In many times your vault files are good sitting on the server. But occasionally you need to move them around, move them from server to server or just transfer them to different location. First it’s important to understand the Vault Structure to ensure you are in fact moving File Store and database. FileStore is the location where your drawings with different versions, as well as other files associated with projects are stored. Vault Database is the database that stores information about these drawings, projects. In order for them to work correctly they must be synchronized.
I recently had a customer with the following error in the Command Line when launching Civil 3D: “There are currently no palettes to show in the Toolspace window.” Not only are there no palettes, but the Toolspace won’t load at all. So what is going on here?
For my customer, they had previously setup their company-specific Profile (.arg file) from a 32-bit machine. The file was then stored on on a shared location, for new users/machines to grab. The issue came to light on the customer’s new Windows7 64-bit machine.
We took a look at their support paths in the Profile, and found the issue. It’s important to remember that since Civil 3D 2010 is a 32-bit application, it is installed into the \program files (x86) directory. When brining over a Profile from a 32-bit OS, the (x86) folder will be missing. You will need to modify these support paths to represent the change in the OS.
Specific to the Toolspace is the \autodesk shared\axui directory. Without this pointed to the correct folder, the Toolspace won’t load, and you will receive the error message.
When manually editing or viewing your Corridor Sections sometimes it can be useful to see more of your existing surface. I had a customer ask this question the other day, and at first it stumped me for a bit. It turns out this is controlled by the Default View Scale in the Corridor Section Editor.
Depending on the design you are working on and the extents of your corridor, you may have portions where your daylight varies from say 50’ to 80’ and you may want to see what lies beyond your design. By default you may not see the entire extents of your design in the Corridor Section Editor. When first launching the Corridor Section Editor from the contextual corridor Ribbon tab, you will notice that the displayed elements will remain the same when zooming in or out. By default the scale for the Corridor Section Editor is set to 2.5, to get more of your surface to display you are going to want to increase the scale.
While in the Corridor Section Editor, you can control the default view scale through the Edit/View Options. This will launch a dialog that give you the control to change the options available for corridor sections. As I said before this is set by default to 2.5, so for this example we will up it to a scale of 10. After changing the scale, click OK to dismiss the dialog. After dismissing the dialog, you will notice that nothing has changed in regards to how much of your surface is displayed. This is because the Corridor Section Editor much be closed and reopened in order for the changes to take effect. After doing so you can see the the desired amount of your surface is now displayed and you can go about viewing and editing your corridor sections.
This can be resolved by editing the Surface Style and changing the Surface Section Visibility to ON.
The end result will be much more helpful.
Depending on the settings, grips for a Civil 3D point will allow the point to be rotated as a whole with the label included. Of course the question/request would come up: Can I rotate the marker independently of the label? This can be accomplished, but may have restrictions depending on the UCS and view you are using in your drawing.
For my example I am going to use the bound symbol, which takes me back to my field crew days. Living and working in New Hampshire (the granite state) we used to set a lot of granite bounds when subdivisions were complete due to local requirements. These local planning boards required the smooth face of the bound to be set aligned with the right-of-way, and they also required their plans to reflect that rotation as well. To get our point markers to rotate and have our labels stay plan readable we are going to need to change the way the label interacts with the point marker itself.
First we are going to need to edit the point label style we are using. On the General tab of the Label Style Composer we are going to take a look at the Behavior Properties, specifically the Orientation Reference. Typically this is set to Object, which “attaches” the label to the point marker. We are going to want to set this to View or World Coordinate System, which will hold the label to these two setting rather then the actual point marker. This also is dependant on whether or not your UCS is set to World Coordinate System or not, so you should take note of this because it will produce different results. Go ahead and click APPLY, OK to exit out of these dialog boxes. You then should be able to rotate those granite bounds to the planning board heart’s content!
I would like to note that the fodder for this post was provided via a conversation with fellow Support Technician and all around good guy, Almas Suljevic. Thanks Almas!
To all visitors of Being Civil blog I’ll take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and may this one be the best one ever!
Yesterday, I got a question from a customer asking is it possible and how to raise or lower group of points. Immediately I thought that should not be the problem but was worried that if we change the datum by some coefficient that all points will be elevated. When I tried it that is exactly what happened. So, no silver bullet there.
Sometimes when troubleshooting it is useful to see what system variables are toggled and compare them to one another to find any discrepancies. To do this you can use the AutoCAD command SYSVDLG. This will launch a dialog box that displays a list of all the system variables. If you select one, it will populate such information as a description of the values, what the current value is, what the initial value was, and allows you to specify a new value. You also have the ability to “Save All” and export out your complete system variable list as a .SVF file which can be opened in Notepad to compare settings side by side. This .SVF file can also be sent to other users and imported in a drawing using the “Read” button. Whether you are using this to troubleshoot an issue, compare system settings, or just looking up what a variable can do for you this can be a handy little tool. Enjoy!