• Tag: add ons

    Plan Production Workflow with CTC Tools: Sheet Sets

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    Creating sheets has always been a time-consuming process and needs to be addressed quite early in the design for preliminary submissions.

    While sheet sets can help us with global information updates across sheets with the use of fields, they cannot alter or create layouts and viewports.

    Civil 3D does offer a solution for creating multiple sheets in one fell swoop. But, where these tools fall short is in flexibility and updating.

    CTC Software has come up with a set of tools to bridge this gap in flexibility and updating. This workflow can integrate seamlessly into a company standard with only the addition of 3 blocks and a few designated layers.

    Sheet Generator ties in with sheet sets for information updating, and has the power to update Plan & Profile sheets if the alignment or scope change throughout a project.

    Instead of View Frames spliced by matchlines, Plan Viewshapes inserts blocks as viewport area extents and closed polylines representing the actual shape of the viewports in layout sheets.

    Profile Views takes advantage of native tools to split up profiles for each sheet.

    Networks to Views adds all desired networks to profile views, but only assigns parts to the views they are visible in.

    Adjust & Move on Profiles allow for efficient tweaking of the profile views to best line up with Plan Viewshapes.

    Profile Viewshapes overlays the extents of the profile viewports onto the profile views for designers to make any last adjustments.

    Create Layouts takes the plan viewshapes and profile viewshapes, adds matchlines to either depending on settings, adds north arrows, and creates sheets that can be added to a new or existing sheet set.

    The true power of this tool set is the Update layouts command. As plan viewshapes change or shift this tool can write that change out to the affected layouts. It will adjust viewport shapes, north arrows, matchlines, layout names, and ripple through the sheet set.

    CTC also has great tutorials for all their tools on their Youtube Channel.

    Gravity Pipe Network Editing Best Practices using CTC Tools

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    Today’s blog post will be focused on revealing the industry’s best practices for Civil 3D – Pipe Networks.

    Explore the techniques to build Civil 3D gravity pipe networks and edit them using the new CTC Pipe Designer, Part Tagger, and Part Swapper all from CTC’s CIM Suite.

    CIM Suite will help you to:

    • Improve sheet production with automated labeling, dynamic plan and profile sheets, and automatic legends
    • Create better grading models with dynamic site grading, corridor target automation, corridor splitting, and merging
    • Work more efficiently with pipe networks using a dynamic pipe run designer, multiple part swapping, and manhole schedule automation
    • Effectively manage multiple survey code standards, improve survey database workflows, and automate data prep for construction staking

    Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and Blog to stay up-to-date.

    Common Uses of Productivity Tools by Contractors

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    Model Compare, in the BIM Project Suite. This tool can compare to iterations of a Revit model. Very useful to see “what’s changed” in very great detail. Thus if they are estimating, or looking for coordination issues, model compare is an excellent tool that many of our contractors use.

    Spreadsheet Link, in the BIM Project Suite. This tool can push and pull data to and from Revit and spreadsheets. Very useful in estimation processes, and also if they ever need to push commissioning/installation/facility management data back into Revit objects in a project.

    Fab Sheets, in the BIM Project Suite. This tool was actually created specifically for contractors who self-perform concrete work. If they do, or create any type of construction sequencing drawing/pour sets, this tool could be a huge time saver.

    Project Cleaner, in the BIM Manager Suite. This tool is free. It helps to clean up models coming in from other parties, blowing away things like working views, or “all views, not on a sheet” which is a common desire of general contractors. This solves a few things. One, it makes the Revit project file faster performing. Two, by blowing away all the “junk” the designers left behind, it makes navigating the project in Revit easier.

    Dim Checker, in the BIM Manager Suite. This is a really cool tool. It finds out where designers might be “lying” in a dimension.

    1. Sometimes designers and engineers do not feel they have time to properly coordinate modeled object positions
    2. Too frequently this leads to overriding dimension values in very dirty ways, mimicking the days of AutoCAD workflows
    3. Unfortunately, these are rarely found and more rarely repaired, and can cause HUGE headaches for contractors and increase risk.
    4. The DIM Checker allows these dimensions strings to be found and reports generated to allow the team to easily repair and coordinate these dimensions where appropriate

    Plotter & Exporter, in the BIM Batch Suite. This tool runs on a nightly, or specified schedule to do all your exports for you. NavisWorks, PDF, DWG, whatever else you might need, automatically.

    1. Sure, generating PDFs can happen from Bluebeam, but what about everything else
    2. DWGs, Navisworks files and others often must be exported for other consultants and partners
    3. Instead of doing this from multiple places, use Plotter/Exporter to single click export all the needed files
    4. Have them exported where you want, named how you want with the exact settings you want.
    5. Instead of manually triggering exports, try scheduling this so it can happen after hours and be ready for you when you walk in the office

    Last but not least:

    Import & Link Manger, in the BIM Manager Suite. Loading, and reloading links and imported files for coordination happens all the time. Waiting for Revit to link in everything, or to find where a link or import may, or may not be working is a pain.

    1. All too frequently files are improperly linked or imported into production models
    2. While Revit does allow minimal management of links, there is no easy way to find and fix imported AutoCAD files
    3. ILM is critical to the regular maintenance of models by finding and fixing imports and update link settings in a simple interface

    To watch our previous webinars on BIM Project Suite click here!