In this exercise you’ll set up a folder in which to store objects that are referenced through data shortcuts the data shortcuts folder contains all of the source drawings and data shortcut objects in a project access the project management tools in the prospector but first open up the project management dash one drawing in your tutorials folder this drawing contains an existing ground surface which you can see right here alignments that represent intersecting Road center lines and parcel objects that represent property boundaries in the following exercises you’ll create data shortcuts to the surface and alignments in this drawing and then reference them in a new drawing now while you’re in tool space go ahead to your prospector Tab and click on the master View now right click on the data shortcuts collection
and click set working folder now the working folder is the parent folder where you save project folders for this exercise you will specify a folder on your hard drive as your working folder now in the set working folder dialog box go ahead and navigate to the Civil 3D projects folder now note the file path up at the top which is where you can find this folder click select folder now let’s create a data shortcuts project right click on the data shortcuts collection now select new data shortcuts project folder
now notice the working folder that we’re in right now the one that we selected previously now while you’re in the new data shortcut folder dialog box select use project template go ahead and select this button under the project templates folder now go ahead and go up one directory and select the Civil 3D project templates folder click select folder now specify the following parameters under name type in tutorial
data shortcuts project
use the sample project template now click ok Now using Windows Explorer go ahead and navigate to the Civil 3D projects folder
go ahead and double click on the tutorial data shortcuts project now what you’ll see here is a folder structure that provides separate locations for data shortcuts Source drawings and other data you’ll save project objects in these folders in the next exercise this is a typical structure for an Autodesk civil 3D project folders are provided for many of the document types that are typical of a civil engineering project so that’s how you go about setting up a data shortcut folder in civil 3D in this exercise you’ll create data shortcuts from the objects in a drawing the data shortcuts will be available to reference into other drawings now note that this exercise uses the project management dash one drawing with the modifications you made from the previous exercise let’s first go ahead and save the source drawing with the project first go ahead and click on The Big C Ave as navigate to your soul 3D projects folder tutorial data shortcuts project and then Source drawings go ahead and Save in this directory now note that Source drawings that contain objects that are referenced in other drawings should be saved with the data shortcuts project so let’s begin by creating data shortcuts go up to the manage tab
and go to the data shortcuts panel and then click create data shortcuts
now note that as best practice each one of these objects should reside in a separate drawing to save time in this exercise all the referenced objects are in the current drawing now in the create data shortcuts dialog box go ahead and check the following boxes click surfaces and alignments this action selects the existing surface as you can see right here and both alignments that are currently within the drawing click ok now that the data shortcuts have been created as you can see right here the current drawing is associated with the data shortcuts project the notice that in the Civil 3D title bar the tutorial data shortcuts project is displayed after the drawing name examine the data shortcuts project notice the data shortcuts have been created for the objects you selected in the next exercise you’ll reference these objects in another drawing Now using Windows Explorer go ahead and navigate to the Civil 3D projects folder go into your shortcuts project and you can see if you double click on shortcuts now when you go into the alignments folder you’ll see this folder contains an XML file for each alignment in the source drawing the XML file identifies the path to the drawing that contains the alignment now you’ll notice the same thing going on when we look at our surfaces this is also an XML document now again you’ll see if we double click on the source drawings folder this folder contains the source drawing The Source drawings should always be saved with the data shortcut project in a real project you would save the drawings that contain each object in the subfolders while it’s useful to know that the data shortcut XML files exist you do not work directly with them in a normal data referencing operation management of data references is done in a tool space on the prospector tab so that’s how you go about creating data shortcuts in civil 3D in this exercise you’ll reference several shortcuts in a new drawing this exercise continues from creating data shortcuts so let’s continue now note that before you perform this exercise you must have created data shortcuts as described in the previous exercise go ahead and open the drawing project management Dash 2 in your tutorials folder this drawing is empty but in the following steps you’ll reference the objects for which you created data shortcuts in the previous exercise now in the tool space go into your prospector tab and then go down until you get to the data shortcuts collection now right now we have under surfaces an existing surface go ahead and right click on that surface and click create reference
now in the create surface reference dialog box you’ll notice that you can specify a name description and style and lastly the render material for the surface the parameters that Define the object cannot be modified in the current drawing but you can adjust the object properties for this exercise you’ll accept the existing property settings except for the surface Style go ahead and click on the style
click on the style list and select 5 meter and 25 meter background click ok and then click OK again now if we zoom into this area
the existing surface is now displayed in the drawing using the style you specified you can also see the reference under surfaces within the tool space so now that the data shortcuts have been referenced the current drawing is associated with the data shortcuts project notice that in the Autodesk civil 3D title bar it shows the tutorial data shortcuts project displayed after the drawing name in the tool space on the prospector tab go ahead and expand the project management Dash 2 and expand your surfaces collection now notice that there’s a little icon next to our existing surface this means that this surface is a data shortcut and the data shortcuts collection go ahead and click on alignments click on the center line alignments and you’ll see two streets one for First Street and Second Street for First Street go ahead and select it right click and select create reference in the create alignment reference dialog box go ahead and accept the defaults and click ok
as you can see the alignment is now displayed within the drawing now we’re going to create an object from the referenced objects go ahead over to your home tab and go over to your create design panel click the profile drop down and click create surface profile now from the create profile from surface dialog box you can see that our alignment is selected which is the only alignment that we have in the drawing right now we have our existing surface go ahead and select that click add then click draw in profile view now we’re in the create profile view wizard now we’re currently on the general page go down to the profile view Style select the drop down and select major grids now create the profile view now the program is asking us to select a profile view origin go ahead and zoom out a little bit here and we’re just going to set this profile off to the side now we have a profile view of our reference surface through our referenced alignment the reference surface and Alignment are currently only read-only in our drawing right now and they require little storage space now you can use the referenced object data to create other objects in the current drawing but you cannot change the source objects go ahead and save the current drawing by going to The Big C
Ave as go ahead and navigate to your tutorial data shortcuts project folder double click on production drawings and Save in this folder now like Source drawings the final production drawings that contain references to other objects should be saved with the data shortcuts project next you’ll modify the alignment in the source drawing and then update the current drawing to reflect the changes now currently I have two drawings open right now for project management I have project management 2 and I have project management one but what I’m going to do is currently since I’m in project management 2 I’m going to go down here in my prospector and right click on project management one click switch to now let’s go ahead and select our alignment let’s go to alignments Center Line alignments and let’s Zoom to First Street
let’s go ahead and select it
and now we have all of our grips let’s go ahead and make a slight change to this alignment let’s change this grip and slide it over like so
press escape to get out of the command now go ahead and click save
now we have a little balloon notification here down at the bottom that says that data shortcut definitions may have changed and that we need to synchronize well before we synchronize let’s see what our current alignment looks like
now if we look within our prospector in our tool space palette and we look underneath our alignments collection we’ll see that under Center Line alignments we have a little yellow shield right here with an exclamation point this icon indicates that the reference to the source drawing is out of date go ahead and right click on this alignment and select synchronize now notice that the alignment is updated to reflect the changes that you made in the source drawing now also notice that those changes are reflected in our profile view as well so that’s how you go about referencing data shortcuts in civil 3D
