Explore the functionalities of data references and external references in AutoCAD's Civil 3D. Learn the unique features of data shortcuts and how they function differently from external references, offering dynamic options in your drawings.
Key Insights
- External references in AutoCAD allow users to reference files in a drawing as a background, which are often scaled back or grayed out, and essentially create a snapshot of what a file looks like in a different drawing.
- Data shortcuts, similar to external references in Civil 3D, allow users to draw from objects in another drawing, creating dynamic elements in your drawings. These can include surfaces, alignments, pipe networks, pressure networks, corridors, and view frame groups.
- While data shortcuts offer more dynamic options, not every object in Civil 3D can be referenced in a data shortcut. For example, parcels must be controlled entirely in the parent drawing and brought in via external references, not data shortcuts.
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So in this video, we’re not going to draw anything inside Civil 3D. We’re just going to talk about a topic that we’re about to go into in the next couple of videos.
We’re going to talk about data references and external references. So anybody who’s been drafting inside the AutoCAD framework is going to be pretty familiar with external references. Those are referencing files inside a drawing as a background for what you’re working on.
Those objects or those files that you reference in are generally scaled back in the drawing or kind of grayed out a little bit so that you can tell that they are not part of the drawing. However, the file looks in the parent drawing is how it’s going to look in your drawing. And so you’re basically taking a snapshot of what a file looks like in a different drawing.
What we have inside Civil 3D is something that’s very similar to external references, but it functions a little differently. And that is the option called data shortcuts. I often reference them as data references, but Civil 3D refers to them as data shortcuts.
If I occasionally call them data references while we’re talking about them in the course, what I am referring to is data shortcuts. We’re referencing in objects inside Civil 3D. So inside the Prospector tab at the bottom, you’ll notice that there is this option for data shortcuts.
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And what you’re going to see here is that you have objects inside Civil 3D that you can reference into a drawing from another drawing and inside your file structures. So data shortcuts can be brought in, including surfaces, alignments, pipe networks, pressure networks, corridors, and view frame groups. So these objects can be taken from another drawing and placed in your drawing.
And where we have a difference in xrefs is that they are static, these objects are dynamic inside your drawing. So say you did an xref of parcels, which is what we’re going to do in this course. We’re going to xref a parcel.
When you xref a parcel, that parcel is fully controlled by the parent drawing. Whereas a data shortcut, if we were to data shortcut a surface, that surface is going to be displayed based on the settings inside our current drawing. We have all our surface object styles and labels, and all those things can be applied to data shortcuts.
Whereas I cannot place parcel labels, segment labels, or anything like that on an xref, I can in a data shortcut. The fault here, or the shortcoming of data shortcuts, is that not every object inside Civil 3D can be referenced in a data shortcut. So my example of parcels—as you can see in the options for data shortcuts—parcels are not here.
You cannot do a data shortcut for a parcel. So you have to control all of the parcel information inside the parent drawing, and then xref it in. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to wrap up this video.
I’ll meet you in the next one, and we’re going to start talking about creating these data shortcuts.
