Cadalyst - March 2008 - (Page 29)

cadlabsreview Eagle Point Task Navigator for Civil 3D U pgrading software is hard. Familiar functions may have been changed, menus and icons redesigned, and so forth. Migration to Civil 3D entails not just adopting the software but also significant change in design and documentation workflow. Users accustomed to 2D-based workflow and the 2D-based software that supports it may know what they want to do, but they still might be unsure of the specific sequence of Civil 3D commands to accomplish their tasks. Figure 1. With rich functionality behind a clean interface, Civil 3D supports creation of intelligent alignments and profiles. (Images courtesy of Autodesk) Enter Eagle Point, long-time purveyor of solutions for land-development organizations and now an Autodesk Independent Software Vendor (www.eaglepoint.com). Eagle Point’s productivity suite, the Pinnacle Series, can be applied to process and project management generally. It consists of three modules that enable any firm to map its processes, document the tasks to be navigated within those processes, and monitor the resulting workflow. With the Task Navigator for Civil 3D add-on, Eagle Point has already mapped common processes and workflows for typical surveying, engineering, and design tasks and integrated them using step-by-step instructions and executable links to commands, all directly inside Civil 3D. This add-on can ease the deployment of Civil 3D by reducing training time and helping to ensure that users are fully productive as quickly as possible. Figure 2. Complex designs, such as intersection islands or pork chops, can be created using interactive grading features. parametric, their parameters can be edited to associate with different alignments. Thus, to add a median along a stretch of road or to modify that median to add, say, a left-turn lane where the median approaches an intersection, a designer doesn’t redraw the roadway but instead uses a series of alignments and profiles to control the horizontal and vertical placements of pavement edge, sidewalk, and so forth. Users also can override or make slight changes to designs by editing them in the cross-section view. The software then automatically redraws the roadway to reflect the new design. Like most parametric software, Civil 3D includes constraints, so that a design engineer can specify the stacking space for cars at the left-turn lane (for example), and the program again automatically redraws the roadway to accommodate the new design condition. The result is an inversion of the old-fashioned — that is, pre-Civil 3D — workflow. Design engineers traditionally drew a road in 2D and cut 2D cross-sections as well as a 2D profile. Those drawings added up to a 3D corridor, but all the dimensional integration was in the engineer’s or drafter’s head. With Civil 3D, the 3D integration is embed- ded in the software, which can produce the kind of traditional-looking 2D profile and cross-section drawings that many highway departments still expect to review. The payoff in Civil 3D comes — as it does with most parametric software — when design changes have to be made: change any aspect of the corridor, whether alignment, profile, or any cross-section, and Civil 3D automatically recalculates and redraws everything else affected by that change. Changes literally ripple through the design. A Matter of Style Treating design elements as software styles means that the style governs more than just the appearance of the finished drawings; it also determines design and production workflow. The same principles that apply in Civil 3D to road design also apply to creating complex features such as islands at intersections (sometimes called pork chops [figure 2]), stormwater detention basins, pipe networks for storm or sanitary sewers, and so on. Civil 3D styles can be customized to reflect the specific preferences of any user regarding symbols and notations, linetypes, contours, slope arrows, and the like. Styles are collected in templates, which can be customized and varied by client, project, jurisdiction, and so on. Autodesk’s Civil 3D Web site includes country kits to localize the program for template requirements suited to 16 countries (such as Japan, Germany, Australia, and the United States) www.cadalyst.com | cadalyst | March 2008 29 http://www.eaglepoint.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - March 2008

Cadalyst - March 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Thicker than Water Safe Keeping — Backup Software Secures Your Designs AMD’s ATI FireGL Graphics Cards AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 — Surveying, Civil Engineering, and Land Development Software Cool Software Utilities for Your Job History, Nonhistory, or Both? In the Eye of the Storm Builders’ Information Modeling CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes CAD from the Streets

Cadalyst - March 2008

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