Topic: Leading zeros

[Dent Cermak]

What Canon has failed to realise in his/her post is that Autodesk does not establish these standards in the Survey field. We are governed by the BLM Manual and the various State's Boards of Registration via their Minimum Technical Standards. Thus, I MUST explode my labels and do them per my state's Minimum Technical Standards and the Boards edicts.
AutoDesk has NEVER bothered to learn the nomenclature of the trade. They have a bunch of pimply faced programmers that no nothing of the trade, but can be given the appropriate formulas and write them into the program.
It ticks me off that AutoDesk does not know the proper names for contours and if you question that Laurie Comerford will blast you. if you do not know your craft, you are not professional. if I interview a potential employee and he starts talking about "Major and Minor" contours, I burn his application.

[Dinosaur]

. . . We are governed by the BLM Manual and the various State's Boards of Registration via their Minimum Technical Standards. Thus, I MUST explode my labels and do them per my state's Minimum Technical Standards and the Boards edicts . . .

Exactly Dent, and don't forget about those ALTA/ACSM regulations and all the lawyers that review tose drawings for compliance just hoping to pad their billing by finding some such flaw and retutning the drawings for corrections.  Those boys won't let ANYTHING slide, even to save their own sweet mom an extra mortgage payment.

[Mark]

Just to be the devils advocate .... can you show me where the ALTA/ACSM, your State MTS or the BLM require leading zeros in bearings?

[mjfarrell]

I think that the concept of leading zeros being shown is to remain consistent with the previously recorder instruments.
A careful read here http://www.acsm.net/ALTA2005.pdf will verify Marks' question of the 'necessity' of leading zeros not being specifically called for.  That being said, I know that in various places we have endeavored to create various line label styles that performed mathematical conversion of the cad distances into the original recorded documents units of measure, i.e., Rods & Chains, Wagon Wheels, etc.  The need for such conversion isn't spelled out anywhere other than a standard of practice, to make it easy to verify that the cad distances matched as closely as practicable to the document that those land titles were originally deeded in.  I think that the 'need' for the leading zeros isn't driven by ALTA, it is driven by unskilled persons attempting to read and interpret a survey document (lawyers, title officers).  To these unskilled consumers of the data, a missing zero anywhere in measurement is wrong even IF that zero is an insignificant value.
Perhaps the argument isn't do we 'need' leading zeros, the question is what is the industry standards of practice? If that practice is archaic so be it, however if the industry wants those zeros, autodesk needs to give us the option, which I'm relatively sure was available in earlier releases of C3D. I may need to go reload an older version to verify this last statement, anyone still rolling a version of 2005 please test and verify.

[jpostlewait]

Personally, I've written tons of descriptions back in the day when you did that on a legal pad and gave them to a secretary to type.
None contained any leading zeros of anything. In the courts there is no difference between N1-1-1E and N01-01-01E.
Never heard a story about anybody being invited to the State Board of Technical Professions to answer for not using leading Zero's.
Much ado about nothing.
The digit is insignificant.
I was going to comment on you need a leading zero on your poll but you got to double digits.

[mjfarrell]

OK, it's a moot point, until some clown sends your drawing back because he wants to see those zeros.
Should we give him your number and let you argue your case while we add the zeros manually?

[jpostlewait]

OK, it's a moot point, until some clown sends your drawing back because he wants to see those zeros.
Should we give him your number and let you argue your case while we add the zeros manually?

You have to fight your own battles with the reviewing agencies.
But my experience is they depend upon the submitters on input to improve the process.
Afterall they are nowhere near the pointed end of the spear and the consultants have an obligation to work with them to help keep the standards current.
A lot of consultants want a well defined set of standards in order to have some idea what is needed to smooth the submital process.
Standards have to evolve, but in the reviewers defense they can't change them based upon some designer's whim.
They need well thought out arguments and documentation to start the process.
It's neither quick nor always successful.
It's just another aspect of the service we need to provide.
Just another thing we have to do,

[mjfarrell]

Yeah, I hear you, only the most recent experience comes to mind:
The reviewer insisted that all pipe lengths be divisible by 2' from structure to structure.
And no amount of meetings with him, or the engineering manager resulted in him agreeing that pipe can and is cut to any length everyday and allowing us to submit the plans with pipe lengths NOT divisible by 2. This is just as crazy as lawyers and title officers rejecting drawings because they are missing leading zeros. 

I was hoping you would be willing to lend you persuasive powers to educate these individuals who refuse to join the 21st century. 

Sometimes it doesn't matter how much logic one brings to the table, some cannot be persuaded to adjust their views to that logic.  As such Autodesk puts us all in the position of needing to have this argument with persons whom may not ever agree to our case and allow the zeros to go 'missing', insignificant or otherwise.

[Dinosaur]

John, I still think we are friends here, but I have to ask this.  Have you really tried that with Johnson County Waste Water?  How about submitting As-Builts through them with Civil 3D?  The ONLY solution I have found was to initiate a policy of "styles inflation" on a proportion that would make Greenspan and the Fed board blush.  I literally had to create a special style for each manhole connection to existing lines during the design phase and then a second set for the As-Builts.  In order to conform to guidelines requiring the geometry to match the annotation on the As-Builts, I had to modify the alignments to reflect the new locations, enter new measured elevations into the data and devise new labels and styles to display both the old and new data in the format they demanded.  The only negotiation was their comment letter saying what they wanted to see and please return it completed in 3 days.  I don't know if a company as large as yours has enough clout to throw a "meet reality" meeting with them or not, but a small outfit like mine certainly doesn't.  JCWD is not alone in this attitude around here either.  There has been some relief only because the developers have finally talked to enough supervisors to curtail the four and five rounds of submittals that had been the routine previously.

[jpostlewait]

If I can reply to you and Mike at the same time.
It's just what we have to do.
Some times it's clunky and you have to do crap that makes you feel dirty but it is what it is.
We have an ongoing discussion in regards to Dino's reviewing agency concerning as-builts and it's not simple.
Easy answer is just move the manholes and pipes to the new location and let everything update, BUT etc. etc. and on and on.
Processes of change are seldom easy or clean but you have to play as hard as you can or you're toast.
Said a long time ago in the lesson's learned thread that this was a much more political exercise than a technological one and that's gospel.

[mjfarrell]

We agree, however imagine how much simpler our lives could be IF the software vendor didn't make us fight a fight that often one can't win the battle without losing the war.  So you go in fighting and slog it with them and they 'accept' the change, and then you find yourself NOT being selected for projects that they offer for bid, exactly because you won that fight. :ugly:

So much simpler if the software publisher wouldn't make us get in that trench and fight that fight to start with.

[jpostlewait]

Thing you have to keep in mind, this is a world wide product and the US market is saturated.
If you can speak Chinese your requests might have a higher hit rate.

[Dinosaur]

The only "easy" answer I think is to just . . . gulp . . . make a copy of the entire project folder, name it As-Built, create the new geometry and explode the heck out of the pipes and labels then revise the labeling like it was pure french vanilla AutoCAD.  Ideally at some point early on in this process turning it over to the grunt staff.  I just don't see an efficient way to keep the dynamic properties with As-Builts.

[Keith™]

I think what is more infuriating than anything, is that every version of AutoCAD that I can remember has always had user customizable options to display leading and trailing zeros on dimensions. Surely the details have already been worked out on "how" to do it. Oh .. and I don't know of anyone who turns of leading zeros in dimensions, but the option is there if you want/need to, perhaps some of you guys do turn them off, but at least you have the option.

[Mark]

I think what is more infuriating than anything, is that every version of AutoCAD that I can remember has always had user customizable options to display leading and trailing zeros on dimensions. Surely the details have already been worked out on "how" to do it. Oh .. and I don't know of anyone who turns of leading zeros in dimensions, but the option is there if you want/need to, perhaps some of you guys do turn them off, but at least you have the option.

Can you make the dimension shown below look like 00°55'09" ?