Would data shortcuts help me with this?

[Anonymous]

Our office has finally pushed everyone to start using C3D 2011. Since the old school approach has been carreid along, basically we keep everything in 1 drawing (site layout, grading, utilities, etc) and each user would keep track of the layers they modified, then block to the person controlling the main drawing. I know, what a mess.

Now that we are using the pipes and grading features in C3D, it is making it a real mess. Our thought was to have a base drawing that contains the layout and some other minor items, then create separate drawings for grading, storm, sanitary, etc. I know some firms do it this way, but figured there has to be a cleaner, maybe easier way. I do not really understand data shortcuts, have to read a lot more but would it help in our situation?

For example, say 2 people want to create pipe networks, 1 for storm, the other for sanitary. What would be the most efficient approach? And then what drawing do you use to have all your sheets setup to plot?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[BrianHailey]

Check out the Best Practices Guide. It describes one method of dealing with the data. I haven't read it in a while but if I recall correctly, it advises to put each object in it's own drawing. If you have a couple people working on the project, I wouldn't do it this way. I would place all the objects in one drawing that make sense (for example, all the alignments and profiles in one drawing that would be necessary to create your corridor).

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Ditto on the Best Practices guide.  You can get away with having everything in one drawing if the project is small but if there a chance that it will expand or you wish to share the work load as you asked, then understanding the drawing heirarchy described in the Manual will be beneficial.  Look for 'Project Management - Organizing Your Data'.  There is a diagram that illustrates this.

It adds extra steps that can be shortcut but if you get in the habit of doing this you'll manage the data sets that you are working with and your drawings will be much smaller.  The idea basically is this:  Keep your 2D Xref's as seperate drawings.  Keep your C3D drawings simple, as in one drawing for the EG surface, one drawing for the FG surface, one drawing for Utils or even seperate pipenetworks and use DATA SHORTCUTS.

Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

I was messing with it after my post and I had a base file with the layout and existing surface. Then I created 2 new drawings, one for storm, the other for sanitary. I was able to data shortcut the surface to both pipe drawings and use it for my pipe networks. So far so good.

Then I did a data shortcut from 1 pipe dwg to another. It seemed cool, but what I found out it that it does not hold the same style that is set in the main drawing. Maybe there is a way around that. The other issue is I read when the main drawing gets updated and you save the dwg, the storm dwg for example should have something that shows it needs to be synched. Did not see it.

I will read the Best Practices, I am sure my questions will be answered in there.

Thanks again.

[neilyj666]

Data shortcuts definitely the way to go - but be careful with grading objects - when they work they are great but when they go wrong, they go very wrong and can (will) crash C3D) in a spectacular fashion.

To reduce the chances of problems, ensure that you make use of sites for the grading objects

[Anonymous]

Yeah...grading objects are risky.  I use them to create the breaklines or featurelines needed to create models.  Daylighting, mostly.  I just won't trust them further than that.  I don't understand why ADesk felt the need to create an entity or 'grading object' rather than a procedure to produce breaklines or featurelines.  I suppose if a release comes where it's stable I'd be more willing to use them.

As for your styles being different in the drawing you brought your data referenced pipe network into, you should be able to select similar and change they styles in a properties dialogue box.  Same with your structure styles.  Also, you can merge networks in 2011.

[Anonymous]

Got it, thanks.

I generally use feature lines to create by grading for the most part, but will be careful if we decide to go further.

I ended up messing with it some more and got the notification when I saved the 1 drawing that I had to sync my shortcuts. I think this is going to work out perfectly.

I guess the last item I am not sure how to handle is plotting the entire set of drawings. Do you make a separate drawing with all the layouts and data shortcut/xref all teh "design" drawings into it in order to plot? I have to read the chapter about this in the Best Practices guide

[neilyj666]

Use the Sheet Set Manager - but it takes a bit of setting up to work as you want.

I believe best practice is to xref the required data into the production drawing layou and label via the xref - I'm no expert and just finding my way through this process at present

[Anonymous]

Thanks neilyj, will mess around with that next.

[neilyj666]

Try this thread for Sheet Set Manager

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/Setting-up-template-for-use-with-Sheet-Set-Manager/m-...

[Anonymous]

Thanks!