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Archive for April, 2010

Storm and Sanitary Analysis Tools 2011

Friday, April 30th, 2010

The Autodesk Storm and Sanitary Analysis 2011 Extension was erleased in the early morning hours.  If you’re life is consumed with hydrological calculations you may want to make a stop at the subscription site to download it and see what’s involved.

Keep in mind this will only be available for those on subscription.  Its part of the subscription “advantage” pack.  The last kind of releases have had these special packs of tools available, and this release continues that trend.  There definitely is an advantage to being on subscription, beyond having the newest release available when it is released.

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Corridor Editing Upgrade

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Corridors are a complex type of object.  There are a lot of design features coming together to create a truly 3-dimensional design.  Whenever you go into the 3rd dimension while designing, things tend to get complicated.  Civil 3D has made this process much easier, in my opinion.

In the 2011 release they make it even easier.  In previous releases if you needed to edit the corridor you had to access the corridor’s properties.  You can still do that, but now all of the editing functions are available in the ribbon, rather than digging into the properties window.

Where this makes things easier is in the interactivity between the editing tools and the corridor, in real-time.  As you make choices you see the corridor update with the new settings.  Also, you can pan and zoom in between edits.  That’s not possible when you have a dialog box open.  Previously you had to make all of your edits, then click OK to process them.  Sure, there was an Apply button, but the dialog box was still open and taking up a good portion of the screen - which you couldn’t pan or zoom anyway!

The editing tool list will be familiar; Edit Targets, Edit Frequency, Add Region, Add Baseline.  There are some that you may have used but never saw a “button” for, such as; Split Region, or Copy Region.  And you can also create corridor surfaces from these buttons.

Context Ribbon Corridor Editing Tools

It’s improvements like these that shave minutes off your day.  Minutes become hours, and time is money.

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Discover the Autodesk 2011 Manufacturing Solutions - April 23, 2010 Webinar - Posted

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

By, Dan Banach

On April 21 and 23, 2010 we presented the “Autodesk 2011 Manufacturing Solutions Seize the Opportunity” webinar that covered Autodesk Inventor 2011 and its family of products. The April 23 webinar has been posted to our website and is available to be viewed at the links below. The webinar has been divided into two parts. To view the movies you may need to install / update a Flash plug-in. The questions that were asked during the webinar have been posted to my blog dated April 25, 2010

Register to view our On-demand Webinar: See the Autodesk 2011 Manufacturing Solutions (2 parts)

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Inventor 2010 Service Pack 3 Available

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

By, Dan Banach

Autodesk Inventor 2010 SP3 has been released and is available at: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL14822533

 

You must install Autodesk Inventor 2010 and apply Service Pack 1 & Service Pack 2, before you can install Autodesk Inventor 2010 Service Pack 3. If you have previously installed the Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk Inventor 2010, in addition to Service Pack 1 and the approriate Service Pack 2, ensure you download and install from the appropriate Autodesk Inventor 2010 Subscription Bonus Pack SP3 file instead of the appropriate Autodesk Inventor 2010 SP3 file.

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Discover the Autodesk 2011 Manufacturing Solutions - April 21 & 23, 2010 Webinars Q & A

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

By, Dan Banach

Thanks to everyone who attended our “Autodesk 2011 Manufacturing Solutions Seize the Opportunity” webinars on April 21 and 23, 2010 that covered Autodesk Inventor and its family of products. Below are the answers to the technical questions that we received.

Q: Does 2011 have any issues installing on windows 7?
A: Autodesk Inventor 2011 supports the following operating systems; Microsoft® Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate/Enterprise, or Microsoft® Windows Vista® (SP2) (32-bit or 64-bit) Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate, or Microsoft® Windows XP Professional (SP3) or Professional x64 Edition (SP2) (1,2)


Q: How much more memory will we need to run the in canvas commands? Does 2011 manage memory better than 2010?
A: The in canvas commands should not impact the amount of memory required. Many customers upgraded from Windows Vista or XP to Windows 7 and have noted performance and memory use improvements .


Q: Are there new requirements for the type of computer capabilities to run the new version?
A: The system requirements for Inventor 2011 have not changed substantially from 2010. There are three resources to learn more about the Autodesk 2011 software system requirements

Q: Is there a presentation video that demonstrates everything we are seeing here?
A: This presentation has been recorded and will be posted to our website shortly. I will update everyone with the location of the video(s). Autodesk also has a YouTube channel and has many videos available for viewing.

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Cutting Section Sheets

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

I’m really loving the new functionality of the 2011 release.  Its hard for me to pick a favorite just yet.  An early front-runner is the cross-section sheet creation tools.  For a couple of releases we have been able to cut plan and profile sheets.  Those tools are fantastic!  While the user’s process is easy, under the hood there are a lot of complex actions being taken care of.  It does necessitate a lot of input from the user, but that entry comes in the form of a wizard that is very easy to follow.

The Cross-section sheet creation tools are very similar - but even easier!  It also has a wizard, but most of it will look very familiar to those who’ve created multiple cross-section views in previous releases.  What I am really loving is the layout of the multiple views is so…predictable!  They rarely fall outside the “page area” and seem very intelligent when the program has to make a decision on how many views to try to place on a page.

Similar to the plan and profile sheet creation tools, the cross-section tools have a second step where you create layout tabs.  It is a very straight forward wizard page (just one page), it thinks a little bit, and bang!  You have very consistent looking layout tabs.  This tool also makes use of the sheet set manager to make sure access is easy from any point in the project.  I like to add my cross-section sheets to the sheet set my plan and profile are in already, but you don’t have to.

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Seize the Opportunity

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

If you haven’t yet heard, or if it slipped your mind, we have our Seize the Opportunity webcast today at 12 noon central time.  Its free, but you need to register to attend.  We’ll be demonstrating some of the new features for the 2011 release of Civil 3D.  On the page there are three events.  First there is a live event next week, then there are two links to the webcasts, one for today and one for Friday at 1 PM central time.  The webcasts will be identical in topic, so you have two chances to see it.  The live presentation is a little different so check out the schedule for that.

Hope to see you there! 

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Civil 3D 2011 Has Been Released

Monday, April 19th, 2010

If you haven’t heard yet Civil 3D 2011 has been released on the subscription site for download.  You will NOT be receiving a box of software in the mail - so don’t wait for that.  If you need the boxed software there is a place on your subscription page that you can check to request a DVD version.

Now, all of this is dependent on you logging onto the subscription site.  Before you head over, find the “welcome” email that included your login and password.  Or - grab the person who has that information and get them to get you into the site.  The download is pretty big, so plan your download time accordingly.

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Drawing Scale and Civil 3D: Trust Me On This

Friday, April 16th, 2010

It seems that with every user of a product there is a method by which they work. That means if you met 15 different users you would find there were 15 different ways to use the same product. Some of these workflows would be slightly different, but several would be wildly different. It is all a matter of perception, and “I’d never thought of that before.”

One of the things that I have run into over the years is people drafting to scale in model space. Well, one form or another of “at scale.” My old production group would draft at 1:1 in model space, but had titleblocks of predetermined size so that when we plotted from model space we could create the properly scaled output. I felt layout tabs would make our lives easier, but I was low on the totem pole. For sake of office harmony and teamwork, I relented.

Now what I’m about to say may be a bit scary to some users. It shouldn’t be, but it may be different than what you have been doing. Well, here it goes….

Civil 3D is designed to use the layout tabs for printing.

Now, I was a true believer in layout tabs long ago, but this is not my bias. The label styles are built to use a text height that is interpreted by the viewport scale to ensure the text is always the right height when ink meets paper. Besides making the text always look right, it makes the million AutoCAD text styles you’ve been maintaining (i.e. L100, L120, L80, TBLOCK, etc.-you know the list) unnecessary.

The problem usually arises for those who have been scaling in model space in one form or another, then print their layout tabs with viewports set to 1:1. This leads to conversations like “See that little dot? That’s your point label!” The viewports are still doing their job, but their math is now skewed from what you really want.

There are new things to learn in Civil 3D. After a while you will learn to like settings like this. They will make your production life easier in the long run.

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Transparent Commands

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Whether you realized it or not you’ve used a transparent command at one time or another. They are basically any command that allows you to not quit one command while you use another. Zoom would be an example. Generally these tools are meant as a drafting aid, helping to make your drawing elements more precise.

But that is not technically the Transparent Commands I’m talking about. In Civil 3D there is a toolbar of tools that allow for use without stopping the currently running command. They should stand out as the only toolbar that hasn’t been added to the ribbon (in 2010). Out-of-the-box they are along the right side of the screen, unless you’ve moved them or closed them, that is.

The Transparent Commands are meant as drafting aids that are specifically built for Civil 3D functions. They don’t create any magic object type, but they make the things that you design more accurate. The  toolbar is “divided” into several groupings.

Transparent Command toolbar, dragged from home position, horizontallayout

At the top (or to the left, depending where you have this toolbar) are 4 buttons that I call the “survey” tools. They are great for metes and bound descriptions, or placing lines when you have bearing and distance, or azimuth, etc. The next three are tools that will place objects at northing easting, or latitude longitude. Then another three tools that can help draft relative to point objects. These are especially useful because they draft to the elevation of the point objects. Very helpful when you need to draw in a 3D polyline for a breakline.

Towards the bottom of the toolbar (or to the right) you have a series of tools that help draft inside of profile views. There are the Station Elevation type tools, but more interestingly are a series of three tools that take information from the plan and draft in the profile view. This is where the dynamic interactivity of objects really shines. If you need to match into a known point, using the Point Station and Elevation from Plan will allow you to identify the station offset from the profile’s alignment, and pickup the surface elevation at that location, then draw your line to that location in the profile view.

These tools are just drafting aids, but they can be used for everything from drawing from point to point to placing and object in relation to other objects. We spend a lot of time getting things located correctly. These can help you spend a little less time doing that!

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