Transparent Commands

Yesterday I talked about the transparent commands in Civil 3D. You can access them by turning on the Transparent Commands Toolbar.

So let’s say you want to draw a simple pipe in a profile view in Civil 3D but you’re not yet comfortable with pipes – no worries.

As long as you have a Civil 3D profile view in your drawing, simply start the line command. When prompted for the first point, select the “Profile Station Elevation” button on the Toolbar and you’ll be prompted for – well – I think you get the picture! To the right of that button is the “Profile Grade Station” button.

What’s that – you like to type? First and foremost – did you know the Earth is round? Apparently back in 350 BC, Aristotle declared that the Earth was a sphere. I can’t be sure, but I think he had the help of a Summagraphics tablet with a 16 button puck…

These are the transparent commands found in Civil 3D:

station and elevation in a profile view ‘PSE

grade and length in a profile view ‘PGL

grade and station in a profile view ‘PGS

angle and distance ‘AD

bearing and distance ‘BD

azimuth and distance ‘ZD

deflection angle and distance ‘DD

northing and easting ‘NE

grid northing and grid easting ‘GN

latitude and longitude ‘LL

point number ‘PN

point name (alias) ‘PA

a point in a drawing ‘PO

side shot from a point ‘SS

station and offset ‘SO

Enjoy!