Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
FiGuRE 1.6
The ribbon displays the contextual Alignment: Main Road A tab
because an alignment has been selected in the drawing (the name of the tab you see
may be slightly different depending on which alignment you selected).
Working with the toolspace
▶
Think of the Toolspace as the Civil 3D “command center” where all Civil 3D
data and settings are laid out in a nice, orderly arrangement. It has several main
functions that are represented by the different tabs it can contain. Altogether,
the Toolspace can house four tabs: Prospector, Settings, Survey, and Toolbox.
You can open the
Toolspace by clicking
the Toolspace icon
on the Home tab
of the ribbon.
Prospector tab
Prospector is arguably the most important part of the Civil 3D user interface.
As you build your design,
Prospector
arranges the different components of your
design in a tree structure (see Figure 1.7). Why a tree structure and not just a
list of items? Later in this topic, you'll study how Civil 3D creates relationships
between different parts of your design. In some ways, this tree structure helps
represent some of those relationships as a hierarchy. Another, more practical
reason for a tree structure is that it's an efficient way to show a long list of items
in a relatively small area—the branches of the tree can be collapsed to make
room to expand other branches.
Another way to think about Prospector is that it arranges your design categori-
cally rather than spatially. In other words, in your drawing area, you might see
road centerlines crossing through parcels, which cross through contours, which
cross through survey points. Everything is in the right place spatially, but from an
organizational standpoint, it's kind of a mess. Prospector sorts out this mess and
puts all the points in one place, all the parcels in one place, and so on. Prospector
also knows exactly where those objects are in the drawing. You can right-click an
object in Prospector and use the Select command or Zoom To command to locate
that object within the drawing.
Certification
Objective
