From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2020 Essential Training

Application menu - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Civil 3D 2020 Essential Training

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Application menu

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- [Instructor] Autodesk Civil 3D is often referred to as a vertical application. The reason for that is because Autodesk Civil 3D is actually built on top of (vertical) AutoCAD Map. AutoCAD Map is also a vertical product. It's part of the tools that is built on top of AutoCAD. So there are vertical tools built within each application. Civil 3D not only has all the capabilities of the Civil 3D software, but all of the capabilities of AutoCAD Map, which also has all of the capabilities of AutoCAD. So we're also going to find a lot of similarities to the user interface of all three applications: AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map, and Autodesk Civil 3D. For example, all of them have this Startup tab. Now, if you have a template setup, when you start Autodesk Civil 3D, it will show a new drawing, but you'll always have that Start file tab also on the left. The Start tab allows us to open files, create a new drawing from templates. You can even hit the down arrow and select from your template available. It will show you recent documents that you've had open, including previews. But what's also often overlooked, is there's a learn button here. This learn button shows you some videos of getting started with Civil 3D. And so not only do you have this LinkedIn course, but you also have some videos that Autodesk has provided to you. Some learning tips along the way. So don't overlook the Startup tab. As we get in, what we want to focus in on, is we're going to walk through the user interface from the top left, and kind of walk around clockwise. So the first is the big "A" up at the top. This is the application menu. Microsoft products also have an application menu, you could say. They have that home ribbon tab there. This is the application menu for Autodesk Civil 3D. Since no drawing is open, you see it's pretty simple. It's application-specific. It's not drawing-specific in any way. You can create a new drawing, you can open up a drawing, or you can even do drawing compare: compare two unique drawings. But if I go to an open drawing, such as the 02_01 Civil 3D interface, I had it open already just to show you what's available in the application menu here, and I click on the big "A" again. Notice you have quite a few more options. Not only the options that are application-specific, not drawing-specific, but also options that are drawing-specific: Save this drawing, export this drawing. One of the tools that is often overlooked is the ability to publish a drawing using eTransmit. eTransmit allows us to be able to take a Civil 3D drawing and depending on how it's linked, as well as whether they have Civil 3D or not, share it with somebody else. So we're going to talk a little bit about data referencing and linking files together later on in this course, but whether they're linked or not, it's going to find all of the links, all the references. It's going to take a Civil 3D drawing which has unique custom objects, we talked about object modeling already, and explode them, make them easier to share with those who don't have Civil 3D. It will then take all of that and Zip it up and put it in a Zip file for you. All of that's connected to the Transmittal setup. So if I click on Transmittal Setup and choose Modify, you have all of the options. Do you want it to Zip for you? Do you want to keep the existing drawing file format? So in other words, keep them as Civil 3D, or do you want to go ahead and explode those custom objects so that people who don't have Civil 3D can work with them? Do you want to keep all of the links? Do you want to be prompted? Quite a few different options here in the Transmittal Setup. So don't overlook many other cool tools that are in the application menu, the big "A" on the far left. Let's continue our walk around of the user interface.

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