Plot Not Showing Existing Contours

I have been getting several calls lately where customers are claiming that when they go to plot their drawing, the existing contours don’t show up in the preview, or the plot.

Ever heard of Level of Detail?  This is a new feature of Civil 3D 2012.  This feature controls the amount of detail used to display surfaces.

If this feature is turned on, then your existing contours will not show up in your plots or plot previews.  So, in order for it to show up, you must turn your Level of Detail off.

This is located on the View tab of the Ribbon, Views panel…

You can also tell if the Level of Detail is on by the symbol located by the Visual Styles Control as shown…

 

Keep in mind, this is exclusive to Layouts.  If you print in model space, it’s fine.  This only happens in paper space.

Have a great rest of the week!!

Fortune Names Autodesk #52 For Top 100 Places to Work For

Released yesterday in Fortune magazine, Autodesk was placed at No. 52 for the top 100 places to work for.

You can read about it here.

On a General Note…

As more and more people start using Civil 3D to its full potential, the need for more custom labeling increases.  Most of these people don’t know about the power of some of the labeling under the General section in the Settings tab of the Toolspace.

Under the General section, Label Styles, there are a few options that most of you are unaware of.  For instance, the Note section.  I had a customer call me today and wanted to know how to create a label for Northing and Easting without having to create a point.

It’s very simple…you create a label under Note. 

If you right click on Note and select New…

The Label Style Composer will open up.  Here you can give it a name.  In this case, I will call it Northing & Easting.

On the Layout tab, turn off the border around the text and set up the text properties to your liking.

Click in the Text Contents cell and pick the ellipsis…

This will bring up the Text Component Editor.  Add the Northing and Easting as desired…

Click OK, and OK again.

Now navigate to your Annotate tab of the ribbon.  Click the tag above Add Labels.  This brings up the Add Labels dialog box.  Select Note for the Feature, and Note for the Label Type.  For the Note Label Style, select the Northing & Easting you just created.  You can add a Marker Style of your choice.  In this case, I’m choosing the Basic X…

Click Add.  Pick a point for your label style and it will label your Northing and Easting.  Simple as that…

These ARE dynamic.  So if you move them, they WILL update accordingly.

Enjoy playing around with the many options you have under this section and check back soon for more updates!!

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Elevation Adjustment in a Survey Database

I get many calls on adjusting point elevations all at once in a drawing.  Most people try to adjust the elevation using the Datum method as shown below…

This method prompts you at the command line to adjust the datum by a value.  You enter a value and nothing happens.  This is because it’s in a survey database, hence, the reason for a survey database.

I’m going to walk you through the correct method in adjusting elevations in a survey database.

First you will need to pick a point as to which to do your adjustment from.  In this case we are going to use point number 504.

Notice the elevation for point 504 is 131.88.

We start by right-clicking on the Survey Database’s name and selecting Translate Survey Database…

This will open up a wizard.  On the first page, you have a few options for input.  All I am going to do is input the point number 504 and hit the enter key…

As you can see in the image above, once I hit the Enter key, it populates the Northing, Easting, Elevation and Description.  Click Next.

The next page prompts you for the rotation.  Since we are not rotating, and we are ONLY doing an elevation adjustment, enter 0 and press Next…

The next page prompts you for a destination point and elevation adjustment.  We are ONLY concerned about the elevation.  Here we are going to enter –2.00.  This will adjust the points down.  If you want to adjust them up, then you will enter a positive value.

Click Next.  The last page is a summary of the values we just entered.

Click Finish.

Here you can see the desired adjustment…

Keep in mind that this adjusted ALL my points –2.00 feet.

Everyone have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  I will see you in 2012!!!