Point Cloud Extension

Just a quick note…

The Point Cloud Feature Extraction extension is no longer a lab product, but has graduated to the Subscription Center. It is a global product for Civil 3D 2012 at this time. If you have no idea what that extension does, here is a quick description:

…provides functionality to display points in, extract a “bare earth” Civil 3D surface from and extract roadway features from a Point Cloud (PCG).

By the way, here’s the complete list of productivity tools for 2012:

• Borehole utility
• rail track layout
• cartogramma utility
• GENIO import/export
• CAiCE translator
• transportation utilities
• DACH extension
• ISYBAU translator
• ….and several other translators and data importers

 

No-Plot This!

Take a moment and tell me what your firm uses for a no-plot color.  Just wanted to take the pulse on this “topic.”  This doesn’t imply STB or CTB, just the color associated with a layer. I suppose it does imply that object color is BYLAYER. If it isn’t, then you’re in violation of the International CAD Code.  :)

[Edit 11/23/2011 So the results are all over the board.  Even the "other" responses were varied; 211, Brown, 124, 101, 160, 49, 245 and a true color 255,255,255. Although layers can be set to no plot, we are still grounded in the idea that a color implies results.]

Thanks for your help!

Get your voice heard!

Now is your chance. Autodesk has created a new vehicle to get input from you, the users of all things Autodesk. It’s called the Infrastructure Participatory Design Council.

What is it?

Annotative Brain Freeze

Man, I hate coming back to AutoCAD sometimes.  Like when I’ve been away in Revit for 6 months and see this nastiness…

I knew a system variable probably controlled this or at least maybe those 2 buttons hidding down in the lower right corner, but to no avail. See sysvars ANNOALLVISIBLE and ANNOAUTOSCALE for more detail.

Rotating your view without changing coordinate values

OR  aka DVIEW TWIST and SNAPANG.  There isn’t a building or subdivision i’ve ever done that looks good with north straight up. Typically, north has to be rotated somewhat to get the view we’re looking for. You know something like this.

To do that with AutoCAD, you need to use two commands – DVIEW and SNAPANG.  Dview has many uses, most of which I have no clue. But what it can do is rotate your view without changing the coordinate values. Snapang is used to set the crosshairs horizontal by using the negative angle of the twisted view.  Blah, blah, blah….

Model View Sort of Non-existent

This is just a quick note about the Sheet Set Manager. You may already know this…  As of AutoCAD 2012, the files listed in the model views tab of Sheet Set Manager are not sorted nor can you make them sort.  Here’s what I am talking about: