Left Align Your Labels

Have you ever had a label that looked like this:


But you wanted it to look like this:



Here's the solution:


In the Dragged State tab of the Label Style Composer, set the Leader Justification setting to false.

The Mysteriously Moving Polyline

Since this is a repeat question in my office, I thought I would share the solution with you. Here are two possible scenarios:

1. Draw a polyline with an elevation of 0.00 in location "A". Highlight the polyline and change the elevation to 147.00 and the polyline moves to location "B".

2. Draw a line at any elevation and location "C". Highlight the line and change the elevation of one endpoint to a different elevation and the line moves to location "D".

You might even find that if you try to execute a move command on either the polyline or the line from Step 1 or Step 2, they won't appear to move because the elevation doesn't change.

Do you know what the problem is?

The view has been changed to something other than "Top".

To correct the situation, just type -view at the command prompt and then top to reset the view. You can also find the solution in the dropdown menus at View-3D Views-Top.

Publishing (in Stereo)

So you're publishing in the background and you need to "plot something real quick". You hit the old plot button and you're faced with this message:


Great. Now what?

Here's the secret.

Open a second session of Civil 3D and plot from that session.

Yes, it's that simple.

I've been experimenting with using multiple sessions of Civil 3D 2009 and so far it seems more stable (knock on wood). So when I was faced with publishing a sheet set with a portion of the set using one page setup and the other portion using a different page setup, I gave the multiple sessions a try and it's working like a dream.

For this process, I have the 3GB switch enabled and I'm using Windows XP. I have my publishcollate variable set to 0 (zero) so the sheets are intermixed. I could have set my publishcollate variable to 1 (one) and the plot would have sent as one file then I could have the sheets in order for easier collating in the end. Since I had never tried to publish from multiple sessions of AutoCAD, I chose not to collate before sending to the printer. This way I could verify that the process was indeed working.

Sometimes xlist Just Isn't Enough

Hopefully everyone knows about the xlist command. It returns the object type, layer, color, and linetype of an entity that is in either a block or an external reference drawing. Sometimes the resulting dialog box isn't large enough to read the layer name so give this a try:

-xlist

This command will give you the same information, but the result appears in the command line instead of a dialog box. It's also helpful when you're trying to find a layer in a layer list to either change the color, lineweight, or plot style. By having the results in the command line, you can still read the layer name while your browsing through the layer manager list.

Do You Have What It Takes?

If you think you have what it takes, or even if you just want to get a jump start on the new technology, Jack Strongitharm (otherwise known as Junction Jack), has blogged instructions on how to join this year's beta test program for Civil 3D. It's not too late to test the new features before the final product hits the shelf, but you better make it fast.