[David Cutler]

So I listened in to a webcast yesterday called “Civil Chat” as recommended by the folks at Morning Coffee Revu. The format is similar to MCR, but the conversation was definitely not as dynamic as that lead by @mechave and Jason Artley.

I posed a question to the chat (imagine that 😎) about the “quality” of the PDF that the host was working on. In a nutshell he thought it was great – it was his work so rightfully he should. I pressed a bit further asking if layers had been preserved and a few other item. His response blew me away. His “best practice” (my words) is to basically dumb down the PDF so that it is a simple image of his CAD linework. He was very concerned about others plagiarizing his work or a contractor missing something because a layer was turned off.

What does everyone think about his response? Is it unreasonable for a Contractor to expect a “more useful” PDF? Should designers produce PDF’s to protect themselves from liability or so they are most useful for “downstream” use as @Doug McLean as discussed on LinkedIn? Should clients require “useable” PDFs from their designers?

Exchanging emails with Jason Artley after Civil Chat he shared that next weeks topic on MCR is going to be “Project Closeout and Distribution”. I’ve offered a few “seed” topics to him:

1. Locking PDFs and how
   effects the usability down stream
2. Including layers
3. Print quality – how it
   impacts the ability to use features such as dynamic fill
4. Viewports and how they
   impact measurements

I know @Vince has commented in the past about the quality of PDFs that he is receiving. My original post in this thread had my initial thoughts on quality PDFs. What are others seeing? What do you look for in a “quality” PDF?

Rant over, for now… 😎

[David Cutler]

I thought of this discussion today @Jeff.Collins after I joined in a session of “Civil Chat”. As Jason Artley from Morning Coffee Revu put it I got my feathers ruffled over a discussion of how Civil Designers should distribute PDFs. The way I heard it the host was basically saying that ideally, due to liability issues and the potential for people to copy designs, PDFs should be distributed as scanned documents after they are sealed by a PE. This is a polar opposite to what you are suggesting with a full project PDF. I was suggesting that a “quality” PDF would have layers, bookmarks, labeled pages, etc. The response, again, as I heard it, was that basically Civil 3D should be used to prepare what amounts to a crayon sketch for distribution!

So, how does your company prepare documents for distribution?

[David Cutler]

An update!

We have been provided updated drawings for this project. In addition to overlaying pages to identify differences I copy the previous takeoff markups and apply them to the new drawings, modifying them as required to match the new curb lines, sidewalk limits, etc. I started having the same problem again with not being able to adjust points. What I did this time is choose “yes” when I was prompted to remove the “Untitled” viewports when I opened the new file. That seems to have cleared up most (but not all?) of the issues…

[David Cutler]

So, @Doug McLean , does this relate to your LinkedIn post from the other day about considering downstream work flows?

😎

[David Cutler]

That’s great progress @Doug McLean !

I’m still trying to get my manager to make time for him to see the custom tools I’ve built and how I export markups/import them into B2W!

Keep on plowing forward!

[David Cutler]

Awesome collaboration @isaac-harned and @lizlarsen ! Glad that you were able to help each other figure this out and give us a bit of a look “behind the code”. 🙂

[David Cutler]

Great idea @Doug McLean !

I’ve done something similar with “Offset Tools”. I’ve found that I use a 5 ft offset quite often so I use a 5 ft diameter circle to make this offset. Having this tool in my “Offset Tools” toolbox is a real timesaver

[David Cutler]

Most of our “Legacy” takeoff tools are Perimeter Measurements. I’m not sure why as they were setup by my predecessor. As I’m updating tools I’m converting them to Polylengths. One of the reasons I prefer the Polylengths is the ability to use a “Rise/Drop” value – typically we end our service connections 5 foot outside of the houseline. Using a “-5” value in the Rise/Drop allows me to extend the markup all the way to the wall rather than pulling the markup to the line, looking at the measurement and then dragging it back 5 ft. Another bonus of this setup is when the client changes their mind and wants us to go 5 foot inside the building I can select all of the service measurements at once change my Rise/Drop to +5 to get an updated quantity!

One note is that for some reason Revu will not allow you to type in a negative value into the Rise/Drop box. The work around is to type “-5” in another spot – say in a text box for example – and then copy/paste it into the Rise/Drop box.

[David Cutler]

I understand completely @Vince

You could try it with a small set of drawings – or piece of a larger set of drawings. Might have to flatten the markups so that they stick.

[David Cutler]

I like @Doug McLean ‘s idea about applying your own header/footer @Vince . You might even be able to use “Bates Numbering” to sequentially number them….

[David Cutler]

Thank you for the update on one of the original questions @isaac-harned

Always interesting when you can stump the support folks! At the same time, no matter how much training they have I’m sure customers like us find ways to bend and break the software that their developers never imagined. 🙂

Now that you’ve posted this perhaps the solution will pop up in some tech support person’s internet search…

Nice job figuring the auto size issue out. Thank you for sharing the solution with us all.

[David Cutler]

You did amazing @lizlarsen especially for your first video!🙂

[David Cutler]

“Fashionably Late” @lizlarsen , “Fashionably Late”. We will let you by this time since you’ve been in the weeds on the JavaScript challenge of the week. 😎

Great tip on the “Import” vs “Add” options for the tool sets.

[David Cutler]

Great video @lizlarsen ! This Java Script stuff is all Greek to me, but I think I might understand a word or two of it after watching your video. The tools that you showed for checking code and such look very useful.

You are also either an amazing editor or just really good at getting everything recorded in 1 take!

[David Cutler]

Great to hear that you are making progress @isaac-harned . If anyone can help you with these types of functions it’s @lizlarsen !

Looking forward to seeing where you take this.

Dave