Elements of Style in Autodesk® Civil 3D® - AUGI · Elements of Style in Autodesk® Civil 3D®...

Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin ResortOrlando, Florida

11/28/2005 - 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm Room:Osprey 1 [Lab] (Swan)

Elements of Style in Autodesk® Civil 3D®

Styles are all the fashion for the modern CAD user. This class will cover the basics of styles in Civil 3D. We'll explore how parent and child styles work together, how to move styles between drawings, and how you can use styles to make fast changes in displaying the data you've already created. If you want to implement Civil 3D within your existing drafting conventions and design process, this session is for you. Part of the AU 2005 Civil 3D Power Pack, this class will expand the your skill set and prepare you for more advanced classes.

CV15-1L

About the Speaker:

James Wedding - Jones & Boyd, Inc.Mark Scacco (Assistant); Robert Gadbaw (Assistant)and

James has carved out a niche in the information technology side of land development. Since joining Jones & Boyd in 1997, his combination of software expertise and engineering knowledge has enabled him to expand the company's services. A part of the gunslinger team for Autodesk Land Desktop since 2001, James led Jones & Boyd's pilot project in Autodesk Civil 3D. JBI was also a gold site for testing AutoCAD 2005 [email protected]


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Introduction to Styles

Civil 3D is entirely based on styles. Learning how to use and create styles can be the difference between a successful migration from Land Development Desktop or a completely baffling and frustrating experience. This lab will give you the first step, but expect to spend a good amount of time creating the styles to make your firm as efficient as possible.

Styles control the display of Civil 3D objects. The Toolspace contains all of the settings for Civil 3D styles.

Almost every object shown here has styles associated with it. Most of these objects have many different subcomponents, each of which has its own style. Notice how the expansion of the Surface branch shows not only surface styles, but labels and tables as well. Each of these items has its own styles also. You can see how quickly all of the components can easily lead to over a hundred styles in one drawing without really trying.

The process of building styles can be overwhelming. There are two major ways to look at styles: controlling display by styles alone, or using the style to control the layering, and then using layering to control much of the display.

For the purposes of this document and lab, we will focus on the use of styles to control the layering. This approach is the most workable at this point since the user cannot control Styles in an Xrefed drawing.

This document will walk you through setting up new styles for these objects:

Point & Point Label

Surface

Parcel Line (and Child)

Alignment Station Offset Label

These styles are merely representative of all the different things you can do with Civil 3D styles. The most important part of the styles process is just to get started!


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Point Label with Block

This label style will use a block for the point marker, and we’ll adjust the label components to all be one color.

1. Open the Styles-Base.dwg. (The location will be on screen)

2. Switch to the Settings tab in Prospector (if not open, go to General Show Toolspace)

3. Expand the Point branch. Right-click on Point Styles and select New…

4. Change the Name: Field to AU Point. You can fill in the description if you like.

5. Switch to the Marker tab. At the bottom click the Use AutoCAD BLOCK symbol for marker and pick the

AU block from the list. Change the inches field to .2500”. The point style uses a bounding box around the block to actually scale the block. This is why the block’s defined size doesn’t matter.


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6. Switch to the Display tab. Click on the 0 next to Marker, and it will pull up a layer dialog box. Select the C-TOPO-SPOT layer. You can also use this layer control to make new layers as needed. Change the Label layer to C-TOPO-SPOT-LABL layer to match the screen below.

7. Click OK to close the dialog box. Prospector now looks like this:

8. Collapse the Point Styles tree and right-click on Label Styles then select New… again.

9. Change the Name to AU Point Label.

10. Switch to the General Tab and change the layer to C-TOPO-SPOT-LABL. You’ll notice that the preview

turns green (the layer color from the C-TOPO-SPOT-LABL layer).


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11. Change to the Layout Tab and drop the Component name: dropdown to Point Elevation.

12. Click on the Contents field, then on the ellipsis button on the right of that field. This pulls up the Text

Component Editor-Label Text dialog box. This is where we’ll change the accuracy of this label.

13. Highlight the coded text on the right side by double-clicking on it. Then change the Precision to 0.01 and

click the arrow near the top to insert a new coded text entry. Notice the subtle difference between the pieces of code.

14. Click OK to close this dialog and OK to close the Label Style Composer.

15. Congratulations, you’ve just built your first two styles!

16. Now, to check your work, zoom in on some of the points. Select one and right-click, selecting Point Group Properties. Change the Default Styles section of the dialog to match this picture.


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17. Click OK, and you’ll be presented with a screen full of points that look something like this.

18. We’re done with points, so let’s make one more change. Right-click on the AU Point style in prospector and switch to the Display tab. Turn OFF both the Point and Point Label. Click OK and the points should disappear.

Modifying an Existing Surface Style

This style will show only contours, but will put them onto layers and color bylayer to make Xref use much simpler. This is how most styles are built when using layers to control the display in Xrefs.

1. Open Prospector to the Settings tab and expand the Surface branch to see the list of Surface Styles. Right-click on Contours (Background) and select Edit.

2. Change the Name and Description as shown.

3. Switch to the Contours tab and modify as shown below:

4. Switch to the Display tab and modify it as shown here. You can change all the components at once by

clicking the top item and shift-clicking on the bottom item to highlight them all. Then click the field you want to change.

5. Click OK to exit the dialog.


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6. Zoom extents if needed, and click on the surface border to select it. Right-click and select Surface Properties. Change the Surface Style to Existing Topo and click OK.

7. You now have a surface perfect for using in all your Xrefs to show the existing ground. You can change the layer colors in the target drawings and the colors will update.

Building a Parcel Line Label Style (and Child)

Label styles work very similar to Dimension Styles, but many people find them much easier. Children inherit properties from their parents, and any changes to the parent are reflected unless that component has been modified in the child. In this case, we’ll modify the arrangement of a child label and see how the parent controls the font.

In this task, we’ll take an existing style, modify its layer, and then modify the child to handle a different placement.

1. In Prospector, expand the Sites-Site1-Parcels branch. Right-click on SINGLE-FAMILY:100 and select Zoom to… This is one of the best ways to navigate large sites.

2. Zoom out a small amount so that you can see part of the overall site boundary. In Toolspace, switch to

the settings tab.

3. Expand the Parcel-Label Styles-Line branch, and Right-Click on Overall Distance and Bearing, then select Copy…

4. Change the Name: field to Site Labels.


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5. Change to the General tab and change the Layer to C-PROP-SITE-LABL as shown. Note the preview should change to reflect the new layer.

6. Switch to the Layout tab, change the Component Name to Distance-Bearing, and change the height to

0.1200” as shown here.

7. Click OK and exit this dialog.

8. Right-click on the Style we just made, and select New… This creates a child style (notice the window title). Change the new styles name to Lot Labels and switch to the General Tab.

9. Change the layer to C-PROP-LOTS-LABL and notice the color changes in the preview again.


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10. Switch to the Layout tab, select the Distance-Bearing component and change the height to 0.0800” as shown here.

11. Switch to the summary tab and expand the Label Branch.

12. Notice that the Override column has a check box in the Layer row. This indicates that this style has overridden the parent style for that item. If you expand Component 2, you’ll see the same checkbox in the Height row since we changed the height. You could also lock components on this tab, and any children would be unable to change those components. This is great for controlling text heights or layers in a family of label styles.

13. Click OK to close the dialog.

14. You now have two styles that are VERY similar, but reflect different layering use and heights for the text.

15. Go to Parcels Labels Add… to pull up this dialog box. Select Site Labels from the Line Label style: dropdown list.


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16. Click Add, and select the outer, cyan colored parcel lines. Then, switch to the Lot Labels style, click Add again, and pick the magenta colored lot lines. Click Close on the Labeling dialog box. Your drawing should look something like shown here.

17. The direction arrow on these labels interferes with the style. Since these labels are based on a Parent/Child relationship, it’s easy to fix this, and the change is instantaneous.

18. Right-click on the Site Labels style in the Toolspace and select Edit…

19. Switch to the Layout Tab and select the Direction Arrow component. Since we don’t want to show the arrow at all, click the red X to delete that component.

20. Click OK to close the Composer dialog

box. The outer site labels should instantaneously update. You might need to regen to get the lot labels to update.

Station Offset Label with Block

In addition to using labels styles to handle design or geometry information, you can also use them to display information about an object that is static. The benefit of doing this is you get scaling labels that look good in every scale.

This label style will insert a Proposed Manhole Block at the point of interest, and label the Station Offset from the adjoining major road alignment.

1. First, define a new Point Style called PMH. Right-click on Point-Point Styles and select New…

2. Change the Name to PMH as before.


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3. Change to the Marker tab and change the marker to use an AutoCAD BLOCK. Pick PMH from the list so that the sample looks like this:

4. Switch to the Display tab and change the Layer and values as shown here.

5. Click OK to close. You now have a point style that shows a Proposed Manhole Block.


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6. Expand the Settings tree to get to Alignment-Label Styles. Right-click on Station Offset and click New…

7. On the Information tab, change the name to Proposed MH.

8. On the General tab, change the layer to C-SSWR-MHOL-N.

9. Switch to the Layout tab and click on the … next to the Contents field to bring up the Text Components Editor – Label Text dialog as shown here.

10. Since we’re making our label from scratch, highlight all of the text in the preview window and delete it.

11. Switch to the Format tab and change the Justification to Left as shown here, and then switch back to the Properties tab.

12. Pick Alignment Name from the Properties dropdown, and then click the arrow to insert it to the label text

area.


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13. Select Station from the Properties dropdown. Click the arrow to add that piece.

14. Select Offset from the Properties dropdown. Change the Precision to 0.01 and click the arrow to add the

Offset component. Add the text to the label as shown below, and click OK.

15. Click OK to close the Text Component Editor

16. Click OK again to close the Label Style Composer

17. Go to Alignments Add Labels…

18. On the Add Labels dialog, change the Station offset label style: to Proposed MH, and change the Point Style to PMH as shown here.

19. Click the Add button.

20. Click on Melinda Lane to set the alignment, then the intersection of the two green lines to set the point and label.

21. You can drag the label away from the point, and a leader will appear. Right-click or spacebar will exit the command, but you can click Add again to pick out a new Alignment on which to base your labeling.

The Power of Styles with Standards

The power of Civil 3D lies in developing styles for every need. It might take a few projects, but you’ll eventually have a template that contains styles for every option under the sun. You’ll have children of children, and styles with only one minor difference between them. They’ll all be useful, and what’s more, your users will use them! Who wants to build all these styles from scratch every project?

The drawing Styles-Finished has a large collection of styles in it, made by various sources. Feel free to experiment with these styles, make them match your standards; make them match your design specs. These are provided as a leaping point for your own exploration and implementation of Civil 3D.

As you build styles, add them to your Civil 3D template by using a drag and drop from Toolspace into your template. Every drawing has a more complete collection, and when you don’t have to build a single style to do a typical job, you can rest easy knowing that a road alignment in project A looks like a road alignment in Project B. Using styles is easy, it’s building them that takes time. Sounds just like your CAD standards and block library, doesn’t it? The process takes some time, but with the initial investment, you’ll soon harness the power of Civil 3D and be going forward in style.

Elements of Style in Autodesk® Civil 3D® - AUGI · Elements of Style in Autodesk® Civil 3D®...

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