Survey Figure's... whats the point?

[lhampton]

So, ive given up. This feature is pretty much useless and creates a TON more work for me and the other guys switching from LDT. I would like to know if there is anyway to make lines come in and NOT BE SURVEY FIGURES. I would LOVE to have my NORMAL 2D POLYLINES back. So would the 25 survey engineers that I work with.

Is this even possible in this pice of junk extremly expensive software?

[owenmull]

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@lhampton wrote:

So, ive given up. This feature is pretty much useless and creates a TON more work for me and the other guys switching from LDT. I would like to know if there is anyway to make lines come in and NOT BE SURVEY FIGURES. I would LOVE to have my NORMAL 2D POLYLINES back. So would the 25 survey engineers that I work with.

Is this even possible in this pice of junk extremly expensive software?

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Dont give up. There's a lot to learn about C3D that LDT could never even hope to accomplish. You need to spend some time and get your Description Key sets and your Figure Prefix Database set up. Once you do that, you can do so many more things than the old LDT. LDT is the "piece of junk," imho.

In C3D you can tell it what layer, style, size, etc. to display the codes you enter yourself. Get a list of all the codes you use in the field, enter them into either your Description Keyset or Figure Prefix Database, and then you are good to go.

[lhampton]

We have our Desc. Keys, Prefix DB all that jazz is set up correctly, lines come in, but they are a REAL pain to deal with even with it all set up. 80% of the time the "Survey Figure Properties" button does nothing (this is WITH THE PATCH), you have to edit it within the survey tab (if your lucky) then after an edit (if it actually works) the figure's stay forever "selected" with a fat blue line. Network Nodes had to be manually taken out because they would show no matter what. I could go on and on and on...

We are fed up with this (costing us tons of money) and want 2d polylines back!!! How do we get C3d to make normal 2d poly's? EVEN OUR TRANING PERSONEL CANT MAKE FIGURES WORK CORRECTLY. 

[ToddRogers-WPM]

Sounds like you need some new training personnel.  We offer a support contract if you're interested.

[Cadguru42]

The survey side of Civil 3D is the red headed stepchild that Autodesk doesn't pay attention to.  It seems to be that Autodesk doesn't have a surveyor(s) that actually uses the database.  If they do, then they ignore him/her.   Editing a figure should not be that difficult or tedious, but it is.  Not having a modeless dialog for figure properties is one of the worst UI issues I have with the survey side of things.  I also cannot get the big button on the ribbon that says"Survey Figure Properties" to open anything up in 2013.  There's also no reasoning or any information regarding a chain basedfigure versus a vector based one.  

With that said, figures are still necessary and better than anything LDD had.  At least in 2013 the figures retain linetype generation.  

What is it you're wanting the figures to do that only  2d polylines can do?

[Jasono2009]

Agreed. The survey interface in C3D is useless. I've looked at this in detail and since 2009 firmly belive LDT survey was better than what C3D offers. Anyone doesn't agree I'll take the same dataset as you and process points and build an accurate topograhic survey in LDT faster than you can in C3D. It will also be more compatible than your trivial figures are. Guaranteed-whoever designed the survey interface in C3D was not a surveyor, nor understands what surveyors do.

Jason, PE, PLS, CFedS

[Jasono2009]

I'm sure you do.

Tell you what - I'll give you my services for free to show how to process survey points faster with LDT than you can with C3D.

[owenmull]

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@Jasono2009 wrote:

I'm sure you do.

Tell you what - I'll give you my services for free to show how to process survey points faster with LDT than you can with C3D.

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If you have C3D set up the way you want, it works well enough. That can take a good amount of time and effort, thoguh, but on the other hand, how is Autodesk supposed to even try to predict what you, the end user, is going to use it for? Even if they DID have a surveyor on the design team, dont kid yourself, EVERY SINGLE surveyor on this planet does things differently. So why try to make a product tailored to 1,000,000 different surveyors rather than simply letting you do all the customizing anyway?

In the end, a well set up version of C3D > LDT.

[Jasono2009]

You missed the point. There was nothing wrong with LDT survey. The sales speak for themselves. I would say LDT satisfied what the majority of surveyors do. Rest assured it will continue to.

Jason

[seattlesurvey]

I agree with you on the survey figures front, though I'd never go back to LDT as far as an efficient field to finish workflow.

Here's what I do:  I bring the data into the survey database, freeze everything but my line layers, explode all of the survey figures to 3D polylines, copy any of those I want to retain as 3D polylines into a specific layer and freeze that layer, convert all of the non-frozen 3D polylines into 2D polylines, select all and set elevations to zero.  Good to go, it takes less than 5 minutes, and I'm off and running!

Some will say feature lines are the way to go, but I have read (and continue to read) about said feature lines mysteriously disappearing from drawings.  So, I still use old-school 2D- and 3D-polylines.

HTH.

[mathewkol]

[...Tell you what - I'll give you my services for free to show how to process survey points faster with LDT than you can with C3D...]

What good would this do?  He's using C3D.

To the OP...

Indeed, some figure editing may not be intuative initially, but there are things you can do that make it nearly as good as editing 2D polylines.  There are a bunch of geometry editing tools for feature lines in the ribobn that work equally well for figures; break, trim, add PI, remove PI, etc.

The problem with these tools is that you need to essentially forget about the survey DB after you use them because getting those figures back into the DB can be awkward especially if you try to process linewrok again after youo've used those tools.

I didn't say it was perfect, but it's what some folks use.

[mcward27]

I draw design topos exactly as seattle does. Converting figures to 2d lines for linework and 3d lines for breaklines is pretty painless. It's all about getting your figure prefix database and description key set set up in the most efficient way for you and your surveyors, and that does take some time, brainstorming and communication. And I can vouch for your concerns using feature lines as I have had some magically disappear when doing design work.

[Jasono2009]

That is my point - he shouldn't be using C3D for survey, go back to LDT.

[Jasono2009]

You are reinforcing my point. Who has time to waste on " getting your figure prefix database and description key set up in the most efficient way for you and your surveyors"? AutoCAD is just a tool and not a resource.

[rl_jackson]

With survey figures and editing they can be a real pain in the ash, but one thing to do is to set them all to come in at elevation, this make using the edit tool discussed in the early post more effective (at least for 11&12, not sure about 13).

Personally I leave all my figures 3D and do the surface from them and ususaly do not exploded anything and things seem to work fine. In general a topo that would have taken all day to do with LDT I can have completed in about an hour with almost no flipping or editing of surface triangles.

[Cadguru42]

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@Jasono2009 wrote:
You are reinforcing my point. Who has time to waste on " getting your figure prefix database and description key set up in the most efficient way for you and your surveyors"? AutoCAD is just a tool and not a resource.

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Considering you had to do the exact same thing to get LDD to do it, I fail to see your point.

[owenmull]

I'm not entirely positive Jasono2009 knows what he's talking about here................

[Jasono2009]

Probably too practical for you.

[Cadguru42]

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@Jasono2009 wrote:
Probably too practical for you.

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Seriously, you aren't making any sense to us.  You complain about setting up C3D to work for surveyors, yet you had to do the exact same thing to make LDD work.  You said you could get a survey drawing done faster in LDD than C3D.  Depends upon what type of survey you are doing.  If you have to get a surface and contours, then C3D easily beats LDD hands down.  If you're just doing a boundary survey, then LDD probably would be slightly faster, but not enough to matter cost wise.

Again, what's your point?  LDD is over 4 years old now, which is ancient in technology terms, and is not even supported anymore.  Do you still survey with a compass and a 100' chain?

[owenmull]

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@Jasono2009 wrote:
Probably too practical for you.

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No, not really. Most firms don't do just surveying anymore. Most will need elements of design, and LDT was never *really* geared for that. With C3D you have that ability to process your surveying the same way and better than LDT, plus do all your design work there as well. 

In LDT you had to do the same thing as in C3D to get your linework, which is why I say perhaps you know little of what you speak, but I shall say nothing more. I wish not to start a mud slinging contest, rather point out your argument is somewhat flawed.

Again, it takes a lot of effort, granted, but once you figure out all the Description Keys and FPD stuff, you should be good to go. And as stated above, if 2D poly really floats your boat, it is simple enough to set that up and do it that way, too.