AutoCAD Civil 3D Wishes (Read Only)
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I wish we had PDF's back

18 REPLIES 18
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Message 1 of 19
OMCUSNR
1029 Views, 18 Replies

I wish we had PDF's back

I have never liked using browsers to read with.  I would very much appreciate getting the PDF versions of help, tutorials, and manuals back and kept in future releases.  It allows me to print areas that I want.  I do well highlighting when I read.

 

Thanks

 

Reid

Homebuilt box: I5-2500k, MSI P67A-GD65, 12gig DDR3 1600 ram, ASUS ENGTX460 Video card, WD Velociraptor WD4500HLHX HD, Win 7 64 pro.
18 REPLIES 18
Message 2 of 19
Joe-Bouza
in reply to: OMCUSNR

I concur, Reid.

Thank you

Joseph D. Bouza, P.E. (one of 'THOSE' People)

HP Z210 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E31240 @ 3.30 Hz
12 GB Ram


Note: Its all Resistentialism, so keep calm and carry on

64 Bit Win10 OS
Message 3 of 19
miked
in reply to: OMCUSNR

Me as well.

NVIDIA Quadro 600
Civil3D 2012 64x
Message 4 of 19
andrewpuller3811
in reply to: OMCUSNR

Me too.

 



If a post provides a fix for your issue, click on "Accept as Solution" to help other users find solutions to problems they might have that are similar to yours.

Andrew Puller
Maitland, NSW, Australia
Windows 10 Enterprise 64bit
Intel core i7 11800 @ 2.30 GHz with 32GB Ram
Civil 3d 2021
Message 5 of 19
AllenJessup
in reply to: OMCUSNR

Flexibility has always been one of the main features of AutoCAD software. But we seem to be loosing more and more of that as time goes by. i.e. ribbon only commands.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 6 of 19
neilyj666
in reply to: OMCUSNR

I be glad to get the pdf's back for 2012 release

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 7 of 19
jmatthei
in reply to: OMCUSNR

You DO have access to the pdf help files.  Go to the Civil 3D support page by browsing on the webpage links or going to http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=16766674.

 

Then click on "User's Guide".

 

Voila.  PDF help files.

 

Jeremy

Message 8 of 19
Jeff_M
in reply to: jmatthei

That's fine for the 2011 product, but C3D2012 does not offer the pdf's.

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
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Message 9 of 19
jmatthei
in reply to: Jeff_M

Ah...you're right.  I hadn't noticed because we let people beta-test the program and issue Update 1 before we adopt the new versions.

 

Ah well.  Bow down to worship what your monopoly deigns to grant you, in all of it's benevolence.

 

When will SOMEBODY come out with some serious competition?!  All available site design packages seem air-lifted from the early 1990s, and would seem well-paired with Windows 3.1.  Heck, even SimCity almost seems to have a better and more intuitive terrain and pipe modeler than Civil3D does.

 

Jeremy

Message 10 of 19
hafenbrack
in reply to: OMCUSNR

Message 11 of 19
neilyj666
in reply to: hafenbrack

No pdf's here - all browser based documents = pretty pointless

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 12 of 19
rforen
in reply to: OMCUSNR

me too....they giveth & then they taketh away. Like all the old Profile functionality for EXISTING UTILITIES & LABELING.

 

My  lazyboy does not have internet access.

Every time I make a note in the HTML manuals, it disappears when I wash my screen.

The stick notes for bookmarks are covering my screen!

 

Unfortunately, the worst thing from AutoDesk is the redundentcy in their manuals. the size of the manuals are impressive, the content sucks....I get it after reading it 2 or 3 time....but 8 or 10 times! Folks using this software are not computer illeritates.

 

Civil 3D 2012 ALL documentation, including Customization. WE WANT IT BACK in a format we can PRINT and read in the toilet!

 

Message 13 of 19
jmatthei
in reply to: rforen

Guess what - it's only getting better.

 

Have you looked at the plain-autocad or revit documentation for 2012?  It's an online wiki.

 

As in Wikipedia, but for how to use the program.  10 to 1 C3D goes that way in 2013.  Enjoy!

Message 14 of 19
andrewpuller3811
in reply to: jmatthei

Don't worry, the Civil 3d Developers Guide is already a wiki.

 

I don't know who came up with that bright idea?

 

"Let's not write too much documentation, lets have the users do it for us." "Wow, we'll save heaps"

 

Forum -> Users helping users

 

Developer and User Documentation -> Software creators helping users operate their software.

 

 



If a post provides a fix for your issue, click on "Accept as Solution" to help other users find solutions to problems they might have that are similar to yours.

Andrew Puller
Maitland, NSW, Australia
Windows 10 Enterprise 64bit
Intel core i7 11800 @ 2.30 GHz with 32GB Ram
Civil 3d 2021
Message 15 of 19

"....Civil 3D 2012 ALL documentation, including Customization. WE WANT IT BACK in a format we can PRINT and read in the toilet!..."

 

With the size of some of those manuals, you'll never be stuck for toilet paper again.....!!!!!

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 16 of 19
dshultz
in reply to: OMCUSNR


@OMCUSNR wrote:

I have never liked using browsers to read with.  I would very much appreciate getting the PDF versions of help, tutorials, and manuals back and kept in future releases.  It allows me to print areas that I want.  I do well highlighting when I read.

 

Thanks

 

Reid



I also agree, i like always having a hard copy of the manuals at my desk along with the electronic copies so that when asked a question by someone I can always take the hard copy to them and show them versus's having to waste more time to locate the item on each computer.

Message 17 of 19
perry
in reply to: OMCUSNR

Totally agree.

 

Know it it feels like with this new "help" system?

 

A typical voice mail system where you Press 1 to get this option, then 2 to get another, then.....etc., etc, etc

 

I WANT MY "PRESS ZERO FOR OPERATOR BACK"!!!!

 

I'm in front of a computer screen 9+ hours a day, I want a good old hardcopy (even if I have to print it myself) so I can read it AFK.

 

 

Message 18 of 19
Sinc
in reply to: perry

I've just been frustrated at how often I find myself getting nowhere in the 2012 Help, then I open my old 2011 Help, and find the answer immediately...

Sinc
Message 19 of 19
enderak
in reply to: Sinc

I also hate the new HTML help.

 

However, I have found a way to get the documentation converted over to PDFs. So far I have only done this with the Subassembly Reference, but it looks like it would work with the others as well. Here's what I did:

 

1) Make a copy of the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012\Help directory ***IMPORTANT so you don't mess up the originals***

2) Find the folder with the guide you want to print. (Look in the address bar of your browser) In the case of the Subassembly Reference, the folder is "filesCSH"

3) The files are named GUID-<gibberish>-NUMBER.htm - those numbers tacked onto the end are in order of the documents. To get the files in order, you need to remove the first part, and make the files named just NUMBER.htm. (I padded the 1 and 2-digit numbers with zeros to help with sorting) I did this with a bash shell script, but could also be done more user-friendly with a batch-rename program such as Better File Rename.

4) Once renamed, you can convert these to PDF or easily batch print them in order. Acrobat Professional works well for this as you can batch convert & combine the HTML files into a single PDF in one operation.

5) If you want, you can edit the style/acad_html.css and style/acad_acr.html.css files and adjust the margins to better fit the page. Search for "220px", these are the values you want to change. I found 50px worked well for the Subassembly Reference.

 

I would be happy to convert the other major documentation (User's Guide, Tutorials, etc) and provide these PDFs publicly if I could get the OK from Autodesk somehow.

 

As a side note, some of the help files look a bit more involved. For instance the AutoCAD User's Guide has a different naming format, the names are not all the same length, and the numbers on the end are in hex. I haven't dug into these much, but at first glance they don't look to be quite in order after renaming.

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