Rick Ellis

In the 2010 version of Civil 3D the interface has been dramatically redone to incorporate the ribbon. As with most changes like this some people love it while others do not and want to know if they can use the old system. The short answer is yes, you can setup Civil 3D 2010 to look […]

Many of us use wild cards in Civil 3D description key codes to help sort through the raw descriptions of points and match them with description key codes.  However, it is easy to forget that there are many different wild cards that work with Civil 3D description keys and limit ourselves to using just the standard

There are many different tips and tricks for improving performance in AutoCAD Civil 3D. This tutorial will cover two of the most important ones that you can implement quickly and easily. Set PROXYGRAPHICS to 0. PROXYGRAPHICS is a drawing variable that specifies whether to save proxy graphic images of objects that can not be displayed by basic AutoCAD. In Civil 3D

In Civil 3D 2010 you can create Data Shortcuts to share Surfaces, Alignments, Profiles, Pipe Networks and View Frame Groups.  Conspicuously absent from this list is an option to create a Data Shortcut for Parcels. However, Parcels can be shared and labeled through External References. Just attach the base drawing that contains the parcels as an

I am often asked if there is a way to exaggerate the vertical scale of a Civil 3D surface when it is viewed in the Object Viewer or with 3D Orbit. While neither the Object Viewer nor 3D Orbit have an option to change the vertical exaggeration or scale of an object, you can still accomplish

Sometimes it can be the little things in life that can make you happy, or that can annoy you and drive you crazy, depending on how they are going. And this little addition to Civil 3D 2011 certainly fits into this category, in a good way. Have you wanted to add a comma as the thousands separator

In this tutorial we will look at a workflow in Civil 3D to manage and label measure down information for points representing manholes and catch basins. This can often be a tedious and error prone task so our goal here is to get the information into Civil 3D once and treat it as data that we

If you have tried to insert a Mr. Sid Image into AutoCAD Civil 3D using the MAPIINSERT command (found on the Insert tab of the ribbon in either of the Geospatial workspaces) you may have found that Mr. Sid images are missing from the list of available image formats. But don’t give up if you

Point Symbols can be quickly and easily rotated in Civil 3D by using the Rotate Point grip.  However, I am often asked if there is a way to rotate the point symbol without rotating the point label as shown below. The answer here lies within the Point Label Style.  Start by editing the Point Label

The increased availability of LIDAR data and other forms of large point datasets have brought new challenges to many Civil 3D users as they attempt to build surfaces from datasets containing millions of points.   One of the challenges is, unlike traditional surveys, the LIDAR data may encompass an area much larger than the project area