Section outline
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This MOODLE course is focused on the use of AutoCAD software for common tasks in landscape engineering.
It consists of texts and necessary files for training of the procedures and tasks that are covered in course.
This course is primarily prepared for the students of the subject "CAD design in landscape engineering", but it is useful also for all the users that use this software in practical applications especially in landscape engineering and various branches of building industry.
This course was created at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra with the financial support of KEGA grant project "007SPU-4/2016 CAD pre Krajinné Inžinierstvo" that was performed in the cooperation with the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica
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AutoCAD software requires for proper work the correct settings and use of units. Modification of units settings allows us to set the units of length, angle and lightning and also units for insertion scale.
Tasks in landscape engineering in Slovakia require the correct use of national coordinate system S-JTSK as the project documentation or its parts may require its laying out in the field or in vice versa - use of geodetical survey and its implementation to the project
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Using several drawings as well as using background documents of other formats (raster graphics, background documents in *.dgn format and other) in the existing design can be solved by using external references from various types of files (DWG, DWF, raster graphics, PDF, clouds of points, DGN).
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The blocks in the AutoCAD program are created by grouping multiple entities to facilitate the work with repeating objects in the used drawing. The block is defined by these objects and is inserted as required, multiple times in the drawing. The advantage is especially the possibility to change all the blocks inserted in the drawing by changing the block definition - this change is then reflected in each copy of this block in the drawing.
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The layers are used to better organize the drawing by allowing the individual objects to fit into the appropriate layer, thus changing the parameters of these objects using the changes made in the appropriate layers.
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Basics of tables in AutoCAD. There is the process of custom table style creation described and also the possibilities of the table creation and modification and use of equations and formulas
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Field (”Field”) is a text or numeric data that changes almost automatically depending on the parameter that was assigned to it. So we can, for example, insert text data about the date or time of the last save of the drawing, the current date, the name of the computer from which the last change of the drawing was made, as well as the parameters, or the properties of the selected object - circle radius, line length, block name, attribute value, and others - into the text (with paragraphs or with only one row). The advantage of using the field compared to the ordinary text data is the option of restoring, or updating the field value after changing the parameter - if the line length changes or if the date and time of the last saving of the drawing is changed, we do not have to manually change and overwrite the data, but the text change will take place depending on the program setting. By default, the field data is highlighted as the grey background of the text (similar to the formula in the table).
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Depending on the requirements on project documentation, we often encounter the need to use and link data from the CAD environment with data represented by a table entry - whether we are talking about comma separated values (files *.csv) or text files or files for the work in the MS Excel program (*.xls or *.xlsx). This can be the export of data from CAD to a spreadsheet file or vice versa, the import of spreadsheet data into CAD. In the environment of the CAD program, both of these tasks can be solved with using the appropriate tools integrated directly into the program.
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Designing tasks in the area of landscape planning are largely related to the use, or the need for knowledge of the geographic location - whether it is the route of a proposed water pipeline, the demarcation of land borders, the creation of terrain profiles, or the incorporation of the planimetry and topographic data into the project. The expansion of the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is therefore creating more and more options for combining these two systems with the use of advantages, data and tools from both areas. But it is necessary to know that the use of both systems is based on different principles and data structures whose knowledge leads to more efficient and precise processing of designing tasks.
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For the usual needs of the project documentation in the field of landscape planning, in general, we can talk about two basic types of graphical outputs:
- drawings printed on paper,
- digital drawings in the form of raster images or vector graphics.
In both cases, we can use the command “PLOT” which allows for the detailed and accurate setting of the parameters for the printing of the drawings or outputs in the *.pdf format. Another option to create *.pdf files is the export, but it does not provide as many options and settings as PLOT, so we will not work with it in this publication.
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In fact, the work on the particular projects is unique, but routine tasks requiring a repeated work flow are common during the project works - for example, multiple insertions of a block and defining its attributes to different locations with different values of these attributes, importing the geodetically measured data (border of the land, watercourse, etc.) or other sequence of steps. The script is a text file containing the record, or the succession of the tasks and the used values that are performed in the order in which they are written in this file. The script file can be created from the *.txt text file to the *.scr file by renaming or by changing the suffix. The content of the file consists of a text containing commands and entered values as they would be entered in the command line.