From the Ground Up

FREE Autodesk Take the Lead Virtual Event

Register today for the FREE Autodesk Take the Lead Virtual Event. 

Join us on September 5, 2012 to see how the latest Autodesk solutions will help you Take the Lead in transforming the way you work. 

Featured solutions include:

· Autodesk Suites – All the functionality you need in one convenient package, specific for your industry

· Autodesk® BIM 360 – Cloud-based services within the Autodesk® 360 platform that provide mobility and accessibility to multidiscipline design and construction teams through infinite computing power.

Register now and secure your space for this FREE online event. www.autodesk.com/takethelead

 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/3Tk72NoNGXI

 Check out the trailer

Autodesk 360 Mobile–now available

We're excited to tell you that it's here! Autodesk 360® Mobile is now available for your iOS or Android devices. Update the Design Review Mobile app on your device, or download Autodesk 360® Mobile for iOS on iTunes® or for Android on Google Play.

Autodesk 360® Mobile extends the Autodesk 360® cloud platform to help you streamline and expedite the design process with anywhere, anytime access and robust collaboration tools.

This release has a dramatically different user interface and includes the following functionality:

· Open and view files stored in your Autodesk 360® account

• 2D and 3D DWG™ and DWF™ files
• Revit® and Navisworks® files

· Use multi-touch to zoom, pan, and rotate drawings

· View meta data and other details about elements within your drawing

· Find tools that help you communicate changes with your collaborators, including an activity feed, a click-to-share feature, and comments by file, sheet or view

Subscription Productivity Tools for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2013

We are pleased to announce that the Productivity Tools for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2013 have gone live on Subscription Center. This is a collection of tools and content supporting regional and/or industry specific workflows that can be downloaded and installed by Civil 3D subscription customers to enhance the value of the Civil 3D product. The following tools were launched: 

via beingcivil.typepad.com

Just in case you missed my tweet on this release, here are some details on the subs productivity pack from the boys in support

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 SP2.1

We have just released an increment to the Service Pack 2 which addresses a small number of regression issue that were found with Civil 3D 2012 SP2.

Note that latest SP can target any version of Civil 3D 2012 (including SP2) and includes all prior fixes (including AutoCAD and Map 3D fixes).

Click here

 

 

Jack Strongitharm

Infrastructure Symposium at AU2012

Save the date for the Infrastructure Symposium at Autodesk University 2012!

The session will run on the day before the official AU programme begins, on Monday, November 26 from 11:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m at the Mandalay Bay Casino & Resort, Las Vegas.

For more details and to register your interest see here:

http://bimontherocks.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/08/save-the-date-infrastructure-symposium-at-au2012.html

See you there!
John Allen

3ds Max Design - RAM Player - tips and tricks

If you are rendering in 3ds Max Design you are hopefully rendering to images, rather than to an AVI etc

 

However you maybe experiencing the output via RAM player to be creating dark videos.

 

Inside the ‘Render menu’, choose ‘Gamma/LUT setup’ and uncheck ‘Enable Gamma/LUT Correction’

Reload your images and now export to AVI and they should match up

 

Jack Strongitharm

AIM - Send to 3ds Max Design tips and tricks

 

If you use 'Send to Max' from AIM, your temporary fbx file and .pos (position file) are dropped in this location.

C:\Users\<user login>\AppData\Local\Temp

You may need to retrieve it if you need to export other data from AIM or Civil 3D again and coordinate the data in Max. You will have to use the .fbx export this time to add the user shift in the model as you may not get the same shift applied by the 'Send to Max' option if you select the region to export differently.

Make sure you copy of this data across to your folder where you save the Max file as if that content is deleted your textures disappear in Max as they are being referenced.

 

 

Images in 3ds Max Design not rendering correctly?

If using trees in your scene which have come from AIM, you may need to set some material settings

Press M for the materials and select the dropper and click on a tree to select the correct material

Set the specular level, glossiness and soften to 0

Select ‘M’ button next to opacity and point to the alpha channel of the tree image texture.

(Thanks to Bob Prokopp for pointing me in the right direction)

Jack Strongitharm

SAC - Subassembly with varying lane width without targets !

This post is based on an earlier post made by Bart De Maesschalck from DEME on the Civil 3D Benelux usergroup page.

The challenge is to create a subassembly with the ability to apply a varying width without the need for a target alignment or polyline/feature line.

In this example the transition will be linear... a curved transition can be considered for another post.

The solution lies in the possibilities that SAC (Subassembly Composer) offers. I'm sure there are many ways to get this done, but this is how I did it…

STEP 1: Define the variables you need

• Base width (Width before the transition, also used in subassembly mode)
• Extended width  (Width after the transition)
• Transition length (Length of the transition zon)
• Transition start station (station to start the transition)

STEP 2: Implement this iS SAC

• Create the input variables we have defined in STEP 1.
• Define an internal variables to be able to calculate the real width during the transition (ActualWidth)
• Define the flows and decisions that need to be taken.
  For every assembly insertion of the corridor we need to define if the current station is before, in or after the transition zone.
  
  
  
  
• Calculate the actual width during transition
  
  

 

• Create the geometry for the lane

  

 

STEP 3: Test in AutoCAD Civil 3D

   

   

The Subassembly can be downloaded here: Download LaneWithTransition

 Peter Ingels