Expert: Bob - 3/27/2007

Question
Hi Bob,

I am a Civil Engineer, with no Autocad training. I designed for a few years in Geopak with Microstation. Now I am designing in Autocad, and have been for 1.5 years. We are using Land Desktop 2004. My question if fairly simply, but I dont know if you have experience in this area or not. Here it goes.

I often make a profile for a roadway. I have to edit it several times to get it just the way I want it. Even when I erase the old one, it seems there are three or four profiles on top of one another. The same thing happens with cross sections. I plot my cross sections, then make some changes in my alignment or profile and when I do my cross sections again, I replot them. Using the edit feature, when I go to a requested station, it takes me to that station, on a previous set of cross sections, that had been deleted. There must be some files somewhere that need to be erased, but I dont know where to look for them. Does any of this make any sense?

Answer
Hi -- well, I don't always have the answers, but I can usually start someone on a good path, I hope.
1-- yes, I never used LDT, but I surmise, since the 2004 release of ADT (which I use) was prior to the Edit In Place feature, that you break down the object when you edit it, thus you get leftovers showing up. Make any sense?  THERE MAY BE A TURTORIAL ON YOUR DISK THAT HELPS, LOOK FOR IT.

2-- for a real answer, go to the Autodesk Discussion for the product, search to see if previous posts give you good info, and ask your question. ___http://discussion.autodesk.com/forum.jspa?forumID=83___

3. the 2004 releases of the vertical products were the point where they STARTED to make real progress. If you were using it as plain AutoCAD only, I could see with staying on a release that now has been superceded 4 times. Frankly, judging by my experience with ADT (now AutoCAD Architectural), I think anyone using a 2004 product fully, for production work, is wasting a lot of time, since maybe half the development of the products has taken place since then -- particularly in ease of use and editing.

4-- I always suggest a good book, never self-learning. I hope you have availed yourself of one, or will, upon upgrading.

GOOD LUCK

BOB