C3D 2017 - Bugs and Issues

[Cadguru42]

Another year, another annoying amount of bugs and issues not fixed in Civil 3D. We couldn't deploy 2016 due to these issues and once again 2017 will not be deployed. 

1. Confirmation pending: Curves not displaying correctly with multiple viewports turned on. See http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/c3d-2016-curves-incorrectly-displayed-with-mu... for original issue. This is a complete deal killer for us. Basic viewing of a CAD model should not be displaying lines incorrectly. This one bug alone will keep us from using 2017. 

2. Confirmation pending: Cogo points not scaling with status bar scale change. http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/2017-cogo-point-labels-not-updating-to-drawin... This also happened in 2016 and is one of the reasons we never deployed 2016.

3. Confirmation pending: When STARTUP=2 is selected, if a drawing is selected from the Recents/Pinned list a fatal error for "RegisterToday.dll" happens. This affects core AutoCAD.

4. Confirmation pending: Command line shrinks when switching drawing to Start tab and/or back. This started with 2015 and still hasn't been fixed. It was a confirmed bug with 2015 and 2016. When anything is docked to the sides and you've switched to or from the Start tab, the command line will shrink. It seems to be scale based on viewport size. When the Start tab is opened the docked windows are gone and so is the command line, but when a drawing is opened and the docked windows reappear then the command line rescales itself. Very annoying. See https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017/the-incredible-shrinking-floating-co... for more info. 

5. Confirmation pending: When the Analyze tab is selected, the ribbon grows vertically and doesn't shrink back until C3D is closed and reopened. It's not much, but it is annoying. http://autode.sk/1YCSlnF is a screencast showing it.

6. Issue: Persistant Start Tab behaves the same as in 2016. Always having the Start Tab open is annoying and wastes space. When a new tab is created the Start Tab should show up like in 2015. Many people asked for this behavior to revert back to the way 2015 handled it, but Autodesk doesn't seem to care. 

7. Confirmation pending: As noticed first by @neilyj666, the Cut Plane Icon and Cut Plane Text toggles in the status bar do not remember their settings when C3D is closed, regardless of the CUI settings. This started with 2016 and seems to still be happening in 2017. 

When I find more I'll post, but due to the curves not displaying correctly bug that will pretty much kill our deployment of 2017. 

[C3D-Nash]

For you guys experiencing the points not scaling, see if you are experiencing the same behavior with pipe network labels. I reported this last year with pipe networks as well as points. I too have experienced random patterns of this issue, and I have yet to pinpoint it. I thought maybe it was based on using a template originally created in a previous version, but it seems you guys may have ruled that out.

[Anonymous]

Reading through the comments both from the poster and answers by "experts" I sincerely believe there is an age-gap in expectations of the softare. Without (hopefully) offending anyone I can draw the conclusion that people whos profile pic implies them being older than say 45-50 years generally don't seem to bother with said issues and found bugs. Myself (I'm 28) and others I know obivously have completely different expectations of a software released in 2016 from one of the worlds largest developer. After joing my first big firm and being assigned to do CAD work was honestly a depressing experience as it felt like borrowing my dad's old computer and working with his old 90's software.

The fact that bugs and workflow-disabilites remain from version to version is´astounding for me, as I'm playing PC-games that handle graphics 100 times faster than Autocad. For new releases of modern software it s not uncommon for entire "engine"-overhauls every few years with new releases, fixing most "workflow"-related issues.  

Dropbox allows me to drag'n drop files from one place to another in windows without even starting up a program (for free). In Civil3d you need a good hour of training to understand the shortcut-functionality.

Microsoft words allows me to write thousands of pages of text, images and data in a document without ever crashing. Our company policies mandates that we purge and audit our files from time to time because they get corrupted otherwise. I mean come on!

[tcorey]

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@Anonymous wrote:

... Without (hopefully) offending anyone I can draw the conclusion that people whos profile pic implies them being older than say 45-50 years generally don't seem to bother with said issues and found bugs.

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No offense taken.

We've all been young and hot-collared. I remember railing about problems with DCA software and thinking bugs were the end of the world. Then I aged, grew wiser and mellower. Now I note bugs, report them here if I don't see someone else has, and go on with my work.

If there had been an internet thirty years ago, I would have been (virtually) screaming at the top of my lungs about how these idiots at Autodesk can't do anything right, the sky is falling, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Now I accept imperfection, not because I like it, but because it is a fact of life. Where I can, I work to help improve the situation, but I don't grind my teeth over it (yes, I still have my teeth.)

Having worked with Autodesk's nineties (and eighties) software, this 2016 stuff is far far far beyond that. Being relatively new at using Autodesk, you have limited perspective on how far things have come. 

I guess when you get to a certain age, you realize there are things that are worth raising your blood pressure over and there are things that you work around. Think global warming, slavery in the Asian seafood industry, abuses in Scientology. As a young person, you want to stop these injustices RIGHT NOW. As an older person, you realize change takes time, often lots of it.

Keep posting!

Best regards,

Tim

[C3D-Nash]

I couldn't have said it better myself Tim. I'm 32, been using Autodesk products for about 12 years now, and I also have used a few Bentley products throughout that time. Trust me, the other companies in this industry have their share of problems as well. My realization came pretty close to about 10 years in that no matter how hard you kick and scream it doesn't help the situation. The best thing you can do is help become part of the solution by submitting your bugs and crashes when they happen, get involved with the beta programs, meet the development team and provide constructive feedback, and even provide some constructive criticism when warranted (there is a fine line you can cross with the criticism if you aren't careful). I've spent countless hours/days of uncompensated time writing workflow outlines for drainage design for the development team's use, joining online demo and feedback sessions, teaching AU classes, attending Gunslinger events, beta testing pre-release software, submitting defects and ideas, and providing support feedback on forums. I see the same from those "old" guys that are being referred to. We don't do it for fame or money, we just do it because we care about the software we use everyday, and we want to see both the software and its users get better.

Civil 3D has a lot of problems, and it will never be the perfect software. But the reality at the end of the day is that it's best software available in the Civil Engineering industry, even with its problems. It does far more things than the examples of Dropbox and Microsoft Word. For comparison you've covered maybe the Xref and Dref portion of the software (compared to Dropbox) and the tools in the Annotation tab of the Ribbon (compared to Word). That's about 5% of the software or less. And it does all these things with a market share (paying customers) of what I am guessing to be less than 10% of what those sofware packages have.

My recommendation for those who get frustrated with bugs and want new features... Get involved. Join the Civil 3D and Infraworks beta programs, and participate in the Autodesk Labs programs that pertain to your industry. And if you do join the programs, spend some time testing and submitting defects. I and the Expert Elites listed in these forums can help you get connected to these programs if needed. Also, ask others to join in the cause by submitting ideas to the Idea Station and upvoting the ideas that matter most to your workflows. The Autodesk guys work in a big corporate environment, and there's no better way to prove to decision makers and shareholders that they need to resources to get things done by showing them strength in numbers with customer involvement.

[dgorsman]

To cover the "screaming fast new games" there's a few things that perhaps aren't thought about.  Those games don't have to consider supporting legacy content so they can implement new core software much more easily.  How happy would the Civil3D community be if they got a brand new, screaming fast, spanking new piece of software... which can't use any of their existing content?  Or cannot be used as AutoCAD?  Unlike games which may (but usually don't) have some character/mod import procedures there is a huge amount of legacy and related data to consider in Civil3D.

The games are also extremely focused on one single aspect; comparatively Civil3D has to cover a huge variety of tasks and procedures.  That extreme focus means they can incorporate any number of "cheats" like hard-coding data or loading 3D objects into video RAM.

[C3D-Nash]

"How happy would the Civil3D community be if they got a brand new, screaming fast, spanking new piece of software... which can't use any of their existing content?"
...
INFRAWORKS!
...
And we're not that happy about it! Why? Because it can't do most of the things we do today in Civil 3D. It can do somethings well, and one day it will probably do many of things Civil 3D does much better / more efficiently. But in the meantime, we have to keep up and improve our legacy tool that makes us money. Google doesn't make driverless cars without keeping up with the ad revenue from Google Ads, Facebook doesn't do Oculus Rift development without keeping up it's ad platform to support the new tech... tons of examples of this in the tech industry. The biggest difference is that our software is far more complex and has far fewer people interested in buying it.

[C3D-Nash]

I just realized we have digressed from the original intent of this forum topic, so I feel the need to pull it back on track.

#10

Some hatch pattern verticies will not remove. One of our users showed me this issue today. 2 out of about 40 he tried while looking over his shoulder exhibited this. We tested the same file in 2016 and the verticies removed as expected. We here able to pick the vertex up, move it to a different location, and then delete. I have not found a pattern to the problem yet; it's seemingly random. If anyone else runs into this please verify here.

#11

The Annotate - Leaders and Annotate - Tables in the C3D.cui file do not have the full panel with the styles on them. These panels in the ACAD.cui partial customization file do have the full content and can be used to overwrite the default panels, but as with doing anything in the CUI menu it's quite difficult and tedious to get it just right.

[C3D-Nash]

#12
When using a Line and Curve label style with tags on by default, the line numbers will not be sequential. This is a known issue that I recall started in 2015. There is a workaround if encountered... see link below.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-civil-3d/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticl...

[C3D-Nash]

I just located my Screencast that showed the Civil 3D annotation scaling issue for Pipe Networks. It's located at the link below for those interested. Notice that when I change the drawing scale from the drawing settings the pipe network labels rescale correctly, but the annotation scale in the Status Bar changes to an Xref scale... it's very odd.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/15409022-71be-415b-b2e4-5f848ef867fa

[smurrin]

I have learned not to deploy the a new version until the first service pack is out. By then they usually fix at least some of the main issues that are present when first released. Now that is of course no excuse to have the same issues carry over from version to version, but most of the time new issues (LIKE WE NEED THEM LOL) seem to get fixed in the 1st service pack. Kinda like the profile issue that was going on in ver. 2016 with the manholes. But what we all need to remember is that minor issues to some might be major issues to others depending on how these companies prepare their plans for their clients. That's my 2 cents not that it's worth even that much 

[InfraChic]

Yep I did that and got the same thing. Opened a file in 2017 saved it then opened it in 2016 and everything went Proxy.

[C3D-Nash]

#13

When running quick elevation editor on a feature line, the round glyph for elevation points does not display properly. If you click in the area where it should be the glyphs will begin displaying properly thereafter until you add another elevation point. After adding a new elevation point the glyphs once again do not display in quick elevation editor.

http://autode.sk/1Uk71Jj

[BrianHailey]

#14 Data loss when data referencing pressure pipes that are vertically edited:  When a pressure pipe has a vertical curve or is set to follow a surface and then data referenced into another drawing, the curve/follow surface does not come through in the data reference, the pipe comes through as a straight pipe. This has been this way since the very first version of Civil 3D that allowed for data referencing pressure networks.

[BrianHailey]

#15 Edit in Storm and Sanitary Sewer fails if catchments have TR-55 ToC set: When you have a catchment attached to a pipe network structure with a ToC set to TR-55, the command Edit in Storm and Sanitary Analysis does not work. If you change the ToC to User Defined, it works fine.

This was an issue in 2016 that I reported and it's still an issue in 2017.

[BrianHailey]

#16 Rotating fittings with grips produces unexpected results: When rotating a fitting using grips, the attached pipes do not adjust to the new location of the connection points on the fitting. If you then grip edit the fitting to a new location (even a miniscule movement), the pipes update to the connection points.

[BrianHailey]

#17 Grip editing pressure pipes in profile views produces unexpected results: If an alignment is created from a pressure network in the opposite direction the pressure network was originally created, and the pressure pipe is made to follow the surface, editing a grip edits the adjacent grip and not the selected grip.

[BrianHailey]

#18 Oddities when editing a pressure network in profile: Create a pressure network with fittings at the ends. Create an alignment that starts and ends at the fittings but goes in the opposite direction the original pressure network was drawn. Break the last pipe in the profile view (first pipe drawn in the drawing) and then delete the first half of it out of the profile view (not the end piece but the next to the end piece). When done, the alignment wigs out (yes, that's a technical term). Undo, delete the fitting at the end, repeat, no wigging out.

[BrianHailey]

#19 Unable to change reference surface for pressure network: Once a reference surface has been set (or not set) for a pressure network part, changing the reference surface does nothing other than listing the new surface as the reference surface. The original reference surface will still be referenced by the part even though the new surface is listed.

[BrianHailey]

#20 Pressure Pipe Follow Surface fails for horizontally curved pipes: If you have a pressure pipe with a horizontal curve and then you run the command to have it follow the surface, it fails. The elevations of the pipe are calculated as if the pipe is straight and not curved.

[autoMick]

It's labelled as 2017.

i.e. do not use until 2017. 

It's a simple rule really.

Apart from the age thing, it seems that new users of Civil3d (including myself when I first started) will rave about how this bug or that is a problem and 'why do we need a workaround?', etc. etc.

I'm just glad there are workarounds because the prospect of having to ditch civil3d and use some other pox ridden alternative is too much for me to contemplate.

Keep reporting the bugs and we will all be more informed and better for it

Cheers

- Mick