Explore the fundamentals of setting up survey databases in Civil 3D, including the importance of having correct user settings to ensure the optimal functioning of the software. Learn about the process of configuring paths for various database defaults, how to establish a centralized location for all line work code sets, figure prefix databases, equipment databases, and survey databases, and how these settings translate across Civil 3D as a whole.
Key Insights
- Proper configuration of user settings in Civil 3D is crucial. This includes setting up paths for survey database defaults, equipment defaults, line work processing defaults, and figure defaults. These paths direct where the software will save information about databases and equipment.
- The user settings in Civil 3D translate across the software as a whole. This means that if one were to close a drawing and open another, the user settings would be retained in any drawing that is opened inside of Civil 3D.
- Having a centralized location for line work code sets, figure prefix databases, equipment databases, and survey databases can enhance the functioning of Civil 3D. This allows relevant information to be brought into multiple different drawings across your Civil 3D software.
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In this video we're going to start talking about Survey Databases, but before we do that we need to do a little bit of housekeeping. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to save this drawing and then I'm also going to do a Save As so that we can retain what we did in our Civil 201 COGO.
So I'm going to go ahead and say File > Save As, and then I'm going to change this from Civ 201 COGO to Civ 201 Survey. I'm going to save it to my directory where I have all of the other files for the class, and I'm going to click Save. Then I'm going to go ahead and select all of the items that we worked on in our COGO drawing and I'm going to delete them. I'm going to go ahead and save this again with the blank drawing, and then we are ready to start discussing survey databases.
So the survey database is a file directory of where we have different survey entities and different survey imports, and so all of that information inside of Civil 3D is contained inside of the Survey tab in the Toolspace window. So I'm going to navigate to the Survey tab, and what you'll see here is we have Survey Databases, Equipment Databases, Figure Prefix Databases, and Line Work Code Sets. We're going to walk through all of these, but the first thing that you have to do to set up your drawing is have your user settings set up correctly.
So what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to navigate up to the upper left corner of our Toolspace and we're going to go ahead and select 'Click Here to Edit Survey User Settings.' So inside of the Survey User Settings, we have directories for all kinds of different entities within Civil 3D, and we have the settings for those entities as well. So what we're going to do is we're going to set our Survey Database Defaults, our Equipment Defaults, our Line Work Processing Defaults, our Figure Defaults, and then we're going to go ahead and check the rest of the items and then we're going to go ahead and save this.
So I am going to not change anything in my Miscellaneous dropdown. These are entities for external editors, and we're not going to be using external editors. So I'm going to go to my Survey Database Defaults.
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I'm going to click on the folder option for Survey Database Settings Path. I am going to navigate to the location where I have my file saved, and I'm going to set my folder that I have my file saved at as the location of my folder for the Survey Database Settings Path. I'm going to select Folder.
I'm going to do the same thing for my Extended Properties Definition Path. I'm going to select my working folder and select Folder. I'm going to set my Equipment Database Path to the same location where I have all my files saved for my Civil 3D course.
I'm going to go to my Line Work Code Sets Path, save it to the same location, working folder. I am going to drop down further, and I'm going to set my Figure Prefix Database Path to the same location, and then I'm going to continue scrolling down. I have no more paths to set, so we're going to go back up and talk about these real quick.
So our Survey Database Defaults is information about how survey databases are being brought into the drawing. So the information for these databases is going to be saved to our working folder for our class files. We also have Equipment Defaults, which we won't be addressing here, but for certain sets of equipment used for a survey, you would save your database information for these pieces of equipment to a specific location.
We're setting it to our working folder for the file or for the class. Next, we work with our Line Work Processing Defaults. These are lines and polylines that Civil 3D will create when we do an import of our survey database.
We are saving these Line Work Code Sets to a specific location. That's going to be our working folder for this class. One thing I am going to check is I'm going to check 'Yes' for Process Line Work During Import.
So I'm going to check yes because when I process my survey import, I want Civil 3D to process the line work during the import. Then I'm going to ignore these. We'll set these when we do our import.
I'm going to go ahead and have my Figure Defaults, our Figure Prefix Database Path, which is our Figure Prefix Database. These are survey figures—basically the shapes and lines created using our Line Work Code Sets that are drawn into Civil 3D during our survey import. We're saving the defaults for that to the working path for our class, and then we have options for the colors of different objects inside our interactive graphics, and the same goes for our Import Defaults.
These are all changeable later, but I go ahead and leave these all as whatever Civil 3D defaults out of the box. So you have options for showing interactive graphics, which would be the colors of these items. We have it checked as No Erase Survey Points from Drawing.
Yes, when you do an import, you're going to erase the survey points from the drawing and then re-import them. You're going to Reset Networks When You Do an Import. You are going to Delete Network Figures When You Do an Import.
This is basically resetting your drawing for you as you do a survey import. Insert Figure Objects. Yes, we want to insert our Figures.
Yes, we want to insert our Survey Points, and then the Default Figure Site if we were to create objects that were a parcel and were associated with sites, which we'll get into in later videos, they would be set to a specific site location. So in this case, they're going to create a site called Survey Site and place those objects inside of that Survey Site. Then we have our tolerances.
We have our Export Defaults, so how we export the figures. Will we export figures with network? Will we export point identifiers? Will we export data points? Yes for all of them, and then our Network Preview. We're not going to be dealing with survey networks, so we have these all unselected, and then we have Setups.
We don't have these for the import they're going to be doing, so we're going to leave these all as No, and then we have the figures and points that we don't want to work with, so we're going to leave them checked as No, and then we have reporting information, and we
Will not be dealing with reporting, so we're going to go ahead and leave these as default for Civil 3D. So I'm going to go ahead and click OK. Now that our survey user settings are set, these settings actually translate not just with the drawing but across Civil 3D as a whole. If you close this drawing and open another, your user settings would be retained in any drawing open inside Civil 3D.
So this is important in that you can have a centralized location for all your Line Work Code Sets, Figure Prefix Databases, Equipment Databases, and Survey Databases, and have that information brought into multiple different drawings across your Civil 3D software. We're going to go ahead and save. In the next video, we're going to start setting up some of these databases and Line Work Code Sets.
