One of my favorite new commands included with Autodesk Civil 3D is the Drawing Compare tool. Imagine this scenario... you have been working for days on a site layout. Once complete, the file is sent off to the powers to be for review and comment. A week or two later, the file comes back with a few "modifications". What is the best way to figure out what changed? What was moved? Added? Deleted? For simple drawings, this is a relatively easy thing to spot, but this is much more difficult in busier drawings. Consider the following two drawings:
Original:
Versus the modified version:
As you can tell, some changes are obvious, but others are more subtle. Enter the Drawing Compare tool! You might say that we already have this and you would be correct. Design Review has a comparison capability, but the files have to be in DWF format. This can be cumbersome at times if you don't have the DWF's readily available. Drawing Compare can be found on the COLLABORATE ribbon tab and will compare two DWG files and create a third drawing.
Using the tool could not be simpler. Invoke the command from the ribbon and select the two drawings to be compared:
Select the COMPARE button and the routine will combine the two files and highlight (by color and revision cloud) elements common to both drawings and unique to each one.
That's all there is to it! No more panning and zooming around hoping to identify all of the modifications.
The next time you need to compare two drawings, keep this tool in mind. There are a few options to include/exclude text and hatch patterns as well as some visibility controls. Play around with it and I believe you will find it as useful as I have.
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