Using Automation in Civil 3D for Construction Documentation and Exports

JOWENN LUA: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Using Automation in Civil 3D for Construction, Documentation, and Export. My name is Jowenn Lua. I'm a senior civil designer from Arcadis and I've been Civil 3D for the past 10 years. And in those 10 years, I've seen the software evolve. It became more efficient and it became very flexible.

I remember the time when I needed to create a complex corridor, then sub assembly composer came to the rescue. Now with the help of COM API and that .NET API, we can create our own customization to make things faster. So this class, we will show you how we think outside the box in providing asset data to our client. Here's my co-presenter, Andrew Milford.

ANDREW MILFORD: Good afternoon, everyone. Yes, my names Andrew Milford. I'm an implementation consultant for Autodesk where I've been working here for the last 4 and 1/2 years. Prior to that, I've spent about 25 years in industry as a roads and highways engineer, working for companies such as AECOM Arcadis, and Jacobs just to name a few.

And I guess today, we're going to be looking at four key topics and objectives. We're going to first of all look at how to capitalize on our Country Kit automation. We're going to focus specifically on the ANZ kit which has a few new tools that we introduced this year.

We're going to learn to create some efficient workflows in Civil 3D around, I guess, naming conventions, and importantly around shape codes so that when we come to the third exercise, effectively using Property Sets, it's going to enable us to manage asset tagging. So we're trying to aiming to get unique asset codes for every single element inside our corridor model. And lastly, we're going to look a little bit about automation and how we can actually apply some more smarts to our property set data to assign asset tags en masse. So with that, we'll get into the presentation, and I'll head back over to Jowenn.

JOWENN LUA: OK. So what to expect? So we're going to talk about Section Label Tools and we're going to talk about Barrier Tools. We're going to highlight key features and tips on how to use them. We'll also demonstrate how to use the five stages of Property Set in managing our asset tagging. And as a bonus, we also provided an 80 page detailed handout.

So if you check your download, you got 80 pages detailed handout. So let's start. So I'd like to introduce the ANZ Country Kit automation tool. So where to get the Country Kit? So it's downloadable to Autodesk Knowledge Network and that's the link. If you download and install them, you'll have the civil Australia, New Zealand shortcut.

And where to find the tool? So you can access it via Toolbox-- so here. You can see that if you go to that side, you can access via Toolbox or you can access it via NETLOAD command. So by default, if you install your ANZ Country Kit, you'll have this folder and you'll have these DLLs. So that's the automation that we created.

And for this class, I'm using the following version. As we know, as we progress, we will build more versions and it will improve. So for this class, this is the version I'm using. So let's start with export for construction. So the concept evolved from a UK, i.e. Country Kit where they have this function to export corridor feature line.

With the export for construction ANZ, we add new functionality that we can export from a corridor feature line and also site feature line because, sometimes, you create a manual feature that you want to export as well. And since we're trying to automate a lot, rather than giving a 3D [INAUDIBLE] we also give a functionality to export a 2D in one go. So I've created a bunch of screencasts, so you could watch it and see the detail later on, but I'm trying to cut short the time so that we will see as much as we can.

So let's start with this one. So how do you use export for construction? So in this demo, I created a sample corridor. And if you go to corridor properties, you can see that in the feature line, you will have so many point code-- whether it's a top or subgrid of point code, you have lots of them.

And if you go to site feature line, I created here project boundary. And here, I created a BD1 and BD2, so two features which is that one and that one. And if you go to Toolbox, which is on the right, and you click Export for Construction ANZ, you'll have this option-- then you can choose between a corridor or all the corridors.

So let's say you want to pick all the corridors and all the feature point code that you can use. So let's say you pick Crown, Daylight-- so every feature that you want to output. And then for the site, you pick all the sites that you want. You can ignore everything that is not required. So let's say I want BD1 and BD2.

You give it a name and DWG, and then you save in a new drawing, and then export to the drawing. And if you click this one, it will process and then you'll have an output which is that 3D and 2D. So that's basically the export for construction. So now let's go to section view label. So this tool can annotate a user defined point code and it allows staggering. That's something that's been requested all the time in the forum-- staggering.

And so let's compare cross section labeling capability-- so this is the history of why we're doing this. So for the traditional cross section you got no feature code in the band and they're mostly relying on the surface, because the design surface, existing surface, they're all relying on weeding. So if I created via corridor and then I export a surface and that surface is not good, then your output here is not good as well.

So it's heavily dependent on surface, so we created this hybrid version which is cross section from a corridor. This time, we are using the point code of the corridor which is the exact value. You're actually getting the correct one-- you're not relying on surface anymore, but our existing ground is still dependent on weeding because we cannot incorporate that one.

Also since we're using this method, we are using marker anchor point. And if you attach it via Section View button, which is here, it will not allow you to auto-stagger. So again, you'll find some of your overlapping text, so you'll run a script to separate them or use the API, which this one ticks all the box.

When we use this one, all the feature lines of that corridor is actually displayed here. So the feature line code which is your point code-- your design-- and then your existing surface is actually picking the surface level, but using the point code to auto-stagger. So that's the trick we did here. And one more good thing with this one is if you're using the traditional surface method-- [INAUDIBLE] this is surface all the way there, and then this is another surface. You can not have a thin surface on top of each other-- it won't work, but this one can.

Because it's controlled by point code, you could label them as much as you want. You can customize-- it's so flexible. So quick demo. So how to use the section view label? So this tool needs customization before you can use it. So things to remember. So if you go to these notes, measurement system variable needs to be set to 0 if it's imperial-- it needs to be set to 1 if it's metric. So this demo, I'm using metric, so I'm making my measurement set to 1.

And then second thing is you need to-- your existing ground needs to have the name following a convention. So here, I've got a name called "demo eg," and this one needs to contain at least one of those names there for it to work. It's hardcoded basically, so it needs to have that surface name.

And the next one is you need to create a marker which is called ADSK section label. That marker, it's hardcoded-- needs to look for that name and then it needs to be added to your code set style. So here if I go to my settings in general, label style and marker, you can see that I've created ADSK section label, and there's another one labeled sub.

But let's talk about the label first. So that ADSK section label is this one-- that's the one above. It's just a marker. The one below, you can use it for the sub which is that one below. And we're focusing on the one above first because if you can master the one above easily, you can do the one below.

So let's go back to the notes. And here you can see that the ADSK section label is actually a non-flat layer-- it's just a guide. It can be a depth point or you can actually turn it off if you don't want to see it. And then once you have them, you need to assign it to your code set style. So here, this ADSK section label, I will attach it to my code set style.

You can do it in a new code set style or a current code set style. Let's say I'm going to amend the current one. If you go to the point and scroll down, you can see that in this CBC and CT-- that's my point code-- I want to assign a marker. It will label it. So you need to set it up first.

So once you have that set up, all you need to do next is to create a section data which is blank. And then when you have that blank, assign that one to a band set. And it will look like something like this if you ran a production.

It's a blank section data, and as you can see, I created a blank feature design existing and design [? of ?] [? it. ?] It's all blank and the API will add that one for us. And let's try it. So I'm going to create section and then create multiple section view. And here I'm just going to probably accept the default.

And then I can choose between a production or draft. I already have a production a while ago, so I'm just going to choose draft for now to show them all together, and just accept everything. And here, make sure that your corridor had the code set style that you want. And then continue here-- I'm just going to accept default.

And once you have that one, you can just place it and it will generate until you have all your cross-section, and it's blank. And then what you do is you go to toolbox-- you could assign that one to the one above which is production, or the one below the draft. So I'm just going to assign it in this draft-- the one I just created.

So click section view label, and you just select one section view-- not all of them, just one-- and it will process. And that's the reason why I did the video-- so that it's fast so that one will work. Normally, it takes a few seconds only. And it will stagger to the left and to the right of the center line.

And those labels came from the code set style. You dictate which one to label. And the existing service, again it's picking up from the surface. And if you check the rest, on the rest of my cross section, it's labeling them.

So let's say I changed my mind-- I want my scale to be 1 to 100 for example. So it will change it, but you can see that the label is actually static. Because it's using API, it's adding a text to the property. So you can see it's a text and that's a polyline.

So we did it that way so that it will stagger. And what you need to do there is select this one, go to update section view layout-- it will update to the new scale-- and then render routine again. Select it-- it will delete, and create. So we added that functionality to delete the one that it already had with just bigger text. Now it's a correct font.

So now it auto stagger again in the correct spot. And let's say you want to add that one-- you want to add another string that you missed. Let's say you go to edit this one-- and if you edit this one, go to point, and then you want to add CF, so the one there. CF-- you add ADSK label.

So just add them and then click OK-- click OK to accept and then it will display the tag. And then you need to run the routine again and then it will auto stagger. So if I go to toolbox now and select that view label-- select it again-- it will delete and it will create.

And if you zoom in, it adds that CF and push everything to the left and to the right. So that's basically the tool. So just want to highlight some key important rules regarding section view label. So here, if you add this one, that's what I just showed you-- that it will label it.

And to overwrite it, just add a description. So if my point code is called "back curb" and I want it to be called "CV," add it to this description-- it will overwrite it. And for the surface name of the existing ground, for as long as your surface contains the name of any of this one, it will work.

So this example, I got demo eg-- it will work. All of this won't work because it doesn't have that-- contains that word. Same as the band name-- that's the band name. For as long as all of this is being used here, then it will work for the band text style.

So you can also change the style. Let's say I don't want the standard-- I want it to be aerial or whatever. You can change each one of them via summary, and change this to standard for the band text height. Same thing if you go to any of them-- go to band detail, edit the grade break. It's hardcoded in the grade break.

And you click this compose label and you can see that there's a text there. If there is no text there-- let's say you deleted it-- it will pick the default value of 1.8-- that's the default value. And if you type it in here-- 2.5-- then that will be your text height.

So that's just the certain rule. So now let's discuss about barriers. So this is a new tool that we created to help the [? road ?] furniture. So for example, you get a Civil 3D alignment-- no profile-- and it will find and drape to a surface that have the name "barrier." And it will use a user-defined block that has a name post and term, which is this, and it will detect it.

So the block that we are using as a sample-- so if you install the [INAUDIBLE] you'll have in this folder-- in this template, you'll have something like that. So that's the 2D view, that's the 3D view. So that have that post and that term for the terminal. So this is the demo-- so how to use it? So this is how to use this barrier tool.

Some things you need to remember about the barrier is you need to have surface and alignment. And for the surface, you need to have that term barrier. In this example, I created that service-- I called it barrier-- and I have this corridor. And this corridor has a surface called "core," and then I got existing ground. So those are the surfaces that I will paste to the surface that I've created.

So here in the definition, I paste the existing ground and then I paste the corridor so that I have a composite surface or a super thin they call it in Australia. And once you have it like that, you just need to have your alignment. And in Australia, we call BX as the y rule, and then BF is for our left-hand guardrail, and then BG would be our right-hand guardrail.

So once you have those naming conventions, it'll be easier. And last thing you need to remember about this barrier tool is you need to insert all the blocks you will need. So this is the sample a while ago that I showed-- that I got a terminal that have that [? TRM. ?] And another one would be this post-- it's a block-- it got that post name. For as long as it's inserted, the API will pick that one up.

So let's test this one. I'm just going to [INAUDIBLE] the view here, and go to toolbox and then click the barrier tool. So once you click that one, you'll have this icon, and then you select that this is a barrier and I want to use this post-- it's a wire rope. And if you click OK, it will generate that 3D for you so that your block and your 3D solid is there.

And then if you change your mind-- let's say I want to add more function. Let's say I want to have terminal leads and you want to have terminal trail-- just add that one-- even the layer you can change-- and then you'll have that one in 3D. It drapes to the surface using the alignment. And then let's say you want to add more. Let's say I want to add the BF-- because we call it BF for the left-hand side rail.

So just attach that one, and then for the BG, that's your right-hand side rail. And then you could also change the spacing. So let's say the wire rope, I will change it to 5 meters instead of 2.5-- just change that one to 5 and click OK. It will regenerate and then you'll have all of that solids.

So as you can see, it's 3D-- it's draped to a surface. And just to illustrate more-- how simple to create this one-- let's say I got a polyline. That's just a polyline-- I will just bring it in the middle and I will make a new alignment on top of it. I'll create alignment from polyline, select that one, and then let's say I want to add curve, because most of the sample [INAUDIBLE] straight, so I'll add here 100 pages.

And then all I need to do now is to use the wire tool. Let's say I want to add a wire rope in that one, so I click the barrier tool in the toolbox. And then you can see that I've created CL4 alignment. This is a barrier-- I want to use TL3-- click OK. And then it will generate-- easily delete and create, and then you'll have that one.

So as you can see, it follows the curve as well. And then all you need to do is attach attribute later on. So this is a sample output of that one. So as you can see, it creates a solid, it creates the block-- your predefined block-- and that's how it looks like, and it drapes to a surface.

So now let's talk about the Genio 2D. So this generates 2D-- can convert a 3D Genio import to a 2D flattened drawing. So this is in conjunction with using the following. We need to create a template and a table for the import-export, and a mapping. And I'll explain that one further later on.

An additional tool we need for this one is we need to have the input-export extension for Genio 2019. So this one you can find in that link, and I think it's for a subscription, so you just have to check if you have that one. And so this is a quick them on how to use it. So how do to use this Genio 2D first, you need to set up the template so that you will have the layers and blocks. So when you click File, New, you'll have those layers and block there so.

We created from the RMS survey. And then second is you want to set up your Genio mapping table. And this one will just tell you this string will convert to this civil 3D layers. And the third thing you want to set up is the Genio mapping file. So this is something new that we created. We just actually convert Cogo point and the 3D into the blocks and flatten it.

So this is the mapping file, and I'll open the mapping file to show how it looks like. So by installing the Country Kit, you'll have it by default in this location. And if you open this text file in Notepad or any file that can open it-- so you can see that it looks hard to read because it's tab delimited.

But you can see that you can have the code layer color block name there. And you can read this one in a CSV or Excel, which is easier. So if I open that one in Excel-- and you can see its code layer is all arranged properly. So that's how you actually read them. And you could customize this one. So this is just a mapping file that we create.

And so let me show you how to use this one now. So let's start with creating a new file. I click New, and then I will go to the template. And that template has a pre-created layers. As I mentioned a while ago, we create all the layers we will need, which is good because you could create your own layer and create your own block, and you could have your own customization up and running.

So here you got all the standard [? things ?] that we are using. And if you click Insert, you can see that we already have predefined block-- it's all RMS. So we set it up. And so once you have this one set up, you can just Delete and then render within. So I delete this one out, and I will do the import from Genio.

So for the import for Genio file, you need to set up first the option. So if you go to the option and then go to this location for the mapping table so that you can load it. And then in this link, it's standard. Once you install it, you'll have this one as well and you can customize that one.

So if you point to that one, as you can see here, you've got the string coming from the Genio, and the layer and the color, it will convert. So all you need to do now is if you get a survey Genio, you just load that one. And then you could see that it's all [INAUDIBLE]-- you could pick one by one-- omit whatever you don't want-- or you can click all of them at once and then just run the import-export.

So here I'm going to click Plus and then Import and it will run. Sometimes it's one minute, sometimes it's 20 minutes-- it depends on how big your survey is. And if you click OK, you can see that you have a 3D model from a Genio file. And this one, if you check, it will be 3D polyline and Cogo point.

So that's the way it works as of the moment. And if you rotate this one, you can see that's actually in 3D. So let's move onto output. So once you have that kind of output, when we run the Genio 2D, it will convert them to a much easier to understand, which is a standard layer, standard line type flattened version-- it's good for CAD production.

And another sample is like this. This is when we import from a survey, and then when we render it in, it will look like that. So that's just a productivity part on that one. And now let's talk about export feature line x, y, z. So this is a very simple tool that exports a feature line into a CSV.

So it will output name, chainage-- or station here in America-- and x, y, and z, which is our easting, northing, and elevation. So just a quick demo-- it's 52 seconds, so let's do this one. So this export for construction, as I showed a while ago, I have this demo corridor. And I have a feature line here, and that feature line has two feature lines, BD1 and BD2.

So all you need to do is go to toolbox and then click Export feature line. And then you select-- anything you select-- [INAUDIBLE] select that feature line-- it will only pick that side feature line. And then name a CSV, save it-- and then click Save.

When you open this one, you can see that you'll have that report. So if you get 10 feature lines, you've got 10 feature lines. In this case, I have only two. So you've got chainage x, y, z, and then my BD2 and BD1 below which is that one. So now let's move onto profile view, datum adjust, and profile view data band copy.

So the first one, which is this, it adjusts the datum to a multiple profile view. The second one, which is this, it copies a profile data band and then pastes it to another data band. This is very useful.

I'll show you an example. So how to use profile view-- that datum adjust? So this one is very useful if you create a multiple profile view. So this one, I'm creating a multiple profile view. And I already have it here, but let's say I want to adjust height.

Here, I will select one-- I will change the profile. And as you can see, I can change the elevation to elevation 50 and then it will adjust, but it only adjusts independent. So it won't adjust the rest which is annoying-- if you got 100 of that, you won't update one by one. So this time, you can click this date profile datum view and select all of them, and then just add a gap-- let's say 30-- enter that one and then you'll have all of them up and running. So this is really cool for production.

And let's say for some reason you adjust your profile way, way beyond your design. Let's say you bring this one up for some reason and then it won't show anymore. It's annoying. So instead of modifying one by one, just use the tool, select all of them, and then let's say this time, I want 20-- Enter and then it will rebuild.

So that's how cool it is. So the next one would be the profile data band copy. So this one, again, it's very useful if you're creating multiple profile view. So here I got a sample profile. All of them have profile one as MC 10 and profile two as MC 10.

So all the profiles that I have, it has the same mistake-- it's all wrong. So I want to change profile two to be existing ground, for example. So if I change this one to existing ground, it will only update just to that profile. So using this tool, it can copy all the settings and paste it to the rest rather than you modifying again and again.

So by doing that, I copy the source, paste it to there. And if I go here now, you can see that this one have the surface. It includes everything, including staggering and [? reading. ?] So let's say some engineer or project manager says to you, I don't want your presentation-- after half of the project, they decide to change it.

They want the horizontal to go down, they want the existing to go up. For some reason, they change it. And you already have your productivity up and running and you don't want to change all of them again and again. So you just use this tool-- you select a source by-- selecting profile copy selects a source, and then paste it to all of them. And that will automatically adjust afterwards.

So that's how cool that one is. So let's go to building Civil 3D model to include owner asset data. So we're going to talk about naming conventions here. So we're suggesting to use this naming convention. For example here, we're using plus for this baseline, and we're using minus for a separator.

And we're working this from left to right. So we're using, let's say, P8-- it's pavement with 8 layers. S stands for shoulder of 8 layers. We use "I" for interface, "V" for [? Verge, ?] et cetera, et cetera. So that's a naming convention we use. And this one is very critical-- shape code.

We suggest you use four components for the shape code, and it's also separated by a minus sign. And again, this is very critical because that minus sign will be used in the property set as a split separator. So for the family, we're actually using three or four characters here.

For the lane type, we're using a more detailed one-- it's an RMS RAMS guideline, which is our road assessment management system. And we're using it like this-- it's a prescribed direction, and we got PT1, PT2 prescribed to lane. And then CT1, CT2 is counter to lane and so on.

So we are having that rule. And for the pavement type, we just name it four characters or five characters. So let's say this one is pavement type TML, and then for the layer number, we're just using it from bottom all the way to the top. So this is layer one, layer two until you've got layer top.

So this is how it looks like when we used that one. And then [INAUDIBLE]-- the initial part is easy to paste them, but when you start to copy-paste or edit, that makes it hard. So I'll pass it to Andrew to explain how we customize that one.

ANDREW MILFORD: OK. Thanks, Jowenn. Can we switch? So yes, as you can see, what we're finding in Australia is we're finding a lot more emphasis on BIM. And the owners are now requiring much more detail in our models than ever before. They're requiring unique shape codes for pretty much every single layer of pavement on a project.

So you can see here that the shape code itself down here is actually becoming rather essential. So what we're trying to do now is we're going to take these four specific key elements in shape codes, and we're going to actually start to rip out and extract and rearrange things to actually create unique asset codes.

And we're going to do this through our solids and our corridor solid exports. So I'm going to go live now, which is always fun. [INAUDIBLE]. So I'm in Civil 3D now and you can see here I have my-- we have the assembly name in place now. I've already gone ahead, and in this case, modeled up some-- actually, I know we got little bit of extra time, so I'll just run through the process a bit more.

So in this case, you can see I have-- [? want ?] that open-- I have all of my shape codes typed in. Now this is-- you can say here we have prescribe through one-- PT1-- in our second field. We have TML1 which is actually our pavement type and our unique layer numbers on each one. When we come to the actual property set allocations, this will make a lot more sense.

But what I want to do at the moment, if I swap this-- if I take these two lines and I mirror them to the other side-- actually, I'll take all three and I'm going to just mirror these around the baseline. OK, I now have to go through and type in-- instead of PT1, I need to type in CT1 for every single shape code. It was just way too laborious-- there's gotta be a quicker way to do it.

So we developed a small tool-- and I just-- again, I'm just going to load it through NETLOAD, and this is probably going to find its way into the 2020 Country Kit. It's called "subassembly parameter rename." Now this one was only built about a couple of months ago, and it's just accessed by subparam rename.

And essentially, this is just a really small, simple tool that's going to make life a lot easier. I just select all of these elements here, and it says what am I searching for? I'm looking for maybe a shape code. This is basically just a text find and replace inside of your subassembly, so you can just rename them all en masse.

So I'm looking for a minus PT-- I'm going to replace that with minus CT. I click Apply, and it says it's changed 16 parameters in two subassemblies. And to verify that, you can see now my second field has gone from PT1 to CT1, and it's done it for all pavement layers at once.

So that's pretty neat. And then the customer says to me-- or the client says, or the payment engineer says OK, this is not a TML1 pavement anymore in field three, it's going to be a TML2 or a TML3 depending on the pavement type. So again, subparam rename. I'm going to select basically all of them and anything that has TML1, I simply come in and replace with TML2.

So there we are. We just changed 48 parameters in a few seconds. So doing that by hand might take a little bit of time. So we're just trying to look at these little tools just to make life-- day to day modeling life easier and quicker. And so let me just check that worked-- so it's all good.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ANDREW MILFORD: .NET-- yep, I'm using properties-- just Civil 3D API. So I'm just going to jump back to the presentation. So now we're just going to move into the next part of the presentation where we're actually going to look at how we can automate and speed up the process of asset tagging. Is there anyone in the room that is currently using property sets inside of Civil 3D? OK, great.

Let's just run through some of the-- let's just run through some tips and tricks, and we're going to run through some of the processes to manage them more efficiently. So the first step when you're creating a model for export to, say Navisworks, or for a client export, is we need to extract our corridor solids.

We're going to look at setting up our output so that we have the output name. We're going to actually export the codes. So that's why before, we set everything inside the shape codes because we're going to use that shape code to drive all of our outputs.

And lastly, we're going to actually export-- the method we're finding is working well in Australia is to actually deref the corridor into a completely new drawing. And actually, when we extract the solids, we're inserting into the same drawing and maintaining a dynamic link. That's probably the key point to take away.

So you can see here there are three different ways you can import solids-- you can generate your corridor solids. You can insert into the current drawing. And as you can see there, some of the advantages-- it has a dynamic link so when your model updates, your solids will update accordingly. It overwrites existing solid so there's no duplication. Most importantly, it maintains the shape code and that's the critical part.

When you add it to an existing drawing, if that existing drawing has solids in it, it doesn't delete the old ones-- it just overrides and creates a whole new set for you. So again, it's going to come down to personal preference and the way you like to work. But again, the shape code is populated and maintained.

And the third option, adding it to a new drawing-- again, no dynamic link. We're going to stick with option one in this case-- we're going to maintain it and make sure that when the model updates, our solids will update as well. So when we extract the corridor solids, by default, Civil 3D now provides us three property sets by default.

You get the corridor model information, we get corridor shape information which contains all of our shape code information, the region start station and end station, as well as a few other items, like the side, the assembly. It also gives us an automatic volume which is quite handy when you're doing volume calculations. And as well as providing a user defined, so we can add our own property sets.

So we're really not going to be focusing on the user defined in this specific part-- we're going to build out some of our own. This is an example from the RMS RAM specifications in Sydney, New South Wales. Now you can see the highlighted attribute over here on the right. This is what's called a long attribute, and this is built up-- this has to be unique for every single component in the project.

And you can here it's actually built up of a family name, a road location code, which is going to be a manual property or a static property in that sense. We need a chainage value at the start, we need an attribute ID, we need a category name, and we need a land number. Now that's an awful lot of information to be adding. So the client is very specific about how they want this data presented and formatted so it can go into their operations and maintenance systems.

And this is just a quick example of some of the challenges that the engineers and designers are facing. Now this is just a very small sample. This document here is approximately 180 pages long of specifications, and I believe there's something around 35,000 unique asset tags that need to be added to our objects on a project.

This is just a small sample of them and we're just going to-- we just need to find a smarter way to be able to add that data to our models. I don't want to be sitting there on a 10 kilometer stretch of road and have to select every single piece of solid and attach information to it depending on what type it is. And so we're going to run through what I like to call the five stages of property sets.

We're going to start with the two simple first, both manual and automatic. Manual simply is you specify a property set and you add data manually. Automatic-- a little bit easier, actually-- it'll extract information from the object itself that you can then use downstream.

Then we're going to go a little bit more deeper into formulas. There's some really good VB scripting websites out there, and we're going to use formulas to actually start to pull apart our data and rearrange it in a much more readable format. Then we can go formula and COM API.

There are certain instances where you may want to tag Civil 3D objects, which you can't traditionally do through formulas. So we're just going to use a little bit of COM Interop automation through VB scripting to attach asset data to maybe a surface-- maybe push out the square meter areas or the number of triangles. Just another way to extract more information from the model.

And lastly, we need a smarter way to add information to all of the solids at once. So we're going to use a little bit of .NET automation with another tool that we've developed just to apply everything at once. So when you jump into property sets, there's two things to make note of. When you-- there's a simple mode and a detailed mode.

Now not too many people are aware of the detailed mode within Civil 3D, but if you access the Property Set Manager through the Manage tab on the ribbon-- you select define property sets-- you get this particular output. Now it's good, it's functional, it gives you what you need. However, there is a few key elements missing, and I'm talking more about data consistency.

If you type in the word "style manager" on the command line, for instance, the areas in red you see up there, you actually get a little bit more functionality, a little bit more bang for your buck. We're actually getting the options up here to add property data formats. So I can take a specific piece of code and actually format it to the client specifications.

And we can also add list definitions. So when we create manual property sets-- I guess some of the key features I sort of want to emphasize aside from just adding manual data, we do have the option to create lists. Which in the case of some of our clients in Australia, we need to actually make sure that they enter the right values. So we basically set up a list of values that the user can choose from when they're populating their data, and they can't go outside of that specific range of values unless we told them to.

And we can also apply formatting. So you can see in this case, the number that's sitting down here has seven padding digits. So instead of just typing in the number 120, it's going to put the four 0's in front of it. So it's just formatting the data ready for pushing into operations and maintenance systems.

Automatic property sets-- these are probably the easiest of all. All we do is when we apply the data to a specific element or that property set, we can actually apply automatic information. So think about if we're applying discrete elements in our model such as blocks, such as lighting, signposting. Anything that needs quantification or tagging, we can automatically pick out it's xy location, and it'll automatically throw it straight into the property set itself.

We can add things like the rotation. If we're doing it to a 3D solid, we can actually assign its volume which is an automatic property. Most importantly, though, we can assign the handle to it. Now when we assign the handle, that enables us to leverage the COM API to actually extract more information from a Civil 3D object.

And then we move into formulas. Formulas are probably where we're going to spend most of our time for the remainder of the session. But these are-- it uses VB scripting. It's really quite a simple language to learn, and a little bit of trial and error. It took me a little while just to get my head around some of the terminology, but it really enables us to take bits of data that come from our native Civil 3D corridor, and we can manipulate the text to pretty much whatever we like.

And the bonus is we can even go and rip out data from external files and bring it in, and I'll show an example of that very shortly. As a matter of fact, I'm going to show it now. So I'm just going to hide the presenter view.