AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Hi guys,

My company has just upgraded from stone age AutoCAD to Civil3d 2013 and I've been tasked with figuring out the program.

What I am trying to do is realign my drawing so a line I drew is horizontal to the page. For example, I have a line at a 45 degree angle and I want to rotate my viewport so that line is now at a 0 degree angle. Is there a simple way to do this?

A follw up: I have my point labels set to be a 45 degree angle, will they be at a 45 degree angle when I realign the drawing or will they "rotate" along with the drawing?

Thanks a lot.

[#2]

You can rotate the UCS by 45° around the Z axis, then _UCS => _VIEW

But.. what for rotating the view, sir?

When you work with maps, the north should stay naturally as is. 

[#3]

Working with maps; yes!

Working with plans; not always

[#4]

If you are going to use a view rotation, I suggest you have it the same in MS. You being new to civil3d you would be unaware of the can of worms that has potentially been open

however you get your view rotated in the style definition you can set the labels to "View"

[#5]

I always alway told to draw in model space with it as the world co-ordinate system.

To have your layout sheets at the different angle I

1. Draw a horizontal line in paperspace above the viewport or trace over a line on the angle you want the x axis to be

2. use the chspace command to move the line to model space

3. type UCS and e for selecting an entity.

4. select the line. depending on what end deteremines if y is up or down page

5. type Plan at the command line and then current.

6. Finally change the ucs back to world by typing ucs then world.

Now withyour civil3d annotation objects styles set to match view and they will be drawn horizontally.

If you want to work in model space to annotate the drawing you will have to save the view in the viewport and go to model space and apply the view

[#6 · Accepted solution]

This is a routine to rotate the view.

the default is two-point method (pick left point, then right point of line to make horizontal).

second option is Angle to rotate by specified angle input.

third option is World to rotate view back to World (WCS).

Oh, for each rotation, the UCS will set to View - that's what I prefer...it would be a simple change to keep UCS at World orientation if you want.

For your follow up question, I'd go with Joe's advice.  The styles will control.

[#7]

My advise is to stay away from a UCS. There is a great potential that you can introduce errors in your work if you forget to change back to the WCS when using Civil 3D commands. I recommend using DView with the Twist option. Dview will rotate the view without affecting the coordinate system.

While I prefer the old Dview command there is the MVSetup command which will allow you to do the same thing.

Allen

[#8]

This one will leave the UCS at World if you don't want to mess with it...

essentially, I am using DView Twist in the routine, but making it a lot simpler for the user input.

[#9]

dview is defiantly the way to go, I have gotten to many drawing that the usc was rotated and totally messed up the coordinate system. My rule of thumb is, keep it simple. As far as text and things aligning correctly with the rotation this is controlled in the styles by setting the orientation to view.

[#10]

Thanks for all the help guys.

As to the reason I'm rotating the drawing, I mainly draw topo surveys so I usually need to align the property line with the page, north doesn't really matter for me.

So this LISP routine seems pretty cool....how do I load it? I've been Googling around fora while but I can't find anything for Civil 3d 2013. Man I really wish my company had upgraded before I got hired, this whole process is pretty frusterating.