AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007

AutoCAD Civil 3D Google Earth: Now Showing in AutoCAD Civil 3D ince the service became free just a few years ago, Google™ Earth has become a staple on millions of desktops worldwide. Suddenly, getting a bird’s eye view of your house or other favorite place is literally just a few mouse clicks away. Beyond the in-home fun that can be had with it, Google Earth also has many real-world applications in education and even television broadcasting. Such reallife uses have left one to wonder, “What about civil engineering?” Here we have a terrain model and aerial imagery for the entire globe, compiled in one easy-to-use location. Even though the data accuracy will vary from area to area, wouldn’t it be nice if you could pull Google Earth data into AutoCAD® Civil 3D for preliminary studies and design? Interestingly enough, Autodesk packed that very feature inside of its latest release of AutoCAD Civil 3D. By following a few easy steps, we can import a portion of the Google Earth terrain surface into Civil 3D 18 S as a civil surface object. With just a few more clicks we can even bring in the corresponding aerial imagery and drape it over our 3D surface. Excited about seeing how this magic is done? What you need Before marrying Google Earth and AutoCAD Civil 3D, you’ll want to first check and make sure you have a few things. First things first: check to be sure you have AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 with the latest Service Pack installed. At press time, SP 1 was the latest service pack available. In addition to that, you will want to download and install the latest version of Google Earth from www.earth.google. com. For those who have not installed a service pack or Google Earth, both are pretty quick to install. Google Earth opens up you will be given an astronaut’s view of none other than the planet Earth. While it is literally possible to “fly” an F16 jet to your site by pressing Ctrl + Alt + A, you’ll likely find the standard navigation tools more than adequate. By default, some of the Google Earth navigation tools are hidden; hovering over the north arrow in the upper right corner will show both zoom and tilt slider bars. In addition to the graphical navigation aids, your mouse has some shortcuts that mimic some AutoCAD commands. • Left Button: double-click to zoom in, press-and-hold to pan • Right Button: double-click to zoom out, press-and-hold to zoom in/out • Middle Button: press-and-hold to tilt view, wheel up/down to zoom in/out A helpful piece to the Google Earth/ Civil 3D relationship is the way we designate an area from which to extract data. Quite simply, what you see within Google Earth is what you’re going to get inside of w w w. A U G I . c o m Flying to your site We will start with Google Earth since it is going to be our data source. When http://www.AUGI.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007

AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007 Table of Contents The CAD Manager Education & Training Finance Training Google Earth: Now Showing in AutoCAD Civil 3D Get Your Input Here A Good First Impression, Part 2 Share and Share Alike Who's Using Revit MEP? Ready… Get Set… Properties! On the Back Page: The Brazilian Model

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.