AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

There was a change in how the materials are assigned to pipes in 2012. Why this was not documented anywhere (that I could find anyway), I have no idea. When you bring a pre-2012 drawing into 2012, it seems to get confused between what we used to be able to do and the new, list based, method of setting the material. I still need to go through and document what I've discovered, both for other's sake and to make sure I'm not seeing something I shouldn't be. But I will post my findings in more detail as soon as I can.

In short, edit the part in part builder, update the part lists, and set the material as an optional property from a drop down list instead of typing it in. If you must type it in, remove the material property from the part in partbuilder.

Note to Autodesk: why don't these changes get documented for us to know what has happened???? If it was, where?

[#2]

Also one thing to remember is that if you try to save changes to part builder you must open Civil 3D as administrator.  Right click on the icon for Civil 3d and then Run as Administrator.  One day I got really frustrated until I remembered that.  I fault MS for that.  Also remember that if you have mapped drives and you are not administrator that when you run civil 3d as administrator all your mapped drives are disconnected (not sure who to blame on that but I will stick with MS). 

As for the cursor issue, I had that problem plus also when I was zoomed in and clicked on a xline the line would jump to the side.  It turned out to be the hardware acceleration that was causing that issue and that was on at the time my brand spanking new Quadro FX4800 (when I thought I was going to be waay ahead of the curve). 

As for the DG, there are good folks on here that have seen and know the issues and sometimes they don't get a chance to respond right a way.  I know that time is money but give some of the guys and gals a chance. Jeff, Sinc, Matt, Brian, Joe, Bill, Laurie, etc. are just a few of the folks that pop in and offer excellent advise.  I know they have helped me or helped others that allow me to find a solution to my problems.  Also Autodesk folks like Seth and Almas typically are the ones who respond to subscription cases for me as well as contribute to these forums and I find them responsive to my submittals even when it is marked non critical in a timely fashion and are typically happy with the response even though the problem is 99% my issue and not the software.   

As for crashing, I do it all the time even though it is not a resource issue.  It is stupid mundane stuff like today I was editting an alignment name and it crashed on me.  Not thrilled and audit did not find any issues.  It is not the first time and I know it won't be the last time so I save versions of my files after doing something major.  For example, I have a sewer force main and service connections to the force main.  I assign a feature line to the force main, assign verticies, snap to the surface and incrementally drop for my cover.  I hit save as and label the filename xxxx.VER1.xxx.xxx.  I then go to the service connection 1 and do the same thing, convert to feature line, assign vertices, etc then Save As xxxx.VER2.xxx.xxx and so forth.  After doing that about three or four times, I run audit and keep going.  When I do that, I cut down on my crashing and I also have a place to go back to that if I start having an issue or I don't like something I don't have to redo the things I like.  That is just me and my workarounds.  I hope this helps. 

[#3]

I know this has been said before but I'll say it again.

Adesk really needs to stop the every year upgrade process. All it does is create more problems. Here we are almost 6 mths into the release cycle with no fix. Just goes to show that adsk cannot handle the cycle they created and need to go back to the good'ole days of every couple of years instead. I found bugs then to but I think the whole process has just gotten overrun.

Just my opinion 

[#4]

Thanks everyone.  I was feeling pretty alone before.  I just noticed that the video card which had been certified for 2011 is no longer certified for 2012.  I just ordered a new NVidia Quadro 4000.  I never had problems with Quadro's before so I will try it and let you know how I do.  I will also try the part builder solution for the pipe materials.  Thank you all so much for your help.

[#5]

Someone may correct me but just because it may not be certified does not necessarily mean that your existing card should not work correctly.  I have found that my Quadro works better each time there is a new driver for it and sometimes that driver is not certified before the driver is released (in other words the driver is too new and autodesk hasn't had a chance to test it yet).  You may have mentioned before but I would double check the driver for your existing card and see if you have the latest and greatest or if you had done that and started experiencing issues then you should be able to go back to an older release of the driver that did work for you.  Just some other ideas to try.  Good luck and let us know if that solve your problem, if not the DG and Autodesk (I am 90% sure) will be watching this thread closely.

[#6]

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darkman257 wrote:

Also one thing to remember is that if you try to save changes to part builder you must open Civil 3D as administrator.  Right click on the icon for Civil 3d and then Run as Administrator.  One day I got really frustrated until I remembered that.  I fault MS for that.

The way I understand it, this is actually an Autodesk problem.  It's related to the way MS intended the C:\ProgramData directory to be used.

As I understand Microsoft's Best Practices, programs are not supposed to put any user-configurable information in C:\ProgramData.  That's why C:\ProgramData is hidden, unless you specifically find the option to show hidden files.  Microsoft's plan is that users should NEVER need to browse in that directory.  And as part of the increased security we got starting with Vista, Windows also restricts general user access to anything in this folder.  You can remove this additional restriction by disabling UAC, but I strongly recommend against that.  UAC is the only significant security improvement MS has made to Windows in over 15 years, so it's a shame to disable it.

The problem you run into, of course, is that Civil 3D stores your Parts Catalog in C:\ProgramData.  The best solution for this problem is to change the default permissions so that any user can edit certain directories in C:\ProgramData.  It's not a great idea to simply change C:\ProgramData itself, but instead, be a bit more selective, and only change permissions on what you need to change.

In order to fix both the Pipes Catalog and the Certified Hardware XML update, you need to jump in and change "C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\[version]\[localization code]".  The localization code varies depending on your installation language; in the default American English version of C3D, it's "enu".  So for the English version of C3D 2011, you would go to :

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2011\enu

Right-click on that directory and select Properties, then in the Security tab, enable "Full Control" for all users on your machine.  (Or if you don't want to enable it for all users, enable it for your user.)  After you do that, you shouldn't have to "Run as Administrator".

You may also want to do this for "C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Geospatial Coordinate Systems", so you can create custom Coordinate Systems (if you ever do that).

The real fix for this stuff is for Autodesk to move user-configurable data out of C:\ProgramData and into the Public Documents folder.

[#7]

We are having the not being able to move or erase in 2012 problem.  Did Autodesk ever come up with a fix?

I had suggested export back to 2010 and open with 2011 to the drafter having the problem.  Don't know if it solved problem.  She may have exploded back to 2004 LDD.

Now how do I convince staff and boss to move off of LDD 2004 when basic LT level functions don't work in 3d?

Drafter doesn't want to move from 4G XP Pro computer to new 20 G Windows 7 computer because new computer runs slower than old computer for plotting.

[#8]

Not really sure what exactly you might be experiencing, but I've definitely not been impressed with the quality control between versions.  We already couldn't go back a version, but we're now reaching the point where there are so many bugs (such as Expressions and Label Styles that don't upgrade correctly) that we can't even go forward a version without breaking so many things that it's ridiculous.

And I've recently been informed that Autodesk's new policy is that, if you are on subscription, you MUST upgrade to the latest version within 90 days of its release.  That means that anybody who is on subscription but NOT on C3D 2012 as of July 2011 is in violation of their subscription agreement, and can face lawsuits and fines by Autodesk.

Is this really what we want?  Are we happy with this?  DOES ANYBODY CARE?

[#9]

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Sinc wrote:

Is this really what we want?  Are we happy with this?  DOES ANYBODY CARE?

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I care. I'm sure others care. I'm even sure that people that people at Autodesk care. Just not the ones that are making the decisions.

It sound like an insane policy to me. Why would they care? Are they going to arrange my work load so I have time to due the upgrades during that time? I still haven't deployed 2012 because we haven't gotten any "slow" period and I've been waiting on computer upgrades. That's all things that are beyond my control.

Because of things like this and budget problems I'm really thinking of just sticking with 2011 and forgetting ever upgrading.

Allen

[#10]

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Sinc wrote:

you MUST upgrade to the latest version within 90 days of its release.  That means that anybody who is on subscription but NOT on C3D 2012 as of July 2011 is in violation of their subscription agreement, and can face lawsuits and fines by Autodesk.

Boy, that makes me feel good about the 3-year renewal they talked me into! Maybe it is time to make a statement even if it means switching to an inferior product. Problem is that Autodesk would probably just buy that one too.