new user - creating a surface issues

[arpaisley]

I am a brand-new user trying to use Civil 3D 2011 to create a TIN from contour lines in an existing .dwg file. I watched the tutorial video on creating a surface, and it says that the first thing I need to do is create a surface definition. The problem is that I can't find the tools that they use in the videos.

In the video, under the "Home" tab in the Ribbon there are the following groups:

Palettes

Create Ground Data

Create Design

Profile & Section Views

Draw

Modify

Layers

Clipboard

The video shows them selecting Surfaces in the Create Ground Data group and then selecting Create Surface.

In the actual program under the same tab, I see these groups:

Draw

Modify

Layers

Annotation

Block

Properties

Utilities

Clipboard

In addition, in the program, there is a menu to select between the Workspaces 2D drafting & annotation, 3D Basics, 3D Modeling and AutoCAD classic, which changes the ribbon, but none of them are the same as the video.  When I attempt to customize the workspaces, I also don't see the create surface data group or the create surface command.

There are a lot of other differences between the menus and groups between the video and program as well.

I tried to go a different route and use the "CreateSurface" command that I found in the help menu, but it says that the command is unknown.

Any help would be appreciated.

[mathewkol · Accepted solution]

You very likely launched the incorrect program.  Close it down and look for "AutoCAD CIvil 3D 2011 Metric" (or something like that).  DO NOT use the "Civil 3D 2011 as AutoCAD" icon.  And try again.

[dgordon]

At first glance, it would seem that you may have click the wrong icon to start C3D. Like maybe you clicked autocad as C3D. Which would only load vanilla autocad. This would be consistent with the menus your seeing. Try to locate the icon that is Civil 3D only. Dan