Civil 3D

I am starting a list of known bugs in Civil 3D here. Some of these may be inherited through AutoCAD.

A common problem I see in Civil 3D on is hard to read text in the Text Component Editor, as shown here.

This can be caused by a feature in Windows called ClearText. Here is how to change that setting in Windows 7.

Have you even run into a problem in AutoCAD (or a vertical such as Civil 3D), that you can't figure out such as a drawing behaving strange, commands not acting right, commands not working, or maybe even the whole application just won't launch? One of the first things I would suggest is to have someone new log onto your machine and launch AutoCAD under their Windows profile, essentially creating a new "AutoCAD Windows Profile". If the problem goes away when you do this, then it is probably some error or corruption in your own "AutoCAD Windows Profile".

There is a bug in Civil 3D 2013 that occurs when you try to sort the parcels in the Prospector. Normally, you can click on a column header and sort the table by that column, but if you do this with Parcels, the entire list goes away. Closing and restarting Civil 3D does not help, and neither does rebooting the entire machine. Here is a before and after screen shot. Notice the little sort arrow in the Name header does not appear in the Before shot, but it does appear after clicking on the Name header in the After shot.

This is a quick tutorial on adding and using User Defined Properties for Civil 3D cogo points, and we will create a new expression for use in our point label style. I’m starting with the stock template provided with Civil 3D 2013. Create a single point whose point style is Storm Sewer Manhole, and whose point label style is “Point#-Elevation-Description”

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and R.K. McSwain at the Expert Elite Lunch, Las Vegas, NV, 2012-11-28

One of the events at AU2012 was a special luncheon on Wed., Nov 28. to announce the creation of the Expert Elite group, a select group of individual community members who have been recognized for their extraordinary contributions, helping customers by sharing knowledge, providing community leadership, and exemplifying an engaging style of collaboration that drives a healthy and valuable Autodesk customer community.

I was honored to be included among this groups initial members, composed of approximately sixty worldwide members. If you participate in the Autodesk forums, you may have noticed the term "Expert Elite" in use on some of the user titles. We have been empowered to better share our knowledge, while supporting our peers and the Autodesk Community in general.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 Service Pack 1 is now available for download! This Service Pack includes all previous hotfixes for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013. It also includes the fixes included in AutoCAD 2013 Service Pack 1.1 and AutoCAD Map 3D 2013 Service Pack 1. 

Thank you Autodesk! I have not installed it yet, but I'm looking forward to this fix -> "In drawings with a custom UCS, switching from the model tab to the layout tab will no longer reset model tab to isometric."

How do I know this has been fixed without installing the SP? It's in the readme file, which is a good idea to read anyway in case there are install notes or other things to be aware of. Hopefully there won't be a recall of this SP or anything like that. There is also an issue regarding the toolspace and parcels, which did NOT get fixed. If you suffer from this bug, I have posted the temporary fix/workaround in message 9 in that discussion group thread. 

I have now installed the SP and confirmed it by running the ABOUT command.

With regard to Civil 3D Cogo Points, you probably know that the point labels include a "Dragged State", the properties of which take over when you drag the point label away from the point location.

Generally speaking, in AutoCAD you either select one or more entities and choose a command -or- you choose a command and then select one or more entities. When you are finished with the command, AutoCAD returns to the previous state where nothing was selected. I have noticed a different behavior in Civil 3D when working with C3D objects. When you select an object and perform certain commands (such as properties), when you are done the object remains selected.

For certain tasks in Civil 3D, I have Quick Properties (QP) enabled. I started noticing in 2013 that when QP is enabled and I select an entity, the focus is removed from the AutoCAD window. In other words, the crosshairs change to the pointer. So if I want to pick a Grip or a command on the contextual ribbon - it requires an extra pick. One pick to restore focus to the window and a second pick to activate the grip or menu item.

In this image, the manhole is selected, QP is visible, and the crosshairs have been replaced by the standard windows pointer.