Topic: It appears that C3D 2012 has hit the ground...

[sourdough]

Just went to updates for C3D and noticed 2012 hitting new updates, anybody dared to get a copy they can talk about?

MJP

[Matt__W]

The Autodesk site is still showing 2011 for all AutoCAD apps.

[mjfarrell]

Just went to updates for C3D and noticed 2012 hitting new updates, anybody dared to get a copy they can talk about?

MJP

technically NOT until after it is released, however you will most likely start seeing some 'leaked' information around April.

[sourdough]

The Autodesk site is still showing 2011 for all AutoCAD apps.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/index?siteID=123112&id=2334435&linkID=9240698

Here is what I saw.

MJP

[Jeff_M]

Trust me, Mike, when things can be talked about, I'm sure you will know.

[sourdough]

Trust me, Mike, when things can be talked about, I'm sure you will know.

Understood, just love the teasers though. I just hope to God they finally make the program use more than one core, or at least be able to use the Cuda/ATI stream processors to solve some of the graphic's obstacles. Just my wish, not to mention all the things posted here that make it a challenge to use at times.

MJP

[sinc]

"Graphic's obstacles"...?  What do you mean?

[mjfarrell]

Trust me, Mike, when things can be talked about, I'm sure you will know.

Understood, just love the teasers though. I just hope to God they finally make the program use more than one core, or at least be able to use the Cuda/ATI stream processors to solve some of the graphic's obstacles. Just my wish, not to mention all the things posted here that make it a challenge to use at times.

MJP

Quality hardware, and training remove many of the obstacles most encounter with C3D.
Some of the other 'functional' issues with the application will most likely remain due to autodesk not really listening to their customers needs.

[Mark]

Quality hardware, and training remove many of the obstacles most encounter with C3D.

In other words; we're still learning how to program so you'll need 32GB of RAM and a water cooled graphics board. LOL

[mjfarrell]

Quality hardware, and training remove many of the obstacles most encounter with C3D.

In other words; we're still learning how to program so you'll need 32GB of RAM and a water cooled graphics board. LOL

Almost...
Although through feedback from the company I trained in Oahu last week, when they upgraded (got rid of) their poor hardware, most of their issues with unexpected crashes went away.
The downside is that none of those upgrades cured the core issues of lack of functionality, or features that fail to function as desired by most users, e.g. Pipes, Survey figures not assuming styles, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

[sourdough]

"Graphic's obstacles"...?  What do you mean?

One of my pet peeves is the lag time when you have to pick a point with the layer manager on. It can take time for it to roll through all the layers before you can actually being able to move it by grip. If you turn the layer manager off you can pick by grip and it is fast. That is my graphical obstacle of choice I would love to have fixed. I'm using a AIT Firepro V7800 with 2 gig of memory on-board and it does no better than a Geforce card Fermi or not. This has gone on every since they introduced C3D. So, no matter which is at fault Graphics or Processor or programming it is an obstacle and one I see on screen, so perception is graphical. Yes, I understand that C3D is running on one core.

My config is:
Graphics listed above.
Intel Ext. 980X 6core up 4 Ghz
12gig ddr3 1600
128gig SSD Sata 6

MJP

[mjfarrell]

Seems like the problem is limited to your process not C3D.
Firstly one should NOT be grip editing points to move them around,; particularly if they are SURVEY points.  Secondly, one should not be working with layer manager open at all times, despite your knowledge of the lag you persist in keeping it open.

If you are doing any sort of DESIGN using points your process needs to be revised.
Surveyors collect, and set points.
Engineers should do their designing using Feature Lines, and or Corridors not points.

If this isn't your method, try adjusting your process.

[Mark]

Seems like the problem is limited to your process not C3D.
Firstly one should NOT be grip editing points to move them around,; particularly if they are SURVEY points.  Secondly, one should not be working with layer manager open at all times, despite your knowledge of the lag you persist in keeping it open.

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

[mjfarrell]

Seems like the problem is limited to your process not C3D.
Firstly one should NOT be grip editing points to move them around,; particularly if they are SURVEY points.  Secondly, one should not be working with layer manager open at all times, despite your knowledge of the lag you persist in keeping it open.

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

It isn't really, in truth I don't suggest that one run C3D with those open constantly either unless one is building Assemblies or working with Sheets.  It's a performance issue that I place far behind the need to improve functionality within the application in terms of development.  One can turn off those parts of the interface and get along well enough when they are not absolutely required to be used..  One can NOT do anything to improve the lack of functionality of things like Pipes, or the Hydrology tools not being well integrated with the model.

[sourdough]

Seems like the problem is limited to your process not C3D.
Firstly one should NOT be grip editing points to move them around,; particularly if they are SURVEY points.  Secondly, one should not be working with layer manager open at all times, despite your knowledge of the lag you persist in keeping it open.

If you are doing any sort of DESIGN using points your process needs to be revised.
Surveyors collect, and set points.
Engineers should do their designing using Feature Lines, and or Corridors not points.

If this isn't your method, try adjusting your process.

I agree with most of what you said. My process is that when you not move a point, rather move the point label with grip it is slow if you have the layer manager on. So, yes I normally turn it off when doing that and most other things.
Sinc asks me what graphics obstacle (loosely stated). My wish would be that they could fix this so it was as fast
as it was with Land Desktop as a baseline to survey point lablel movement. It was a wish nothing more. Overall I like
C3D a lot. Most all my work now days is Survey related, and no design for now. So, this is something I deal with a lot.


MJP

[mjfarrell]

That would be where I and most other users differ.
I don't do 'wish list' items. 
I simply want the functions that exist to actually function without need for work-arounds.

[drizzt]

I simply want the functions that exist to actually function without need for work-arounds.

Isn't that #1 on a wish list?

[Chris]

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

There is a significant hit in performance with the layer palette open, sometimes with the properties palette as well.  I dont use sheet set manager, so it is always off.  I am always using the properties palette, so it is on, but all my palettes are anchored and set to autohide.

[mjfarrell]

I simply want the functions that exist to actually function without need for work-arounds.

Isn't that #1 on a wish list?

Not exactly; as most folks are wishing for things that do not yet exist.
Ignoring the facts that existant functions fail to do so, and asking autodesk to produce yet another feature, while ignoring the current failures. Along the lines of "wouldn't it be cool if it did this?".  I just want the things it is supposed to already do, to work without compromise. (see pipes and structure label issues as a start point for my ranting)

[mjfarrell]

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

There is a significant hit in performance with the layer palette open, sometimes with the properties palette as well.  I dont use sheet set manager, so it is always off.  I am always using the properties palette, so it is on, but all my palettes are anchored and set to autohide.

This would suggest you should revisit your methods so that you are not ALWAYS adjusting properties.

[Chris]

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

There is a significant hit in performance with the layer palette open, sometimes with the properties palette as well.  I dont use sheet set manager, so it is always off.  I am always using the properties palette, so it is on, but all my palettes are anchored and set to autohide.

This would suggest you should revisit your methods so that you are not ALWAYS adjusting properties.

I never said I was using it to adjust properties, I'm always using it to determine what the current properties of an object are.  And Always is also an overstatement, as It is set to fly out, if I were really always using it, it would be more beneficial to dock the palette so I can always read it.

[sinc]

One of my pet peeves is the lag time when you have to pick a point with the layer manager on. It can take time for it to roll through all the layers before you can actually being able to move it by grip.

Strange...  I don't see that.

I see a delay if I pick a Cogo Point with the Properties palette open, but not with the Layer Manager open.  And I'm running on lesser hardware than yours.

I actually leave the Layer Manager open (set to auto-hide) all the time, and don't have any issues.  Well, it sometimes loses track of things when I switch drawings, and starts throwing an Unhandled Exception (null value) error...  (Usually when I have XREF selected in the Layer Filters, along with "Invert Selection", so that the Layer Manager is only displaying all layers that DO NOT appear in XREFs, and then I switch my active drawing.)  That problem typically goes away if I close and reopen the Layer Manager, though.

[mjfarrell]

Why is that different than say the sheet set manager or the properties?

There is a significant hit in performance with the layer palette open, sometimes with the properties palette as well.  I dont use sheet set manager, so it is always off.  I am always using the properties palette, so it is on, but all my palettes are anchored and set to autohide.

This would suggest you should revisit your methods so that you are not ALWAYS adjusting properties.

I never said I was using it to adjust properties, I'm always using it to determine what the current properties of an object are.  And Always is also an overstatement, as It is set to fly out, if I were really always using it, it would be more beneficial to dock the palette so I can always read it.

Try; leaving the tooltips on for your objects, and turn the properties palette off.  Or use the LIST command it's far faster.

[Wedding]

We did a webinar for some bloggers this morning to go into more picks and click feature updates of the Civil 3D 2012 product. You can see the first wave of commentary here:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23C3D2012

And then I would suggest checking out the blogs of some of the people on that list for further development and commentary.

[sourdough]

We did a webinar for some bloggers this morning to go into more picks and click feature updates of the Civil 3D 2012 product. You can see the first wave of commentary here:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23C3D2012

And then I would suggest checking out the blogs of some of the people on that list for further development and commentary.

Jim, would you know if they are ever going to have a brg/dist style that can use points instead of objects? Or is there a way to do that already, or
has someone got a style that can do that. This is a big request from the surveyors I work with.

MJP

[mjfarrell]

We did a webinar for some bloggers this morning to go into more picks and click feature updates of the Civil 3D 2012 product. You can see the first wave of commentary here:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23C3D2012

And then I would suggest checking out the blogs of some of the people on that list for further development and commentary.

Jim, would you know if they are ever going to have a brg/dist style that can use points instead of objects, for those occasions of
when you split a line and want to label the segments between the overall line? Or is there a way to do that now. Creating extra objects
is one of my other survey type of "why didn't they make that an option yet". Has that ever been discussed to your knowledge?

MJP

SPAN LABELS,  however not by points unless one adds a line

[sourdough]

We did a webinar for some bloggers this morning to go into more picks and click feature updates of the Civil 3D 2012 product. You can see the first wave of commentary here:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23C3D2012

And then I would suggest checking out the blogs of some of the people on that list for further development and commentary.

Jim, would you know if they are ever going to have a brg/dist style that can use points instead of objects, for those occasions of
when you split a line and want to label the segments between the overall line? Or is there a way to do that now. Creating extra objects
is one of my other survey type of "why didn't they make that an option yet". Has that ever been discussed to your knowledge?

MJP

SPAN LABELS,  however not by points unless one adds a line

Mike you are to quick, I re-wrote my request. But, what does your term mean Span Labels, definition please.

MJP

[mjfarrell]

Parcel Spanning Labels
 
 
 
AutoCAD Civil 3D provides parcel line and curve anchor points for the creation of useful visual cues when annotating parcels. In previous releases, workarounds were used to create crow’s feet to indicate the start and end points of lot lines. These extra steps are no longer necessary.

a setting inside ones parcel label style.

[sinc]

Unfortunately, as usual, there are caveats...

Only Parcel lines have the "spanning" capability, and all parcel lines involved must be in the same Site.  That means you often can't use "spanning" to label what you want.  Also, in an attempt to help with the "Style Breeding Problem", a couple releases back Autodesk made it so you can also put General Line/Curve labels on Parcel lines, but when you do this, the General label will ALWAYS use an implied "span = false".  You cannot get General Line/Curve labels to "span".  And you can't put Parcel labels on standard line/curves, so this feature didn't work so well at reducing the "Style Breeding Problem".  And Spanning doesn't work over "hard PIs".  And "hard PIs" sometimes get created accidentally when editing parcels, but can't be removed without deleting and recreating Parcel segments.  But doing THAT will often cause you to lose the assigned Parcel Numbers, Styles, UDPs, etc....

It's a constant string of troubles.  

[sourdough]

Unfortunately, as usual, there are caveats...

Only Parcel lines have the "spanning" capability, and all parcel lines involved must be in the same Site.  That means you often can't use "spanning" to label what you want.  Also, in an attempt to help with the "Style Breeding Problem", a couple releases back Autodesk made it so you can also put General Line/Curve labels on Parcel lines, but when you do this, the General label will ALWAYS use an implied "span = false".  You cannot get General Line/Curve labels to "span".  And you can't put Parcel labels on standard line/curves, so this feature didn't work so well at reducing the "Style Breeding Problem".  And Spanning doesn't work over "hard PIs".  And "hard PIs" sometimes get created accidentally when editing parcels, but can't be removed without deleting and recreating Parcel segments.  But doing THAT will often cause you to lose the assigned Parcel Numbers, Styles, UDPs, etc....

It's a constant string of troubles.  

So, a simple request to create a brg/dist label from point to point, something surveyors use all the time is still a mystery to solve. It is time
to add a second entities/object pick to make a label.  Our surveyors are requesting this. Or maybe someone could make a routine. I have an old
list routine to do it, but it won't work with applying a projection so well.

MJP

[sinc]

For times when we can't use a Parcel (spanning or non-spanning) label, we always just draw a line or curve over the segment we want to label, and have a non-plotting layer set aside for just that purpose.

Not a very "clean" solution, but it's simple and effective.

[sourdough]

For times when we can't use a Parcel (spanning or non-spanning) label, we always just draw a line or curve over the segment we want to label, and have a non-plotting layer set aside for just that purpose.

Not a very "clean" solution, but it's simple and effective.

Yes, we do that too, thanks for your thoughts. The devil in the details.

MJP