Civil 3D 2008 Drawing Lines and Curves versus Lines and Curves in Land Desktop

[JoshNelson]

So we are running into an issue with 2008 when drawing lines by bearing and drawings curves via a radius and delta angle. They have incorporated the lines and curves menu from Land Desktop into Civil 3D 2008. However, they made a minor, but frustrating change. In Civil 3D 2008 when you go to Lines-Create Lines-Line By Bearing you are prompted for the bearing which will accept a bearing in the format DD.MMSS just like Land Desktop. However, unlike Land Desktop, when you draw a curve by delta angle and radius (like "curve from end of object") and you go to punch in your delta angle, it interprets 45.4522 as 45.4522 decimal degrees and not 45d45'22". So it takes a bit longer to draw deeds, parcel lines, etc. in 2008 than it did in Land Desktop. It doesn't give you any notice of this on the command line or in the help.

The weird thing is in Land Desktop when you would do a line by bearing it would give you this prompt:

Bearing (DD.MMSS):

It wouldn't give you that prompt for a curve, it would just give you:

Enter delta:

It should have said:

Enter delta (DD.MMSS):

Because it accepted that. Now in Civil 3D for a line by bearing it gives you:

Current direction unit: degree, Input: DD°MM'SS.SS"
>>Specify bearing:

Though it accepts DD.MMSS

If you do a curve by delta it just says:

Specify delta angle:

You have to actually punch in 45d45'22" to get it drawn properly or 45°45'22"

Am I missing something or is there a way to draw curve deltas in the format DD.MMSS? Thanks.

Josh Nelson

[mpowelljr]

Change the angle format in the Drawing settings, note, this is drawing dependent so if you want it to act the same way in every drawing you have to change your template.

Go to the settings tab of toolspace, right click on the drawing name, select drawings settings and then you will see your angle options.

Mark

[JoshNelson]

That didn't work. It does display the curve data in DD.MMSS, but it won't accept a delta input of DD.MMSS - here is a paste of my command line:

Command: _AeccCurveFromEndOfObject
Select arc or line object:
Select entry [Radius/Point] : r

Specify Radius, or [degree-Arc/degree-Chord]: 50

Select entry [Tangent/Chord/Delta/Length/External/Mid-ordinate] : d
Specify delta angle: 25.2235

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARC DATA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Begin . . . . . North: 1827964.6330' East: 6580393.1486'
Radial Point. . North: 1827925.9963' East: 6580424.8852'
End . . . . . . North: 1827947.4245' East: 6580379.7096'
PI . . . . . . North: 1827957.5321' East: 6580384.5039'
Tangent: 11.187' Chord: 21.834' Course: S37°59'17.3000"W
Arc Length: 22.012' Radius: 50.000' Delta: 25.13246000 (dms)

Note that I am trying to get 25d22'35" so I punch in 25.2235 but as you can see it interprets that as 25.2235 decimial degrees and then converts that to DD.MMSS on the last line and results in a 25d13'24.6" that it displays as 25.13246000 (dms).

Josh

[Anonymous]

This has been previously reported, so I think the folks in NH know about it.

wrote in message news:5706067@discussion.autodesk.com...
That didn't work. It does display the curve data in DD.MMSS, but it won't
accept a delta input of DD.MMSS - here is a paste of my command line:

[mpowelljr]

Yeah, can see where that would be an issue. Doesn't even specify what type of angle its using.

[Anonymous]

JoshNelson wrote:
> That didn't work. It does display the curve data in DD.MMSS, but it
> won't accept a delta input of DD.MMSS - here is a paste of my command
> line:

You're right - angular settings don't control this particular one.
It's been discussed before, but I'm not sure where Autodesk development
is on this one. Right now, your best answer is to enter delta angles
in what I call "plain autocad format" - IOW, type 25d22'35". Yes, it
takes longer, but it's still better than the way it used to be.

--
Jason Hickey

Civil 3D 2008, SP1
Dell Precision M70
2 GIG RAM, 256 MB nVidia Quadro FX Go1400
Intel Centrino 2 gHz Processor

www.civil3d.com

[kwecker]

Overall, I like Civil 3D, and this is the solution I've been using for drawing tangent curves. It's acceptable, but I don't agree that anything about drawing deeds has improved. It's either stayed the same or gotten worse, though there are enough other features that make up for this short-coming.

Kyle Wecker
Wecker Surveys, Inc.

[Sinc]

You sound like you're expecting "Complete Survey Functionality" or some such nonsense... 🙂 🙂 🙂

[kwecker]

I know...what a concept! I'm not trying to be overly critical, but in their drive to make the ultimate large-scale civil design tool, Autodesk does, at times, seem to forget the "little guy" on some relatively minor points of functionality.

By the way sinc, I appreciate your programming work, I've used it for examples to help me make some of the functionality I need. (I will probably end up making something that handles this particular issue.)