INTRODUCTION TO THE INQUIRY TOOLS IN AUTOCAD CIVIL 3D 2009

In teaching classes and advising our clients in the use of Civil 3D over the years, I have found that the Inquiry Tools are simply not used that often. In most cases, when folks are introduced to these tools for the first time they are amazed and wonder how they ever survived without them.

The truth is that the Inquiry Tools are not indispensible - all the information gleaned from the Inquiry Tools can be captured elsewhere in our drawings using various methods but I find that these "various methods" are never quite as quick or thorough as the Inquiry Tools. Besides being non-critical to the program, I also speculate that the Inquiry Tools are often unused because of their innocuous title and position on the innocuous "General" pulldown menu. Whatever the case may be, I think many users could benefit from their use and should become more proficient users as a result.

As stated above, the Inquiry Tools are launched from the "General" pulldown menu and unlike some of the other Palette based functions there is no hotkey shortcut to launch this toolbar.

Once the Toolbar is opened, the user can pick a variety of options under the different Inquiry types to extract information from the Civil entities contained within that drawing.

As an example, if a user needed to know the centerline elevation along a profile at a given station, he or she can select Profile from the pulldown list then choose the "Profile Station and Elevation at Point" option. Once that option has been selected, the user must now choose a Profile either from a list or using the "Select from Drawing" button. The result is accurate and clearly presented.

Once the Elevation has been calculated, the result can then be transferred to the Clipboard or the command line using one of the two buttons found in the upper right corner of the Results box.

In this example, the same information can be obtained by using observing tool tip information as the user zooms tightly into the profile or by drawing some guide lines and taking distance measurements in the profile. But these methods, as stated above, are simply neither as accurate nor quick as the Inquiry Tools.

Some other useful options include:

• Point > Point Inverse option which will calculate the distance between two known point numbers.
• Surface > Surface Elevation and Grade between Points.
• Profile View > Profile View Elevation and Grade between Points.
• A wide variety of Cross Section and Corridor Section offset and elevation options.