbered 200,201,202,203 and then copy 201 and make a new layout so you have 200,201,201(1),202,203. If you go to SSM and renumber 201(1) to 202 things start to go to custard in SSM as a layout 202 already exists in the drawing.
To add a new 201 drawing to SSM and have everything in sync you have to renumber 203 to 204 , 202 to 203 and 201 and then renumber the layout 201(1) to 202.
Someone may know of the correct way of doing this but this is how I worked around it for now.
The New Zealand Land development and subdivision infrastructure Standard NZS 4404:201 requires that
the drop though a manhole structure should be changed depending on the angle of turn between pipes as follows and for stormwater pipes that pipe soffits should be matched to achieve the drop when pipes change in size.
Back in 2008 I wrote some custom rules to achieve this and how I have finally got round to updating them to 2012 and I have updated the rule to use the difference in incoming and outgoing pipe diameter for the drop if it is greater than the minimum drop calculated from the angle difference between pipes.
If you are interested you can download a copy of the vb.net project and rules here .If you are running 2012 they should run ok but if not you will have to recompile the rules for whatever version of Civil3d you are using.
1. First we can check if they work by chance with the 2012 build attached.
2. Go to the path C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2011\enu on your machine and rename the shipped xml point file C3DPiperules.xml to say C3DPiperulesShipped.xml.
3. Copy the two files attached C3DPiperules.xml and C3DCustomPipeRules.dll to the folder.
4. Close and open Civil3d and setup a new rules set you will see some extra rules in the rule dropdown list.
5. Try and create a pipe network with the new rules. I suspect an error will happen at this stage if you are not using 2012 as the compiled .dll program is looking for 2012 files.
To re compile the .dll code
1. Download and install Visual Basic Express 2010 from here http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2010-express.
2. Unzip the project code file attached to your c drive as compiling code from network drives does not work.
3. Now open Visual Basic Express and open the project file and change the references as per this video http://screencast.com/t/JGOk2EtZhyr
Been really busy at the moment so have not been posting as much as i like. Anyway this is a non Civil3d post that maybe of interest to some. I was designing a detention pit/chamber the other day and had no idea of what the likely void ratio of the rock material available would be. So I looked into it theoretically for spherical stones here and then once on site measured the actual void volume of some sample rock.
Sample Rock available was 40mm and above Clean River Run sourced from a local river
Test Procedure
To calculate the percentage void volume in the sample rock fill to be used in the proposed detention pit a 14litre bucket was filled with a sample of the 40mm and above Clean River Run and water was poured into the bucket to fill the voids from another bucket of known volume the percentage of voids filled with water was then calculated as follows
Round Bucket Volume
Pi(0.25)^2/4 * 0.28 = 13.7 litres
Volume of Water from Square Bucket
0.23*0.23*0.13 = 6.877 Litres
Percentage Void Ratio =6.877/13.7 =49%
About a month I go I was playing around with partbuilder trying to add additional properties to pipes in my catalogue to improve our pipe labels and did not have much luck.
However Kevin posted an interesting couple of articles the other day with a link to a BeingCivil post on how to do it.
So I have revisited the problem with this new knowledge and have been able to add a Stiffness Class as well as Material type to our PVC pipes and labels. I was able to get it to work following the Being Civil instructions with a couple of extra bits of information.
1. If you pipe catalogue is in a common network location the .xml file you adjust is in that location not on your local drive.
2. If you are in Civil3d while you are changing the xml file you will have to shut down and restart to have the new xml file loaded into Civil3d.
I keep forgetting about this tip I found one day in the forums so this is just a reminder and a link to the forum discussion.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/Trim-Surface-at-Elevation/m-p/3222202/highlight/true#M163412
