You say my suggestion in unworkable. In the absence of your wish coming true, what are you doing? Do you prefer the Chappel solution? To my mind they take about the same to set up and are both dynamic. My solution has the advantage of giving a nice report broken down by areas.
Your wish involves the volumes dashboard. Since I'm still working in 2011 I haven't had a chance to see that yet, so I can't really understand or comment on the wish. I'll check it out when I get a chance.
As for pasting and managing surfaces: pasting is quick, and managing is non-existant. Drawing boundaries does take time. What does managing surfaces mean?
Since I'm the only one in the office who does earthworks I presume hours budgeted on new projects is based on how long I took on the previous one. I do my best to set things up sensibly so that if I don't work on a project for a while and then have to go back two years later I'll understand what was done and where I left off; or so that I can hand over to a coworker if one was asked to get into it. I'm willing to look at new ideas, and I support your wish if it's going to save me time. But I am interested in your current workflow, since you obviously feel it is better than mine.
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Win 7 Pro, 32 bit; Intel Core i5 @ 2.80GHz; 4GB RAM—Civil 3D 2008 & 2011
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Credit where credit is due! Give kudos or accept as solution whenever you can.
