Next Month's Meeting-Autodesk visits C3DFRAG

The next C3D FRAG Meeting will be on the 20th of August since Lucy Kuhns, Nationally Recognized Autodesk Expert and Mark Schoenfield, SW Civil Territory Manager, will be in for a Civil 3D Workshop and will be present for our meeting. We will update you with the presentation topic towards the middle of the month.

Meeting 4- C3D and Revit

Once again a small showing of users but a great presentation from Brian Haley and Brian Mackey from CAD-1. With more and more civil engineers using Civil 3D and more architects using Revit, Brian H demonstrated how to successfully save a Civil 3D drawing and make it usable in Revit. As the Revit instructor at CAD-1, Brian M then demonstrated how to use the information given to him in the proper format from C3D and save his building footprint in state plane coordinates for Civil 3D use. The new program Navis Works was presented as well. Brian was able to walk us through the site of his demo project through the program that allows clients and users get a 3D look at what is occurring in the design. If this is a presentation you missed and want to see I think they are giving the same demo at the Revit Users group this month.

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Meeting 3 – Civil 3D Corridors

A small turn out, understandably due to the AutoCAD Seminar downtown Denver, for this month’s meeting didn’t seem to deter a lively discussion on Corridors. Brian Thomasy and myself led the discussion that involved showing examples of intersections and a channel design that we used corridor to design and model. We covered other topics such as sub-assemblies and the benefit of naming them along with the individual assembly pieces in order to easily organize your corridor when setting the targets. We went off into a few different tangents as well. Cross sections and using CTB vs. STB plot styles were also covered. We had a great response from the members that attended. There were a lot of questions, and hopefully we were able to answer many of them or at least point you in the right direction. Some of the highlights from the meeting were:

• Whether you are working in a large subdivision, a 3 mile stretch of roadway or a mile long channel that has merging channels into it, put it all in one corridor model.
• A little fore thought and planning before you begin your corridor pays off huge in the long run.
• Naming the assembly and the sub-assembly pieces makes it easier to find them in the corridor properties when setting the targets.
• Take advantage of the available white papers provided by AutoCAD (and Autodesk University) to help guide you through the more complex applications of the corridors. Especially in regards to intersections and cul-de-sacs

C3D FRAG Yahoo Group

Many of you have joined our Yahoo Group and some of you have taken advantage of the posting area to ask question or present problems to the group. If you have not done so yet I encourage you to do so. It is an easy way to stay in touch and keep up on new events.

I’ll be adding links to the group site for Autodesk University so you can download the prior mentioned “white papers”. You will have to register as a member to the site (if you have not done so before), but it’s free and it only takes a moment. That way you can not only download the papers, but you can watch recorded webcasts of different lessons as well. So look for those under the LINKS on the Yahoo group site.

Next Month’s Meeting

I’ve posted a poll, on the Yahoo Group page, asking for your opinion on what you would like to be the topic of discussion for next month. There are a handful of topics including revisiting Corridors. Please take the time to vote on the issue that interests you the most. If you have not yet joined the Yahoo Group, this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

We look forward to seeing you all there!!!

Agenda for April 30- “C3D 2009 New Features"

6:00pm – Arrive & sign-in. Dinner will be provided.

6:15pm – Announcement on upcoming events.

6:30pm – Main presentation will be a webcast on C3D 2009 New Features from CAD Masters.

7:30pm – The last 30 minutes is devoted to an open discussion forum and a chance for the group to interact with professional colleagues.

8:00pm – Clean-up and depart.

Civil 3D 2009

I have had the opportunity of receiving a cool web cast on the new features that will be coming in C3D 2009 from CAD Masters. They have agreed to repeat the web cast for us if we would like. So if everyone would like, for the next meeting in April, we can arrange to have an hour long web cast. please e-mail me and tell me if this is something you want or do not want. I will keep you posted on the results.

Thanks

Bryan Thomasy
bryan.thomasy@tetratech.com

March 2008 Newsletter

Our First C3D FRAG Meeting was a Success!!

We wish to thank all of you for attending our first user group meeting. All in all I think it was successful. Also, thank you all for filling out the questionnaires. They were very helpful in giving us some insight on the needs of the group and how we should precede with future meetings. Going through the questionnaires, we noticed that the topics you all wish to discuss are varied. It seemed that everyone had a different need that they wished to see discussed, which is great!! We will be posting a finalized schedule of topics for the upcoming months on this site in the near future. Again, thank you all for your interest and we will, with your help, try to make this a user’s group the meets, and maybe even exceeds your expectations. Please remember that this is your group. In order for it to flourish, we need a large member base, so tell everyone you know about us. The larger we become, the more things we will be able to accomplish.

What You Wanted for FRAG

Going through the questionnaires, here are some of the results from what you said:

Topics

• GIS
• Production Issues
• Corridors
• Surfaces
• Styles
• Converting LDD-C3D
• Config/Options Setings
• Pipes
• Grading
• Parcels
• Labeling
• Vault
• Profiles
• Cross Sections
• Code Sets
• Working with MicroStation Files

What Day(s) to Meet

The majority of you gave a range of days that you wanted to meet. Wednesdays seem to fit the majority of everyone’s schedule. Also, many of you seem to like the idea of meeting twice a month instead of just once a month. This sounds encouraging, but for now (or at least till we get a bigger group) we’ll stick to once a month.

Types of Software

Everyone seems to be running Civil 3D 2008, with a few of us running 2007. And everyone seems to want more information on the 2009 version when it comes available. We will try to get out as much information as we can in order to make your transitions as painless as possible. We may have CAD-1 as a guest speaker to highlight the new features the 2009.

Getting Involved

A few of you have expressed an interest in being more involved in the operations of FRAG. Thank you!! We will get in touch with you and discuss, in more detail, how you wish to participate. For everyone else, it is never too late to get involved. Especially as the group gets larger we will need more involvement from a larger group of people. Don’t be bashful. We welcome any suggestions or level of help that anyone can offer. After all, this is everyone’s user’s group.

We also have some volunteers offering their space to hold a meeting. Presently, we are looking into some other larger venues, but we will keep you in mind as we move forward.

Members List

We will be posting a list of all the members, which registered last Tuesday, on the web site. It will list your name and email address. Let us know if you want us to include your Company’s name too. For now, however, we will leave it off. Right now we stand at 15 registered members plus 4 officers. We’ll keep a running tally on the number of members and offices as we go on.

Thank You!!!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank, once again, everyone that attended the meeting. We would also like to thank CAD-1 again for sponsoring FRAG and lending us the use of the facilities. This would have never have started without you help.