California Surveyors Forums

I am running a poll to see if there is anyone interested in a full day class on Autocivil 3D. If there is enough interest, we might be able to get AUTODESK to provide the instructor if CLSA were to organize the seminar (across the state). Is there any interest? I am willing to work on this.

I am curious what would be covered in the class. It seems like a day is not a whole lot of time to learn civil3d? Seems to me like the best thing to do would take advantage of a local college and take a 1-2 semester class? This would support local programs and would be way more beneficial that a one time class? I would think that anything that could be learned in a one day class could be learned from any working CAD technician?

That being said if there was a specific more advanced topic-some of the higher functionality that is not usually utilized-or a product provided such as quality lisp routines, then I could see the class a great benefit.

Many of us are very busy and don't have the time or ability to commit to a class and some of us don't employ a working CAD technician, thus the nature of the inquiry. I am not interested necessarily in supporting any local programs, I am interested in understanding the basics of Civil 3D.

Thanks for your reply.

Point taken. Just thinking that for one night a week a lot can be learned from a class. And if you want to learn then some time has to be put in.They had some really good classes up in Santa Rosa taught by a Mr. Coleman I believe. He stopped doing them and someone that was not as good stepped in. Not even sure if they offer the classes anymore. The class was in high demand from student to professional, and it focused on actual work product for surveyors taught by a working professional.

I am not trying to diminish the value of your proposal, just giving some other options. Might be tough to find a good class around SoCal anyway.

Thanks my friend. I use so many programs including ESRI and it is so hard staying abreast of the latest versions. A lot of folks have mentioned this and it is for this reason a lot are not upgrading. When I deal with other firms I constantly have to save to different versions and them some of the processing capabilities are lost.

I took a half day seminar once and it was very helpful.

Just an idea...

Has anyone taken the CADMasters course in Civil 3D for Surveyors? It's a two day rather than one, but it might fit the bill.

I've sent a couple of people to the CADMasters class. It is not for Civil3D beginners though. You have to have taken their AutoCAD level I and level II classes first.

We just did our own class here in Humboldt County for Department of Public Works Engineering and Survey on Automated Mapping using Civil 3D. We used the CAD lab at College of the Redwoods and in two 5 hour sessions we covered 10 topics including working with point files and codes, setting up the Civil3D environment, automated mapping, building surfaces, alignments, manipulating the TINN and drawing property lines and right of way lines. It was a very intense class and I could see it taking several days to do a complete Civil3D overview. One of my references was the book from SDC Publications AutoCAD Civil 3D for Surveyors. I recommend this book to anyone who cannot make it to a formal class.

CADMasters up in the bay area set me straight on C3D back in 2006. It was a two day intensive course focused on the engineering components of the program at the time. My guess is that a survey intensive course could take one day, perhaps with an optional second day focusing on the parceling capabilities of the program as well.

My biggest tool in learning C3D has been youtube. That said, I was thinking about putting together a course for a conference. What I'm not 100% confident about is what functions in C3D people are interested in learning. I too made the leap from LDD to C3D and it took me a bit to understand the environment and get the same functionality as LDD. For the most part I have found that C3D will do all the same things as LDD did.

My idea was to develop the course content based on what surveyors generally want to learn how to do. Then post youtube followup videos to assist after the course was done. This is similar to how I taught drafting when I did part time work at Fresno State. The difference here is that surveyors are already skilled in autocad so my existing videos are probably too elementary for this audience.

Maybe we could start a list here of the items we would like to see in a course. I'll kick it off:

Styles
-line and curve labels
-point labels
-contour labels

Map check function

Point databases

Maybe it's just a lot of "where's the button to do xyz" questions that would be helpful. Maybe this would be a good webinar session?

I'm willing to try and help but I'd like to get some input to get going in the right direction on content.

Travis

I would find a lowdown on the survey fieldbook process profitable. I recently spent a half day keying in horizontal and vertical angles and distances due to a misplaced data collector incident. I finally got it down but it wasn't a smooth process and I'm certain that I am not realizing the full potential of the software. Also, we had an instance of a bad data collector entry (wrong point number) of a total station setup and trying to correct all of the points and subsequent setups that were corrupted was a fiasco. I believe that could be easily resolved in the fieldbook function as well. The point, line and curve labels have certainly been troublesome to us. I have previously spoken ill of the Autocad mapcheck function so I would appreciate having a better understanding of that. Your list is right on point for me, Travis!

I believe you are allowed to download the trial version. I do not think there is a expiration date (has a watermark if you try to plot). Use the tutorials that are part of it. I use tutorials to refresh new items with each version. Labels are not difficult, just different. There is a lot of redundancy when making labels. I create a layer for the different styles, point styles.

All good guys! All good! Let's get through the conference and see what we can do!

Outside of styles & labels which can be tricky, I believe having proficiency with the following functions would greatly improve your use of Autocad C3D. When all else fails hit F1 and search the help files. I use the help files often when YouTube or the Autodesk forums don't have what I need.

-Toolspace [Prospector, Settings & Survey tabs] from here you can manage all aspects of your drawing related to point groups, description key sets, surfaces, sites (parcels), alignments, data shortcuts, coordinate systems & field to finish capability (automated line work/spots elevations/symbols) etc. There's a lot you can do from Toolspace and I'd say it's the most important thing to understand.
-Insert [Point Import/Export]
-Modify [Convert 2D to 3D Polylines]
-Analyze [Coordinate Geometry Editor]
-Manage [Import, Purge]
-Output [PDF Export]
-Survey [Add Tables, Renumber Tags]
-Express Tools [Convert to Mtext, Auto Number]
-Geolocation [Aerial/Road maps from Bing]
-Surfaces, Parcels & Alignments [Create/Edit]

Practice good "house keeping" with your drawings & management of XREFs/paper space layouts. Understanding functions or use of layers related to plotting (Freeze/Lock/VP Freeze). Line type & block creation. Audit, Recover, Mapimport, Mview & Find commands. Creating a template to standardize your layers, styles, settings & paper space layouts would be a great aid if you haven't already done so.

Great advice RCS. I'll add one more bit of advice for C3D "When in doubt....right click"

LS_8750 wrote:CADMasters up in the bay area set me straight on C3D back in 2006. It was a two day intensive course focused on the engineering components of the program at the time. My guess is that a survey intensive course could take one day, perhaps with an optional second day focusing on the parceling capabilities of the program as well.

I just checked their schedule and pricing. They have the 2 day class on June 15, the cost is $750.