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Contents

Chapter 1 Welcome to the AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Getting More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Setting Up the Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Saving Your Tutorial Drawings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Chapter 2 Getting Started Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Tutorial: Understanding the AutoCAD Civil 3D User Interface . . . . . . 5
Exercise 1: Finding Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Exercise 2: Understanding the Toolspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Exercise 3: Using the Panorama Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Tutorial: Using Basic Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Tutorial: Viewing AutoCAD Civil 3D Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Exercise 1: Setting Up the Drawing Window . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Exercise 2: Changing the Display of an Object . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Exercise 3: Viewing a Drawing in Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter 3 Points Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Tutorial: Creating Point Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Exercise 1: Creating Description Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Exercise 2: Creating Point Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Exercise 3: Importing Points from a Database . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Tutorial: Displaying and Editing Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Exercise 1: Displaying an Externally Referenced Drawing . . . . . 31

iii
 Exercise 2: Changing the Style of a Point Group . . . . . . . . . . 32
Exercise 3: Changing Point Group Display Order . . . . . . . . . 33
Exercise 4: Removing an Externally Referenced Drawing . . . . . 35
Exercise 5: Editing Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Tutorial: Adding User-Defined Properties to Points . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Exercise 1: Creating User-Defined Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Exercise 2: Creating a Label Style That Displays a User-Defined
Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Exercise 3: Assigning User-Defined Properties to Points . . . . . . 41
Exercise 4: Importing Points with User-Defined Properties . . . . 42
Exercise 5: Querying User-Defined Property Information . . . . . 44

Chapter 4 Point Cloud Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Tutorial: Working with Point Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Exercise 1: Importing Point Cloud Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Exercise 2: Working with Point Cloud Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Exercise 3: Adding Point Cloud Data to a Surface . . . . . . . . . 53

Chapter 5 Surfaces Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Tutorial: Creating and Adding Data to a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Exercise 1: Creating a TIN Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Exercise 2: Adding Point Data to a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Exercise 3: Adding Breaklines to a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Exercise 4: Adding an Outer Boundary to a Surface . . . . . . . . 70
Tutorial: Working with Large Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Exercise 1: Limiting Imported Surface Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Exercise 2: Simplifying a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Tutorial: Changing the Surface Style and Display . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Exercise 1: Editing the Surface Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Exercise 2: Using a Different Style for a Surface . . . . . . . . . . 83
Exercise 3: Labeling a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Tutorial: Editing Surface Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Exercise 1: Swapping TIN Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Exercise 2: Deleting TIN Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Exercise 3: Adding a Hide Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Exercise 4: Smoothing a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Tutorial: Creating a Watershed and Water Drop Analysis . . . . . . . . 96
Exercise 1: Configuring a Style for Watershed Display . . . . . . . 97
Exercise 2: Generating a Watershed Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Exercise 3: Creating a Watershed Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Exercise 4: Extracting Objects from a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Exercise 5: Analyzing Surface Water Runoff . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Tutorial: Generating Surface Volume Information . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Exercise 1: Creating the Base and Comparison Surfaces . . . . . 106
Exercise 2: Creating a TIN Volume Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

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 Exercise 3: Creating a Composite Volume Calculation . . . . . . 110
Tutorial: Visualizing Surface Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Exercise 1: Moving Multi-View Blocks to a Surface . . . . . . . . 111
Exercise 2: Rendering a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Tutorial: Obtaining an Aerial Image and Draping It on a Surface . . . . 116
Exercise 1: Publishing Surface Data to Google Earth . . . . . . . 117
Exercise 2: Importing a Google Earth Image . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Exercise 3: Draping an Image on a Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter 6 Survey Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Tutorial: Survey Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Exercise 1: Creating a Survey Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Exercise 2: Setting the Equipment and Figure Prefix
Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Exercise 3: Adjusting and Verifying Settings . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Exercise 4: Setting Survey Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Exercise 5: Setting Up a Linework Code Set . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Tutorial: Importing Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Exercise 1: Importing Field-Coded Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . 136
Exercise 2: Updating Imported Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Tutorial: Viewing and Editing Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Exercise 1: Viewing Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Exercise 2: Editing a Figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Tutorial: Analyzing and Reducing Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Exercise 1: Querying Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Exercise 2: Performing Traverse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Exercise 3: Performing Least Squares Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Exercise 4: Translating a Survey Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Tutorial: Manually Creating Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Exercise 1: Creating Survey Data Using the Toolspace Survey
Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Exercise 2: Creating Survey Data Using the Traverse Editor . . . . 160
Exercise 3: Creating Survey Data Using the Survey Command
Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Exercise 4: Calculating an Azimuth in The Astronomic Direction
Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Exercise 5: Creating Figures from Parcels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Tutorial: Outputting Survey Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Exercise 1: Viewing Inverse and Mapcheck Information on a
Survey Figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Exercise 2: Performing a Mapcheck Analysis with Parcel
Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Exercise 3: Performing a Mapcheck Analysis by Manually
Entering Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Exercise 4: Working with Mapcheck Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Exercise 5: Creating Surface Breaklines from Figures . . . . . . . 181

Contents | v
Chapter 7 Project Management Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Tutorial: Using Data Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Exercise 1: Setting Up a Data Shortcut Folder . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Exercise 2: Creating Data Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Exercise 3: Referencing Data Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Tutorial: Vault Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Exercise 1: Logging In to Autodesk Vault . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Exercise 2: Creating User Accounts and Groups . . . . . . . . . . 197
Exercise 3: Creating a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Tutorial: Creating, Referencing, and Modifying Project Object
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Exercise 1: Adding a Drawing to the Project . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Exercise 2: Creating a Reference to a Project Object . . . . . . . 202
Exercise 3: Checking Out and Modifying a Project Object . . . . 204
Exercise 4: Checking In a Project Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Exercise 5: Updating a Project Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Tutorial: Creating and Modifying Project Point Data . . . . . . . . . . 207
Exercise 1: Adding Points to a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Exercise 2: Checking Out and Modifying Project Points . . . . . 209
Exercise 3: Checking In Project Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Tutorial: Exporting and Importing Vault Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Exercise 1: Exporting a Vault Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Exercise 2: Importing a Data Shortcut Project into Vault . . . . . 212

Chapter 8 Alignments Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Tutorial: Creating Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Exercise 1: Creating an Alignment with the Alignment Layout
Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Exercise 2: Adding Free Curves and Spirals to an
Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Exercise 3: Adding Floating Curves to an Alignment . . . . . . . 219
Tutorial: Editing Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Exercise 1: Editing the Layout Parameter Values of an
Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Exercise 2: Grip Editing an Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Exercise 3: Applying a Mask to an Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Tutorial: Working with Offset Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Exercise 1: Creating Offset Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Exercise 2: Editing an Offset Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Exercise 3: Adding a Widening to an Offset Alignment . . . . . . 239
Exercise 4: Editing an Offset Widening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Tutorial: Designing an Alignment that Refers to Local Standards . . . 248
Exercise 1: Drawing an Alignment that Refers to Design
Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

vi | Contents