Building Useable Civil 3D Templates – Part 5: Object Styles

You’ve got the task of building new Civil 3D standards that are going to be the basis for every job your company does moving forward – lucky you! So, where do you start? What’s the right way to handle this? This series of blogs from ZenTek Consultants is going to teach you how to develop your Civil 3D standards.

Part 5: Object Styles

The Object Style, or how Civil 3D items look on screen, is probably the most important tool in developing reliable standards. Luckily, it’s actually a straightforward process, though there are literally hundreds of Object Styles you can create/edit, they’re all relatively similar in form. Once you learn the basic concepts of creating one Style, it’s easy to apply that to all other styles, with a few item-specific variations. The “Surface Style” is the obvious start for creating new styles, since surfaces are the base, we build on for the Civil 3D world. To begin, go to the SETTINGS tab, right-click and select “NEW” to get the Surface Style creation dialog (below).

Almost all the style creation dialogs are similar to this, with a series of tabs across the top for editing the basic information for the particular type of Civil 3D object you’re building a style for. You access them all in the same way as well, via right-click > NEW in the Toolspace Settings tab. You can also expand each section and right-click > EDIT on any existing style to modify it (below).

Information Tab: Here’s where you fill in the basic info like name, description and who created this style. I always suggest using a company prefix to show people which are approved standards for use, i.e. I always start ZenTek styles with ZTK_ like so:

Borders Tab: Here, you set the visibility and default settings for your surface border. You can change it to draw at the elevation of the surface for snap connections or to a flat elevation, like zero (0) for 2D display. You can also use the Tru/False options of the Border Types to show or not show different types of surface borders.

Contours Tab: Here, you can set the size difference between minor/major contours, if contours are smoothed and by what amount, and other contour specific settings to get the display you want when contouring a surface.

Grid Tab: If you want to use the grid functionality for surface displays, here’s where you build the sizes and elevation settings for those grids into your display style. You can also set their display on or off and alter the baseline angle for the grid to follow here.

Points Tab: This controls the display of “surface points” (note this is NOT where you control COGO Points). Items like spot elevations or high/low point marker symbols that are surface dependent are controlled here. You can choose different symbols, set their sizes and if they are drawn at surface elevation or flat for 2D work.

Triangles Tab: Simple elevation control of how the triangles in your TIN are drawn on screen.

Watersheds Tab: Display controls and settings for watershed creation on your surface are controlled here. Each section has a drop-down list with multiple options for controlling display of those particular items.

Analysis Tab: This tab is for controlling display of analysis items like elevation and slope banding. Here’s where you set the number of ranges, if they display 2d/3D and what colors each uses on screen. You can even turn slope arrows on/off and set their sizes in this tab.

Display Tab: This may look like a layer control dialog but it’s not. Though you can change item layers in this dialog, here is where you decide what objects do/do not show on screen for this object style. Note the drop down in the top left corner. Switching this between Plan/Model/Section can let you have the same item displayed differently in differing views on your drawing.

Summary Tab: This tab just gives you an assembled list of your display setting from all the other tabs in a simple tree view for reference. Just hit the (+) sign to expand each one.

The big takeaway from this blog isn’t the details of the surface styles options but the fact that all the other object style dialogs will look and act very similar. Yes, each tab will have slightly different settings based upon the object type you’re editing but they will all have the same “Information” tab and “Summary” tabs, etc. for consistency. Start with creating Surface Styles and once you’re comfortable, you should have no trouble moving on to build whatever other display styles you need.

There you have it! All the steps you need to follow to generate a set of functional Civil 3D standards. Now, the reality is it’s never quite that simple, is it? Even if you’ve followed along with this blog series and have a much better understanding of how everything needs to be put together, you may just not have the time available to do all that work. It’s one thing to understand how to put together Label and Object Styles in Civil 3D, it’s another thing to build the dozens, even hundreds, of each you need for your type of work. It becomes even more time consuming and complex when you start to develop Survey or Mapping workflows that require entire sets of tools we didn’t cover in this series. Not to worry – that’s what ZenTek is here for! We are your technology partner, with decades of experience developing, implementing, even training your staff on the right way to work in Civil 3D and its related workflows.

Ready to put your standards into action?

If you’re ready to streamline your Civil 3D setup, reduce project startup time, and ensure consistency across your team, let’s talk. Schedule a free consultation with the experts at ZenTek to get personalized guidance on building templates that actually work for your workflow. Reach out today and take the next step toward more efficient design processes!