Twitter profile picture

Now, this is just completely random.  While browsing my twitter feed the other day, I realized most people might not know what my profile picture represents.

At that resolution, it kind of looks like a poorly drawn happy face. I can tell you that it is not a happy face on purpose.

How to do anything well

I’m working on a post that is taking more time than I want and should be an opinion piece in the local paper, but I digress.  Through doing that and other things that interest me, I’ve been reading a book entitled, “Writing Better Lyrics.” And there, in chapter one is probably the best advise for doing anything well – and that advise is written like this; TEN and ONLY TEN minutes.

Rogue Pipes Catalog path

How many times are you called over for pipe network “issues” only to find out that the catalog path has somehow been changed from the network share to the local cache?

** Wrong catalog path **

We could open this dialog, browse for the right location, select it, and click OK. But where’s the fun in that?

One solution is to create a registry key that resets the correct value, place that key file on the network and send a link to create a desktop shortcut pointing to this registry file.  Then, users can double click that desktop icon to reset the pipe catalog path.  Easy peasy as my girls like to say…  But, how do you do all of that?  Let’s dive in.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

 

In 2010, there were 28 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 143 posts. There were 42 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 14th with 192 views. The most popular post that day was AU 2009 Learned Lessons – Pfunks tips.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were caddigest.com, Google Reader, google.com, civil3d.com, and acecivil3d.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for civil 3d, map 3d, autocad map 3d, land development engineering, and autocad civil 3d.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

AU 2009 Learned Lessons – Pfunks tips January 2010

2

You know when we tell you that Map 3D is included with Civil 3D…. April 2007

3

Station Equations do what? to my alignment? June 2007

4

HOW TO: Jump Quickly to Different Project Locations February 2010
1 comment

5

Recover Corrupted DWG with Data objects January 2010

Base mapping geometry ownership

Often times, we’ll get survey linework that is not a “survey of the field conditions, a sort of half hearted attempt to describe the site conditions.  Now, I don’t mean to say that the necessary effort wasn’t put in by the field guys or the office guys to create and map the conditions. But, the typical problem is that with any collection method, you’re introducing error. And how you limit that error defines the accuracy of the survey.

Now, with point clouds, I suppose the accuracy level goes up, but it still relies on the user to interpret correctly.

Now the good stuff. After catching up with different blogs, I came across Scott McEachron’s I.II.I blog post about survey collection tools in civil 3d. Here you’ll find the answer to the biggest culprit – finding PC & PT points along tangents in the field.  Finding those points in the field is a bit of a crap shoot.

We have fancy computers now that can add and multiply and can toss the occasional geometry problem out with ease. The survey figure is one of those fancy computer tools we should use. In Scott’s post, he does a great job of explaining the function and how to collect the data in the field without worry of generating linework issues back in the office.

Why did I write this post? A – so that I don’t forget the tool. B – so that others can be made aware of such simple and elegant tools within the app they already own!

If I were an Automobile in Civil 3D…

 

I would need a checkup about now. I’ve recently gone over 30,000 miles, i mean hits. Now for those more popular blogs, this is but a drop. But for the rest of us, i’m kind of proud. Sadly, i wish the DJIA looked more like my blog stats then what it does. But that’s a completely different topic…