A Practical Guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013

I am excited to announce that my latest book, A Practical Guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013, is now available. 

The books in the Practical Guide series have been formatted to maximize learning by starting all lessons with an explanation of the concepts and processes that will be covered; followed by real world examples in step-by-step exercises that you can perform yourself with the included dataset.

It features over 130 exercises organized into 34 lessons in 11 chapters. Each lesson includes detailed descriptions of processes and theory with many illustrations and diagrams, to help you understand “why”, not just “how”.

For more details, including a table of contents, and to place an order, please visit our web site.

A Practical Guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013

If you are like me you have come across areas where Civil 3D labels look great in your drawing and other areas where they just don’t fit.  For example, in the image below the label is too long for the pipe it is labeling.  It may work great for other, longer pipes.  But for this one it just doesn’t fit, and dragging it away from the pipe doesn’t look much better.

Learn how you can limit the length of labels in Civil 3D so that they fit the area that you have available and the geometry you are labeling with this tutorial.

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Better Elevation Banding In Civil 3D

I have always been frustrated with the way that Civil 3D preforms an Elevation Surface Analysis. This is a great tool, however, the process of running the analysis has always seemed cumbersome to me. There has never been a way to set an interval for the elevation bands or a starting elevation for the bands. The only option was to set a number of ranges and then manually edit the ranges that Civil 3D automatically created for you. This was a tedious and frustrating process. Civil 3D 2012 finally gives us some options to make this much easier.

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Better Elevation Banding In Civil 3D

Purging Styles from Civil 3D Drawings

Cleaning up Civil 3D drawings and removing unwanted or unneeded styles has been a tedious process in the past. Yes, you could do it, but the process was time consuming. Now in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012, we finally have a quick and easy Purge Style command. 

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Purging Styles from Civil 3D Drawings

Labeling Pipe Network Structures from the Top or Bottom in Civil 3D

I’m often asked questions by users that are frustrated when labeling pipe network Structures in Civil 3D. They would like the label to extend out of the top or bottom of the structure but instead it is being labeled at the center, even when the label is dragged to another location and displayed in the dragged state as shown in the examples below.

This tutorial will show you how to take control of these labels and automatically place them at the top or bottom of the structure.

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Labeling Pipe Network Structures from the Top or Bottom in Civil 3D

Tips to Improve Civil 3D Performance

In previous posts I have discussed a number of ways that you can improve the performance of AutoCAD Civil 3D. Those tutorials have consistently drawn a lot of interest and feedback so I have brought them all together in the following list along with some new items that I have come across.

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Tips to Improve Civil 3D Performance

Improve Civil 3D Performance by Optimizing Label Styles

Most of us are always looking for ways to improve the performance of Civil 3D, let’s be honest, no matter how fast things get it could always be faster.  One thing to consider is the way that your Label Styles are set up, because in some cases it can make a noticeable difference.

In this tutorial you will learn how to optimize your Civil 3D label styles and why certain decisions that you make while configuring your label styles can impact performance.

For the complete tutorial, (and many others) follow this link...
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Improve Civil 3D Performance by Optimizing Label Styles