Civil 3D is part of a larger product family from Autodesk. During its earliest creation, various features and functions from other products were recognized as important to the civil engineering community. These included the obvious things such as the entire suite of AutoCAD drafting, design, modeling, and rendering tools as well as more esoteric options such as Map’s GIS capabilities. An early decision was made to build Civil 3D on top of the AutoCAD Map product, which in turn is built on top of AutoCAD.
This underlying engine provides a host of options and powerful tools for the Civil 3D user. AutoCAD and Map add features with every release that change the fundamental makeup of how Civil 3D works. With the introduction of workspaces in 2006, users can now set up Civil 3D to display various tools and palettes depending on the task at hand. Creating a workspace is like having a quick-fix bag of tools ready: preliminary design calls for one set of tools, and final plan production calls for another.
Workspaces are part of a larger feature set called the custom user interface (referred to as CUI in the help documentation and online). As you grow familiar with Civil 3D and the various tool palettes, menus, and toolbars, be sure to explore the CUI options that are available from the Workspace toolbar.
You may have noticed that when you start typing in Civil 3D, it shows a list of the commands and set variables that begin with that letter, and as you type further, it refines that list. This is AutoCAD’s new autocomplete feature. If you do not want to use this feature, you can type AUTOCOMPLETE and set the command to OFF.
Managing Civil 3D Information
The Manage tab contains many of the management tools available in Civil 3D. Many of these tools are continuations of the basic AutoCAD tools, but they are worth some discussion.
- The Data Shortcuts panel contains all the tools related to using data shortcuts. You will learn more about data shortcuts in chapter 17. “Interoperability”.
- The Customization panel has the tools for manipulating the user interface and tool palettes via the Customize dialog box. You can also import and export your customized user interface (CUI). And for the real hackers, you can set aliases; for example, if you wanted to change C (which is the default keyboard shortcut for circle) to COPY, you can take care of that here.
- The Applications panel allows you to run specialized third-party applications, as well as manage Lisp files. And you thought that Lisp was dead!
- The CAD Standards panel allows someone such as a CAD Manager to set compliances for layering, allow importing of third-party drawing file layers, and, via a macro, change their layers to your company’s standards automatically.
- The Action Recorder panel contains all the tools for recording and playback of keystrokes. It has been around for some time but is probably not used much in the Civil 3D world. You can record keystrokes and play them back to remedy the repetitive keystrokes one might use over and over.
- The Styles panel is new to Civil 3D 2012 and is a welcome addition. You can now import styles via a dialog box instead of the old ways of accomplishing this. And the Purge tool will look at all the styles in your drawing and allow you to remove ones that are not in use. You will learn more about these tools in Chapter 19, “Styles.”