Are You Ready to be Stimulated?

Unless you've been living under a rock or are part of an oil sheik's entourage, you've heard that the economy has been sluggish for a while. Furthermore, you've heard that the transportation sector is going to be a large focus of the economic stimulus package cooking on Capitol Hill. Figures between $45 and $100 billion have been heard thrown around for dollar amounts promised for roads, rail, bridges and water distribution projects over the next two years. Additional money is being talked about for the energy sector.

AASHTO has a nice breakdown by state for projects that could break ground within the first half of 2009.

But are you ready?

If a glut of work came your way right now, are you and your co-workers equipped to handle it?

More specifically, are you as efficient as you can be with your design software?

In my humble opinion, we are in the calm before the storm. Now is the time to implement software and train people before you are knee-deep in projects. When this work comes you don't want the headache of taking time out to get up to speed on Civil 3D.

Get good at your software now, while the lull still exists.

In all fairness, I realize I am not an impartial voice on this subject. One of the primary parts of my career is teaching and implementing Civil 3D*. However, I feel that the incoming presidential administration will come in with checkbook open. Whose bank account the money ultimately lands in won't depend on which projects are "shovel ready", but which engineering company's systems and personnel are "project ready."

*If you are interested in having me work with your organization to train or assess your needs, please feel free to contact me.

WisDOT Template-in-Progress

Lots of my users have been asking about the WisDOT draft Civil 3D template. My friends at the DOT have given me the green light to post the link to the FTP site where the template-in-progress can be found.

Keep in mind that this is NOT the final cut and that they are posting updates every month or so.
I'm told the final cut should be available in fall 2009.

ftp://ftp.dot.state.wi.us/transp/roads/civil3d/

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Quick, Non-technical Update

As the Holiday season approaches I am spending more free time making Yule logs and wrapping presents than blogging - so I apologise to my adoring, somewhat neglected following.

I've got my hands elbow deep inside a Map 3D implementation project and I've been ramping up to be the next Revit Architecture guru at my company. Oh! I've always wanted to make a family!

Dare I say I'm Tuckered out?

So just a few shout-outs to keep the hits up:
Ladd Nelson of Carlson Software - it was AWESOME to see you last weekend. I could really use another margarita.

Anne Gerriets of Eagle Point - break a leg sista' and I don't mean on the Iowa ice!

Peace and love to everyone else. I'm planning on posting a real post before Christmas.

Back to Basics: Panning, Zooming and Selecting Stuff

This week I conducted a class in which one of my students did not want to use the middle mouse wheel to pan and zoom. She wasn't using Autocad with MBUTTONPAN set to 0, she just was used to right-clicking all the time to get there. I gave up trying to coax her into using the middle mouse wheel when she said, "..But all that panning and zooming makes me seasick!"

The problem arose when creating Civil 3D objects - many of the Civil 3D commands treat any right-click as ENTER. When we were creating Profiles by Layout, for example, she would try to pan over and set a PVI, but her right-click kicked her out of the layout tools. Watching her use the scrollbars to pan thereafter was nothing short of painful.

So, in short:

• Roll forward to zoom in.
• Roll Back to zoom out.
• Wherever your cursor happens to be is where Autocad is aiming for the center of your view to be.
• Double-click the mouse wheel as if it were a button for zoom-extents.
• Push and hold the mouse for panning.

A little Dramamine and you're production speed will double!

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Selecting Sh*t:

I'm always surprised at how many people still don't know this after years of CAD work.

By default Autocad (and by association, Civil 3D) you are in a selection mode if you are not in a command. (If you came from Microstation, this fact is a hard one to get used to).

A Left to Right crossing window only selects items that are completely inside the selection window.

A Right to Left crossing window selects items that are inside the selection window as well as items that touch the dashed line.

And that's just outside of a command.

Now, let's say you are in a command. Let's take the Civil 3D command Delete Lines iinside the surface editing tools, for example. At the Select Edges: prompt, type F for fence, then enter. You now are in fence mode and can click around to make a temporary line. Anything that touches this line becomes selected. Hit enter when you are done creating the fence and you can keep selecting or hit enter again to continue deleting triangle legs.

Lastly, don't be shy about using the SHIFT+SPACEBAR trick to select objects that are on top of each other. This happens all the time in Civil 3D. You have alignments under corridors, surfaces coinciding with grading objects and featurelines everywhere in between. Hover over an object until it "lights up" without clicking. If that is not the object you were aiming for, hold down the SHIFT key, then thumb the spacebar at the same time. When the object you want "lights up," click it. This is a heck of a lot faster than flipping around the Draw Order.

In Honor of Jame's AU Presentation

Did you see James Wedding's presentation today at AU?

You should have - and this is what I think of him...