Autodesk Documentation

I was recently sent a link to a centralized page on the Autodesk website for the "Support & Documentation" for many Autodesk Products. From this page we can access the "Knowledge Base", "Documentation", and "Online Help" for those products. My first thought was "Wow, this would be helpful for quick access to this information". Then I figured that others might find this page useful as well, so thus this post.

The products for which there are links are...

AutoCAD

AutoCAD LT

AutoCAD Map 3D

AutoCAD Civil 3D

Autodesk Vault

Autodesk 3ds Max

Autodesk Revit Architecture

AutoCAD Architecture

Autodesk Inventor

AutoCAD Mechanical

Autodesk Alias

autodesk Maya

Autodesk Moldflow

Click here or the title of this post to get to that page.

Be Better! ...support others with you knowledge.

Working with DGN files in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011

James Wedding. Autodesk Civil Engineering Technical Specialist, has posted a video describing Civil 3D 2011's ability to work with and create dgn files in the following scanarios...

1. needing to work with legacy .dgn data
2. work with design teams using other applications/platforms
3. submit to an agency requiring dgn

If you have ever found yourself wondering how best to address those needs you should view this video.

Be Better! ...work well with others.

Civil 3D 2011 Hotfix

On June 17th there was a hotfix released that addresses a few items including:

• Creating a feature line from a closed polyline with assigned elevations no longer causes the program to exit.
• Help now appears as expected when running Civil 3D as AutoCAD 2011.
• Datasets containing large numbers of control and non-control points now open and import more quickly.
• Figure prefix databases will now match lower case figure names.
• You can now create parcels from multiple objects selected in a DGN underlay.
• Application Product Interface changes are included that improve:
1. Point group import functionality
2. Custom draw issues with second command instances in localized Japanese builds

Most of the fixes relate to Survey, but a few do not. This should help.

Be Better! ...fix things.

Introducing James Wedding (a Video)

Many readers are already aware of what James Wedding has done for the Civil 3D community. Well, here he is in an exciting new role, as Autodesk Technical Specialist for Civil Engineering. I am looking forward to working more closely with James and know that this will lead to great things.

Click here or the title of this post to see James in an introductory video.

Be Better! ...always introduce yourself.

Optimizing Performance with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011

Last year's version of this video was one of the Civil 3D YouTube videos that I referred to most often. It is great to see that the "Optimizing Performance with AutoCAD Civil 3D..." was updated for 2011.

This 15 minute video offers many tips and processes to increase the performance of Civil 3D. Additionally, metrics are sometimes provided to put the potential gain into perspective.

Covered topics include...

• Subassemblies
• Profile Views
• Label Styles
• Surfaces
• Corridors
• Layouts
• Proxygraphics
• Event Viewer and Tooltips
• Data Management

I am sure that I will be watching this many times and referring to it in my interactions with users.

Be Better! ...plan to perform optimally.

AutoCAD Raster Design 2011 Object Enabler

The AutoCAD Raster Design 2011 Object Enabler is now available for download here.

This will allow objects created in AutoCAD Raster Design 2011 (once available) to be accessed outside the Raster Design environment.

There is a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

Be Better!