Thursday, April 19, 2012

Welcome...and oh ya, Mapping Cleanup Tools!

Hello and welcome to the Civil 3D sorcerer. For the first post I'm going to keep it pretty light and oddly enough, the feature I'm speaking about is actually included in AutoCAD Map. But because AutoCAD Map is included in the Civil 3D platform, it counts! The Drawing Cleanup tools are great for de-sizing a drawing in a real hurray. It's automated, wizard driven interface makes it not only easy to use but functional, as well. I remember being very skeptical when trying out this suite of tools when I first heard of it many years ago, and, let's just say I made multiple backups first!

 To find the tools quickly click the application button and type Drawing Cleanup in the search box. Or type MAPCLEAN on the command line. The wizard will take you through a set of dialogs in which you specify which type of entities you'd like to clean, how you want to clean them and fix inconsistencies in the drawing. It will work on Civil 3D objects and regular AutoCAD entities and you're able to save your cleaning settings so you can clean house on many drawings very quickly. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure the rest out yourself so have fun and enjoy your smaller, cleaner drawings!

Remember, if you have a good Civil 3D/Map 3D comment or tip/trick, email it to me and I'll try to get it posted.