And a little (literally) control is what we are going to look at today. When you open up AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012, you will see this group of controls in the upper left corner of your model space viewport.
These are the
Viewport – Currently shown as [ – ], or single viewport selected.
View – Currently shown as [Top], or plan view.
Visual Style – Currently shown as [2D Wireframe], a non shaded view style.
Mouse over them and they’ll change colour and you’ll get a tooltip explaining their function. Here’s the Viewport control tooltip.
You can turn them on and off through the 3D Modeling tab of the Options Dialog.
The Viewport control lets you set up a viewport configuration. Using the Configure option in the Viewport Configuration List, you can create and restore named viewport configurations. The Restore Viewport command will restore the last viewport configuration you used. Each Model space viewport will show the control set, as will an active viewport in Paper space. The Viewport control will change to [ + ] when there are multiple viewports.
Clicking on the control will show you this pop-up menu.
You can click on the Maximize Viewport command to return to a single viewport configuration. Double clicking the control will also reset the viewports to a single viewport configuration. As you can see, you can control the View Cube, Steering Wheels and Navigation Bar from this menu.
The View control lets you set the perspective view for the viewport. All the old favourites are here, as well as the View Manager command.
When you select a view, the control text changes to reflect the view name.
The Visual Style control lets you control lets you control the drawing style in each viewport.
The text of the control will reflect the style you’ve chosen. You can access the Visual Styles Manager palette through this control, so you have quick access when working with all of your visual styles.
Well, that’s about it for this post. As you can see, a little control can go a long way.
But while we’re at it here are a few more simple, but effective controls.
When ships enter the Panama Canal, there are two sets of locks they can use. Which set they are sent to is not done through radio communication, but by using this simple mechanical control.
That’s right. The canal authorities just move the arrow to point to which set of locks a ship will use.
Once the ship enters the canal, it will proceed under its own power. By this time, it has taken on a pilot, who will stay with the ship through the entire canal transit. The canal has locks at either end and connected waterways in between. When in the locks, the ships need to be secured so that they do not hit the sides of the locks while passing through them. With the Panamax class of ships (the largest able to pass through the locks), this clearance is less than 0.3m (one foot) on either side of the ship. Lines are thrown to the handlers, who will attach them to locomotives that travel alongside the ship as it passes through the locks. Another simple control is in place to get the lines from the ship to the canal workers at the locomotives.
The ship’s crew just throw a light line to these guys in the rowboat and they row over to the lock workers who attach it to a winch and haul it and the heavier ship’s line attached to it over to the locomotive.
And here’s one of the locomotives.
These locomotives travel on a cogged rail line which allows them to climb and return back down the locks while following along with the ship, keeping the tension on the lines to hold the ship in the center of the lock. Remember, the ship is proceeding under its own power and can weigh in excess of 85,000 metric tons - several orders of magnitude more than these locomotives. There are usually four or six attached to a ship to keep it centered. It’s quite a ballet!
Sometimes simple is all you need! Thanks for your time. We’ll see you again soon!