Civil 3d data shortcut workflow or drawing management

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to see if I'm doing things the most efficient way.

Alignments.dwg: This drawing has all the roadway alignments for the project

Profiles.dwg: This drawing dref's all the alignments, creates profiles/finished grades for each alignment

CrossSections.dwg: This drawing dref's the alignments and profiles, and is used to create my corridors and cross sections. Most of the design happening here.

Drainage.dwg: Torn on this. I'd like to parse this task out, but it almost goes hand in hand with the corridor iterations and should be in the cross sections. You can't dref corridors so it's almost like this should be happening in my cross sections drawings.

Sheets.dwg: Xref in above sheets into model space and use viewports for paper space (that would have border, stamp, etc).

Am I on the right track here? Is this how most people do it or am I missing a step? Usually don't have a problem with data shortcuts, but recently been having problems with other people hopping on the project and the working folder not showing all profiles.

[Jay_B]

For best performance (if working on large projects involving worksharing amongst a design team is of concern) then splitting things up can really help.

We usually have:

Base.dwg - Contains Survey Points & EG surface.

AL.dwg - Contains Alignment, XG profile, FG Profile and Corridor.

XS.dwg - Contains Sample lines, Sec. Views & Sheets. (Corridor Xref'd as "Attachment" type Xref)

PN.dwg - Contains Pipe Networks

Objects are then data referenced.

The Best Practices Guide is a great resource on dwg mgmt.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

For best performance (if working on large projects involving worksharing amongst a design team is of concern) then splitting things up can really help.

We usually have:

Base.dwg - Contains Survey Points & EG surface.

AL.dwg - Contains Alignment, XG profile, FG Profile and Corridor.

XS.dwg - Contains Sample lines, Sec. Views & Sheets. (Corridor Xref'd as "Attachment" type Xref)

PN.dwg - Contains Pipe Networks

Objects are then data referenced.

The Best Practices Guide is a great resource on dwg mgmt.

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Any reason you keep alignment, profile, and corridor in same drawing? I could see alignment and profile, but wouldn't throwing corridors in start to bog the drawing down? 

And so if you're attaching Xref's, are you just cognizant of the fact you would need to re-attach after every tweak of your corridor? That seems like it would start to get tedius really fast.

[Jay_B]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Any reason you keep alignment, profile, and corridor in same drawing? I could see alignment and profile, but wouldn't throwing corridors in start to bog the drawing down?

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Nope, Alignments & Profiles are very light.

Start mixing Corridors and Cross Sections (files with large data sets) in same dwg etc., then Yes.

We keep each street in separate files here so multiple users can work at same time, it also keeps files smaller.

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@Anonymous wrote:
And so if you're attaching Xref's, are you just cognizant of the fact you would need to re-attach after every tweak of your corridor? That seems like it would start to get tedius really fast.

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Say What? You lost me with that one, virtually every file I work in contains xref's and I've never reattached an xref after tweaking a corridor.

If the corridor file is open at same time as XS file and the corridor is rebuilt then file must be saved and it's xref reloaded from in XS dwg in

order for the XS file to update.

Just the way it works.

What I was stating re: our workflow is in the Cross Section.dwg file we attach the file containing the corridor to the cross section file because as you mentioned a Corridor cannot be data referenced but it can be read via an xref.

The same workflows aren't for everyone & you'll get many different ways to do things but often times a chosen workflow boils down to a few basic factors:

Size of shop.

# of users in shop.

Size of design team amongst which these files must be effectively shared.

Size of project.

Type of project.

Project data source types.

Yada yada.

[Anonymous]

Jay,

sorry, I think I was confused on xref's. Let's back up.

When you xref another drawing, you said you are picking "attachment". Does it matter?

And if I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you xref in your corridor, and then run sample lines along your alignment (which is dref'ed I'm assuming?) and the sample lines will pick up the xref's corridor in order to run multiple cross section views? Will this pick up all my assembly features (I have marked points/assembly calls for ETW, HP, CP, etc)?

If you say yes to these, you may have just started the beginning of a shift in my offices file structure haha

[Jay_B · Accepted solution]

Yes, in the case of a XS.dwg file which Xref's. Corridor which will become a "sampled source" it definitely matters to choose "Attachment" vs. "Overlay" as attachment type.
Another thing that matters is to create data references to surfaces which will also become sampled sources. Xrefs containing the surfaces may also appear in the available sources listing. Duplicates seen are being read via an xref. Don't sample any of these surfaces via xref's. Pay close attention to the surface icons as the drefs are created etc. as the ones your going to sample are absent the little arrow on the icon. Normally I'm an overlay type xref fan for most everything but not here.

The reason for going into such detail is we've had this workflow for a couple of years now and have had volume tables go to all zero values and in 2014 continually loose most or all sampled sources if not done as noted.

When the above workflow is followed we have very few if any of these issues.

As far as your concern re: the marked points and codes mentioned, shouldn't be a problem.

[AllenJessup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Any reason you keep alignment, profile, and corridor in same drawing? I could see alignment and profile, but wouldn't throwing corridors in start to bog the drawing down? 

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We keep the Alignments and Profiles together because when we didn't there were some problems. That was four or five releases ago so it might not hold now. But it seems natural to keep them together. Corridors are in another drawing.

Allen

[Cadguru42 · Accepted solution]

No matter the job size we create the following drawings:

1. present_layout.dwg - contains survey points, figures, and DREF'd view frames & alignments. Used to create present layout sheets and for XREFs.

2. eg.dwg - contains surface survey points & figures. Only contains existing ground surface. 

3. alignments_profiles.dwg - contains roadway alignments, profiles, and view frames. present_layout.dwg is XREF'd into this one.

4. proposed_layout.dwg - DREF'd alignments & view frames and XREF'd present_layout.dwg. This contains the linework for the proposed layout sheets and sometimes the storm pipe networks.

5. corridor.dwg - corridors go here. DREF'd alignments, profiles, and EG are here. XREF of proposed layout. Corridor specific alignments and profiles are created in this drawing so as not to clutter other drawings. 

6. x-sections.dwg - XREF'd corridor, DREF'd alignments & profiles. Sample lines are created here as well as the sheets for the cross sections.

Depending on the job, the storm pipe network might be in its own drawing called storm.dwg or it's in the proposed_layout.dwg. Also depending on the job and size we might have other drawings for things like the pavement marking plan, erosion prevention & sediment control, landscaping, etc. We don't do site plans as we're a local government, but if a job requires site grading it'll go in the corridor drawing.

By doing it this way C3D works really fast and the file sizes stay smaller. 

[Anonymous]

Jay, 

So far this method has been working out well for one of our projects. My question is this:

After you ever noticed an assembly not updating, even after you reload an xref? I've been noticing that I have add to run some dummy section views to almost snap the others back to where they're supposed to be.

Another big one is this: When you attach an xref, do you still get a bubble notification that the xref needs to be reloaded? I've always gotten this message with xref's that are set to overlay. However, I don't think I have gotten any notifications while I'm in my cross section files. Is this something to just be aware of and know in your head that they need to be re-ran?

[Jay_B]

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JonVinci wrote:

After you ever noticed an assembly not updating, even after you reload an xref?

Yes I have, this almost always occurs when corridor file is attached as xref using "Overlay" attachment type.

When "Attachment" type is used almost zero issues occur.

Another big one is this: When you attach an xref, do you still get a bubble notification that the xref needs to be reloaded? I've always gotten this message with xref's that are set to overlay. However, I don't think I have gotten any notifications while I'm in my cross section files. Is this something to just be aware of and know in your head that they need to be re-ran?

If Corridor & xsec file are open simultaneously then as long as I save corridor file first, then switch windows to xsec dwg, then yes I get 2 balloon notifications. 1st tels me Data Shortcuts need synching, 2nd the xref needs reloading.

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One more very important part of this workflow is to be sure to sample only the data references of surfaces.

The differences in the icons as they appear in "Sampled Sources" list within Sample Line Group Properties is this:

The icon on the left (absent the little arrow on lower left of icon) is the data referenced surface to be sampled.

The icon on the right (containing the little arrow on lower left of icon) is being read via an xref and sampling these seems to cause issues.

As long as we do all steps mentioned, the sections seem to behave really well.

HTH

[StevenGoodrich6896a]

This a very helpful discussion on how best to break up drawings.  Reminds me of the early days of PC & 286 machines and lisp or scripts where you could wblock out the layers into separate files to keep moving forward.  The cycle seems to be repeating.