What’s New in Civil 3D 2012

Styles and Settings Management

Any of us who have tried to create or streamline a template have wondered when we would get a better solution to importing styles than this: open template, open second drawing containing needed style, and drag needed style to template. This method took an inordinate amount of clicks and we were only able to import one style at a time. Well, we got our wish with Civil 3D 2012! Not only do we not have to open a second drawing, we can import all styles with just a few clicks.

We’ll import styles first (Note: the drawing must be saved before invoking the command or you’ll get a message telling you as much).

Click the Manage tab on your ribbon and find the Styles panel, where you’ll find the following:

Click Import. A familiar dialog box opens allowing you to choose the correct drawing to import from.

Select the appropriate file by double-clicking or by highlighting and clicking Open. This opens the Import Civil 3D Styles dialog box.

Expand the tree to see styles to be added or updated. Check or uncheck appropriate styles as needed and click OK. The following dialog appears:

Click OK again. Civil 3D processes the selected styles and returns a dialog box regarding your import:

Click OK to complete the command. Congratulations! You’ve just imported several styles in a matter of minutes.

Too many styles? Want to streamline a production drawing a bit? Now let’s purge those unneeded styles.

Click the Manage tab on your ribbon and find the Styles panel, where you’ll find the following:

Click Purge. This opens the Style Purge Confirmation dialog.

Here you will find all the unused styles within a drawing. Check or uncheck appropriate styles as needed and click OK. Civil 3D processes the selected styles and returns the information regarding your purge to the command line:

You have now purged all those pesky unused styles from your drawing.

Two additional added features regarding styles includes replacing object styles and finding styles.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re clicking happily along importing points, creating surfaces, profiles and such. You finish and realize that all your hard work has been created with the wrong style associated with it! Civil 3D 2012 allows you to select all the objects associated with that style and replace the “wrong” style with the “correct” style.

Head to the Settings tab of your Toolspace. Expand the tree until you find the style you’d like to replace, highlight it, right click and select Replace with…

The following dialog opens:

Open all available styles by clicking the Pulldown arrow.

Highlight the replacement style and click OK. You have now replaced the “wrong” style with the “correct” style globally.

Finally, we’ll deal with finding that style that Civil 3D says is in use somewhere, somehow, but you just don’t know where, because you don’t see any of your objects using it. We can locate these styles by simply Finding references.

We’ll again head to the Settings tab of your Toolspace. Expand the tree until you find the style you’d like to find, highlight it, right click and select Find references…

The following dialog opens:

Not only does this dialog list the references pertaining to a certain style, but double-clicking the location in this dialog will immediately place you at that location in your Settings tab of your Toolspace!

These are just a few of the “new” features included in Civil 3D 2012 that will save you important production time. Take a moment to see which ones will work best for you and include them in your workflow.

This page last edited on Monday, June 13, 2011