Cad Training
by Kathy O'Brien

This spring the Morgantown Office had Cad Research conduct a training session covering the fundamentals of Civil 3D. This course was designed for cad operators already proficient in Land Desktop software, managing points, creating surfaces, laying out parcels, producing grading with related calculations and generating alignments for pipelines, sites, and roadways. All of the Morgantown cad operators attended the training, while other members of the Design and Survey staff sat in on portions of the training.

Civil 3D creates an integrated drawing where elements within the drawing are linked. When a change is made to the plan view, that change is reflected in the profile view and on all related text, a tremendous saving in cad time. A change to the profile view has the same effect to the plan view and related text. When creating Parcels, all the data for each parcel can be displayed and will change when changes are made to the parcel. Move a property line and the acreage, bearing and distance notes change, if charts have been created the related information on the chart will reflect the change. The linked drawing elements make the creation of charts or the calculation of volumes very easy and quick.

Civil 3D is a powerful tool that can increase productively but it is not an easy step from Land Desktop to Civil 3D. Civil 3D points, surfaces, alignments, profiles and other elements must be created in Civil 3D to be linked. The methods used to create Civil 3D elements are different from those of Land, so new procedures must be learned. Civil 3D requires that a complex set of styles be set up for the company to facilitate the creation of standardized drawings and reduce drawing production time.

Several of the Morgantown cad operators are taking the initiative to set up a set of standards to present to management and have been working toward learning the functionality of Civil 3D. The heavy workload of the spring and summer have not left much time for learning and applying the new drawing methods