Subscription Center Update

While sitting with David Blanchette he made mention of a few changes that are coming for the Subscription center. Lately, some clients have been complaining about the "value" of being on the subscription that is required when purchasing any vertical product from Autodesk.

It appears that the ears up in Manchester have listened to the crys and are in the process of revamping the Subscription program.

Look for Updates to no longer be free to non-subscription holders. They will be available for download only through Subscription Center. That is one of the changes coming. More will be posted here when they aremade available.

On a personal preference note, I know that we are notified through the InfoCenter when new Updates are available, I would like to see perhaps an imbedded link to the Update that would allow for amore direct download. Perhas a widget similar to reloading an Xref or something along those lines. Provide an option for the user to add their Subscription Center login to their user profile so theey can be verified at Civil 3D/Civil startup. However, this may be a moot point when the new Subscription Center is brought online over the next week or two. We shall see what lays in store.

Where are the Service Packs ... revisited

Just a little update to the last post ... I've been sitting with David Blanchette from Autodesk and we've been having a pretty good time talking about all things technical. I brought up the point that the update for Civil 3D wasn't called a Service Pack. Well, it seems like The 'Desk is getting away from the term "Service Pack" as it had a not so positive feel.

Now all patches and fixes will be called "Updates".

Another thing of interest is that while there is already "Update 1" for Civil 3D the users of the newly released AutoCAD Civil will not have an Update for a little while. That seems a little odd, but it was stated that not many licenses have been purcased yet so the need to patch it wasn't the same priority level as getting CIvil 3D 2009 updated.

Until next time keep the Earthworkers busy!

Where are the Service Packs?

Service pack ... a term that all Civil users are used to hearing ... and eagerly waiting for. Well as of this writing no "service pack" has been released. However, there has been a Civil 3D 2009 Update released.

Go Here to see more about it.

After a quick browse of the readme this does seem like it will fix a few of the nagging problems I keep having.

Cheers!

Got stones .... or just lines?

So let's say you are wrapping up your planset and your final task is to hatch out your sidewalks or your driveways or perhaps even your stabilized construction entrance (if you don't use a block and/or marker style for this). So you go and make sure you have closed polygons to hatch with, you apply the hatch pattern and you see this:

It's rather disheartening to see your beloved hatch pattern broken up like this!! Alas there is a quick fix for this. If you select the hatch and then right click you can choose to go to Hatch Edit

Once you have gotten back to the Hatch properties dialog you will notice the option for a hatch origin point. The reason the majority of these hatch busts occur is this: Normally your drawing origin point is set to 0,0. However when we move a project into State Plane Co-ordinates we usually have a location point a long way off from 0,0. Therefore, to fix the hatch we simply need to adjust the origin point. Select "Click to set new origin" and then pick in your drawing somewhere closer to your project.

Once you have selected an origin (if you get an errors stating that it's outside the drawings extents, at the command line type limits and turn them off) Your hatch pattern will be fixed.

Happy CADD'ing you digital earthworkers!

Avoiding the unavoidable

So who reading this has ever had a Civil 3D lockup and/or crash? If anyone didn't raise their hand then you aren't really using the software.

When the crash happens there are a few common variables whose settings go awry. These few settings are:

FILEDIA - possibly the one I get the most questions about! Make sure that just after you crash when you have finished swearing and stating that this is the biggest pile of software that you've ever used change the setting from 0 to 1. This will bring back you dialog boxes for File -> Open.

PICKFIRST - This is a new one that I seem to be getting more and more questions on. Have you ever not been able to double click edita piece of MTEXT without typing ED, DDEDIT (or some equivalent) and then having to select the piece of text? If you have then this is the setting for you.

Well that will conclude this post fr today. Good luck all you digtal dirt workers!

Land Desktop ... retired after 18+ years of service

Well it is finally official. Land Desktop is retiring after it's 2009 release. If you are not on subscription as of 2009 you will not be able to purchase LDT anymore.

This is great news for those that have adopted Civil 3D already, but not so good news for those that haven't. The screws will really get tightened to switch over from LDT to Civil 3D.

To all those that have switched you have my blessing for continued success. To those that haven't please give your local reseller a call to schedule an on-site visit by the Civil Technical Specialist and Salesperson to talk about how Civil 3D can help change your business model. With the new change to the Civil series you can possibly get some value upgrades to plain AutoCAD Civil without purchasing Civil 3D if you don't need H&H/GIS functionality.

Times right now are very exiciting in the world of Civil Engineering. Hope to hear from all of you soon.

Work with the program rather than against it

One of the recurring themes in my training classes and implementations is how the software works. For obvious reasons I won't be reverse engineering Civil 3D to better explain how it works. However, the one thing I will say is that if you figure out how the software (and in turn the programmer) wants you to work you will have a much easier time transitioning from LDD to Civil 3D.

If you are designing something and are constantly crashing or getting bogus information try it a different way or in a different order. Remember there is more than 1 way to do any certain task within Civil 3D. There other important aspect to remember is the correct order of operations. We all remember OoO from Elementary school right? The arithmetic operations are: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Within Civil 3D there are very similar orders, however they are not as set in stone. There will eventually be posted here a workable order of operations that will keep things stable and ready to rock.

Until then, keep on keeping on.

Civil AE Position thoughts

Well, I have been a Civil AE for CADapult, LTD here in Newark, DE for the passed 6 weeks. While the workload is different than what a typical Cad monkey is used to, there is a LOT of work to be done. Scheduling training, doing workflow assessments, dealing with peoples problems over the phone etc ... these all pose challenges that I never really thought about before.

I know that my previous trainer/friend Dana had all of the responsibilities I just never really thought about them. Having to juggle 20 clients at any given time can be stressful. However, being able to set your own hours, make your own workload and get paid to learn as much as possible really has it's benefits. Life is good so far here and as I get more settled in to my role here as Lead Civil Applications Engineer I will be posting more helpful tips and tricks.

That is all for now.