Drawing Lines automatically by Point NAME range.

[Anonymous]

Now that all of our Surveyors are using Civil 3D exclusively we have been allowing our Field crew to use Point Names in Survey Pro software.  Point names seems to work well for complex jobs such as Building/Construction and As-built jobs cause we can have calculated a point "C100", an as-staked point "AS100", then as-built point "AB100". This allows use to easily compair the tolerances of the the point from it's calculated (design) position vs its as-staked then as-built position.

The only problem we have is that we can't automatically draw lines by point name range as you can by point number range such as AB100-AB108, AB110. I know you can draw lines by point name but each point must be typed individually such as  AB100 <enter>, AB101 <enter> which is too time consuming its just faster to manually draw the line graphically

Surely this can be added to Civil 3D without having to purchase a third party solution...   

Also it would be great if Autodesk would just drop the entire concept of having point numbers and point names separate.  Why not just have "Name" which can either be a number or name?  I hate the fact Civil 3D assigns a point number such a 6592298 when the point was entered as a point name AB200, for example.  Trimble and Survey Pro does an excelent job using point names as they can be either numbers, alpha names  alpha-numeric names.

[tcorey]

Regarding removing the separation between point number and point name, it would really tick off a lot of users if Autodesk did this. Having both covers most companies' preferences.

As a workaround to your main issues, to draw line by name range, if the numbers are also in the same sequences as the names, you can create a point group of a certain name* (like Point name = AS*), isolate that point group on the screen, create a point group by Selection Set on Screen, copy to clipboard the resultant point number list, draw line by point number range, paste the list to the command prompt. It's not as nice as if there was an actual function for it, but it saves you typing every single point name.

[Anonymous]

Tim,

I'm open to discuss reasons why there should be a separation between point numbers and point name. Just to make it very clear a point number such as 2553 can be used as a name, in Civil 3D if you can enter number into the point name field it will automatically assign the point number you entered in the point name field, so the point name and number is the same. This is to ensure there is not a point number with a conflicting point name. Which leads me to a question why bother separating the names and numbers into separate items. Many survey and engineering software simply use "Point ID" which can be numeric, alphabetical or alpha-numeric.  Either way Civil 3D won't allow for a point named "2553" to exist with a difference point number of 2553.

I don't see the reason for keeping them separate. I have never heard any complaints from Survey Pro data collection and Trimble software users that only have a single point names field.  

[odoshi]

I added it to Civil Express Tools.

It requires that ranges start with the same letters. bldg1-bldg4,pad1-pad4, etc.