NEWSLETTER - FEBRUARY 10th 2005

COMPANY NEWS

We’ve incorporated a special visit from our programmers in the last round of scheduled client visits. We trust that you have enjoyed meeting the team and that some of your technical questions have been answered.

The programmers conducted the following demonstrations during regional visits:

• New ‘Strings’ functionality in Civil Designer – presented by Alasdair Craig in Johannesburg.
• Sewer functionality in Civil Designer – presented by Johan Swart in Port Elizabeth.
• Roads functionality in Civil Designer – presented by Dawid du Toit in Durban.
• AllyCAD functionality – presented by James Fife in East London.

In addition to this, the Namibian region can look forward to meeting the Support Manager Brett Pureveen later this month where he will address software related queries and also assist in technical problem solving.

PRODUCT NEWS

CREATING A DTM FROM A COORDINATED DRAWING

With Civil Designer 6.3, there are three different ways of performing this function. You may create a DTM from a coordinated drawing by:

• Extracting DXF
• Extracting Text
• Converting a Polyline to DTM

Extracting DXF

This procedure takes any points, lines, polyline structures or text that may be converted to a floating point number in a DXF file and then converts them to Civil Designer readable ASCII. The program prompts you to name and save the ASCII file on your hard drive so that this may be imported and viewed in 3-D format.

Civil Designer reads the lines and polyline structures and then prompts you to indicate whether you prefer these to be processed as feature lines or break lines.

Extracting Text

The ‘extracting text’ routine converts numeric text on any layer or combination of layers in the currently loaded drawing to DTM points. The location of the text items forms the X and Y co-ordinates of the new points while the value of the text string (which must be numeric) forms the elevations of the new points.

Converting a Polyline to DTM

With this procedure you can create DTM points from the vertices of a CAD polyline. The points have a user-assigned surface, height and line. This function may best be used to convert contours on a drawing to a DTM.

These three functions have the advantage of creating a three-dimensional site DTM from a drawing that has XY co-ordinates and Z heights and allow you to remain ahead of the pack with increased functionality. You can switch on the contour display or slope shading. When a design module needs an elevation it simply queries the DTM with minimal effort.

With Civil Designer all your design tasks with be faster and easier and you will be able to do so much more than before!

Watch out for subsequent Tech Tips for more information on creating a DTM from a coordinated drawing.

CIVIL DESIGNER SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT

  SEWER AND STORMWATER TECH TIP

How to add a pump station to a Sewer or Stormwater network.

This tech tip explains how to add a pump station to a Sewer or Stormwater network. The first step is to create the pump file that will be added to the network. (For the purpose of this example a pump station will be added to a sewer network, the same steps are followed for stormwater.)...

View Tech Tip

DO YOU WANT TO SEND IN A REQUEST FOR A TECH TIP?

If there is a specific area in CIVIL DESIGNER that you would like us to provide a Tech Tip on, then please let us know. Send your request to support@knowbase.co.za and indicate the subject heading as "Tech Tip Request".

Note: We will attempt to create Tech Tips for all responses, but this may be a timeous process depending on the amount of requests that we receive. Should you require an immediate response, then please liaise with our Support Centre telephonically or via e-mail.

LATEST UPDATES FROM THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Here are the latest downloads available on the updates page:

• Civil Designer v6.3
  Build 15 (28/01/2005)

• Civil Designer v6.3
  Updated Water Help file (14/05/2004)

• Civil Designer v6.2
  Build 33 (31/05/2004)
   

TRAINING AND VISITS

CIVIL DESIGNER TRAINING CONTACT DETAILS

www.knowbase.co.za