Handling Batch Operations and Mutliple Objects in Civil 3D

[ceethreedee.com]

I started writing this, realised it was getting incredibly long and stopped…

taken from http://ceethreedee.com/wishlist/batch-operations-and-multiple-object-handling-in-civil-3d

There is a distinct problem with “scalability” in Civil 3D. As modelling becomes more complex, as inevitably it does, handling of batch operations and multiple objects is hindered significantly by a lack of simple functionality to handle them in the core product. In turn, precious hours are wasted.

See below examples….

This is just a small handful of things you have to do “one at a time” inside Civil 3D. A simple function added would allow you to do multiple operations at once, saving an operator hours of time! But yet, we have to live with it!

(Having 20 plugins and/or 3rd party apps to deal with this is not a solution!)

1. Create Reference using Data shortcuts. You can create multiple data shortcuts, but you can’t “Create Reference” to multiple data shortcuts.

2. The volume dashboard can add multiple surfaces at once. But only remove one at time. Not to mention its lack of sorting or basic organisation functionality like, the ability to change multiple surface styles at once.

3. Synchronizing Data Shortcuts can only be done on mass. Or one at a time. It would be ideal to be able to choose the objects I wish to synchronize in the toolspace to save processing time.

4. Additionally while synchronizing there is no way to specify in the “Object Name Change” box to update the name of all change objects

5. Settings Objects to rebuild automatically. Currently you can only turn them on/off one at a time. Very time consuming. There is a lot of work that can be done here. Particular for more complex models that need to be changed. Rebuilding can take a very long time and you may want to delay it until you have made enough changes.

a. Adding a “Global Rebuild” On/Off Feature. This would allow a quick and dirty solution to changing complex models without the wait time..

b. Adding the ability to turn on/off rebuild for civil 3d objects in the prospector/properties box. And even “save rebuild state” so you can restore certain states for particular modelling operations.

6. In the Profile View Properties – > Profiles Screen although you can select and edit multiple profile styles etc. You cannot add or remove profiles

7. Additionally in the “Create Surface Profile screen” Only one alignment can be given profiles at a time.. Plus profiles that were previously created can’t be removed?

8. Corridor Targets – You can only do them all or one at a time. It would also be particularly useful to “copy/paste” targets between items.

9. “Set Width or Offset Target” and the “Set Elevation Slope Target” – In more complex drawings your alignment list can get quite long. A tick box that filters out “alignments/profiles that aren’t related to this corridor” would be very useful. Not having to press the “add” button everytime and just pressing enter would be also quite useful.

10. Can only add one DEM file to Surfaces at a time.

But you can do it in the point cloud creator?

In my opinion the GUI functionality is inconsistent and broken and needs a major overhaul. Relying on third party developers to solve these problems by creating little apps that perform these operations is also not good enough. Quite often the API is not available for these functions.

I do hope that good apps that reflect “core functionality” should be bought or reproduced and incorporated into the product regularly. Not left to be discovered on an “as needed basis”

[LeafRiders]

This is probably the most thorough explanation of the little things that just don't work properly within some of the Civil 3D interfaces. I appreciate you taking the time to put this together. I always thought I'd make time to do the same, it's just too bad these little things can't be advanced to improve the overall functionality of Civil 3D. These items are "production" based enhancements, and may not be the big "Visual" enhancements we're seeing more focus on, but are more valueable to the hands on users that use the software for design.

[Civil3DReminders_com]

I see these more of Autodesk not being able to see the pain that goes into these annoyances. ceethreedee.com has written a post here on Idea Station, he'll probably complain to his coworker or send an email to the reseller, but for the most part ceethreedee.com has completed the informing of Autodesk of this. We might get a few kudos here in the Idea Station, but probably not enough to make Autodesk think that is worth working on. LeafRiders has given input through the comments, but will probably not do too much after this. Users will have to live through these pains, but since we can't get all of the users who are affected by these pain points to complain we can't really get these fixed since they won't get to the level of support needed to get it worked on. 

Seems like ceethreedee.com and LeafRider would need to come here once a day putting in the same request to start to make Autodesk feel the pain of it's users. Otherwise this is just a minor annoyance that we as users get to feal, but won't get addressed since Autodesk won't feel the same annoyance. 

It's like the stupid External Reference Dialog box and the Relative Save error if an Autosave has occured. It's like a one line code change to make that go away in looking at the database file name instead of the document file name, but since users usually accept having to close out of the dialog box, save the drawing, and then go back in and finish the command Autodesk won't find it high on the list to fix. 

[ceethreedee.com]

Yep, if only we could start a protest to re-focus the design on existing customers and core functionality rather than new customers and fancy addons.

I think the only way to genuinely make them listen is to stop buying the product and encouraging others to do so as well!.  I already considering moving over to dark side (bentley) or maybe back to 12D. 

Then I remembered how horrible it was to do all my drafting in those applications. Civil 3D is still a great product but it could be an amazing product if they keep pushing the core functionality updates.

[Anonymous]

This looks interesting: http://advancedroaddesign.com.au/ Looks like they took Civil 3D and also corrected a lot of the Civil 3D shortcomings.

[ceethreedee.com]

Quite a good package actually, used it regularly in a previous job. Saying
that it had a lot of finicky non-dynamic workflows that werent much better.
Has been awhile though so i should probably go back and investigate.

[peterfunkautodesk]

Great idea, but it is going to need a deeper look by our development team to determine technical scoping, before potentially moving into our short term development backlog.

Regards,

Peter Funk

Sr. Product Manager

Autodesk, Inc.

[Nik-D]

I would like to add my sixpence to the mix if I may. I think this is great and would like to add the following as I am working on a large residential estate at the moment and the setting up of the drawings to start just takes sooooo long.

I typically get a layout from our urban design section with a road layout and a centreline. I have to convert each centreline one at a time to alignments hoping that I have set all the parameters correctly and haven't missed any. Then I have to create surface profiles one at a time. Then I create a start profile, which is a simple line from start to end before I snap it using the intersection wizard and add any vertical curves etc....... One at a time.

What i would love to see added

1. Batch editing of alignments design speeds etc. This could be done by adding additional columns in the toolspace prospector tab where things could be sorted and batch edited

2. Batch editing of alignment styles.

3. Batch editing of labels and adding labels as its not always you that sets up the drawing.

4. Batch creation of profile views

All of these things as said above save hours and hours of time and let people design as opposed to set drawings up.

[TimYarris]

I’m revisiting this post because some of these ideas are things that we’ve either already implemented or are in the process of researching:

1. In current releases of Civil 3D, you can multi-select data shortcuts and drag them into a drawing.
2. Volumes dashboard -- understood
3. Sync data shortcuts selectively -- understood, and under research
4. Apply name change to all -- understood and under research
5. Rebuild automatically -- understood and under research
6. Is the goal here to use the Profile View Properties dialog to delete profiles from the drawing? The way it is today, the dialog lists all profiles that are children of the parent alignment.
7. Is the goal here to create (for example) a surface profile for multiple alignments? That is, I select three alignments and one surface. Profiles of that one surface are then created for all three alignments at once?

8 and 9: Understood. We are researching an overhaul of the existing corridor targeting workflow. This is an overly complicated process that involves a lot of picking and clicking through dialog boxes.

10: Adding multiple DEMs -- Understood

Excellent feedback all around. In the future, would you please enter a single post for each idea? Aggregating so many into a single post makes it challenging to track and report progress on the individual sub items.

[ceethreedee.com]

@TimYarris thanks for revisiting! I guess at the heart of the problem is batch operation is often overlooked throughout the application. I think at the time I was hoping to see a change to key UI elements that allows users to do multiple things at once everywhere, as i think some UI elements are shared though out the application. I wrote this one a long time ago though!! Ill try and keep them separate and more targeted in the future..

[TimYarris]

@ceethreedee.com , thanks for understanding about making future ideas a bit more discrete -- and for your patience with this idea. We're looking into several of these issues (particularly around selective rebuild), so we should have progress to share soon.

[ceethreedee.com]

@TimYarris  and @peterfunkautodesk  big kudos to the team on the new corridor targets workflow. That is the exact sort of development overhaul that will make Civil 3D more scalable.. and address some of the batch/large project complexity issues listed above..

[TimYarris]

Thank you, @ceethreedee.com ! We're doing our very best to make Civil 3D (and its users) more efficient. There's plenty more work to do, but we're doing everything we can.

[ceethreedee.com]

@TimYarris  and @peterfunkautodesk 

Revisiting this one recently. I have created a whole bunch of "Batch Operations" tools as part of my free tools package at website below. One could argue that dynamo fills the role, but I have found that approach generally has a lot of limitations and is little more convoluted for the average user.
https://ceethreedee.com/ceethreedee-tools

Batch Create Volume Surfaces
Batch Create Profiles/Profile Views
Batch Create Alignments

Batch Create Corridors
Find/Replace Civil 3D object names etc..

Thought i would provide for interest sake.. 

[TimYarris]

Thanks for sharing, @ceethreedee.com . You're right that Dynamo would be a great solution for a lot of these issues; some of the limitations would hopefully be mitigated by the updates to Dynamo in the Civil 3D 2025.1 Update. (>1100 new nodes for Civil 3D and AutoCAD)

But we're still doing our best to pick away at issues that affect productivity in the core product. I really appreciate you keeping these on our radar.

[ceethreedee.com]

@TimYarris .. interesting.. might be time for me to revisit dynamo again.. 1100 new nodes you say.

Might be just me used to having more freedom as a programmer, but my previous experience was always hitting a wall with functionality. Thanks for letting us know about changes in 2025.