CAD Terminal
Customise design and survey DWG elements according to your needs, and see their properties as a summary directly in the drawing. Identify a structure once and CAD Terminal remembers it, ready to track, search and export.
General
- Platform
- Civil 3D
01Drawingexample-road.dwg
15 objects0 structures15 to identify
Command: OPEN example-road.dwg
15 objects on layers 0, C-TOPO and SURVEY. None of them is a structure yet.
02Properties
Pick any object in the drawing. A grey one is still just geometry: tell CAD Terminal what it is, and it becomes a structure.
03Project browser
Not identified15
04Export0 of 0 structures
| ID | Structure | Package | Zone | Chainage | Status | Quantity |
|---|
Nothing to export yet: identify a few objects in the drawing first.
The example drawing is synthetic and everything runs in your browser. In the demonstration, “Reopen drawing” stands in for closing and opening the DWG: the structures come back with it.
The idea
A drawing knows a lot about geometry and almost nothing about the project.
To AutoCAD, a kerb is a line on layer 0. A manhole is a dot. The new wearing course and the old pavement that has to be broken out are both just TIN surfaces, and an excavation is a cloud of points with their levels typed next to them as text. Everyone on the project knows what those objects are. The drawing doesn't, so every time you need a quantity, a list or a report, you work it out again by hand.
CAD Terminal fixes that at the source. You pick an object on the drawing and tell it what it is. That line becomes Kerb K-02, in Zone B, from chainage 0+180 to 0+400, in progress. The TIN becomes an asphalt surface or a demolition surface. The survey points and their levels become an excavation surface, directly on the drawing.
It works on design drawings and survey drawings alike, and you set it up around your project: the structures you track, the information you attach to them, the way you group and export them.
You do it once. CAD Terminal keeps it with the drawing, so next week the kerb is still K-02, with everything you told it.
What you can do with it
- Pick any drawing element: a line, a dot, a TIN surface, a set of points with levels
- Identify it as a project structure: kerb, pipe, manhole, street light, asphalt, demolition or excavation surface
- Assign its project information: zone, chainage, status and anything else the project tracks
- See its properties as a summary directly in the drawing, right where it is
- Find it again with the built-in browser, grouped by type, zone or status
- Export only what you need, with its project information attached
- Customise all of it for your own design and survey drawings
Why it helps
- Identify once, use it everywhere. The drawing remembers what each object is, so nobody has to work it out again for the next report.
- Surfaces that mean something. A TIN is no longer just a TIN: it is the asphalt you are laying or the pavement you are breaking out, and it is counted that way.
- Exports that answer the question. Instead of a list of handles and layers, you get "storm drainage in Zone A that is still in progress", with IDs, chainages and quantities.
- Your drawings, your way. Design or survey, every project tracks different things. CAD Terminal is customised around what yours needs, not the other way round.
- The answer is on the drawing. Point at a structure and its summary is right there: ID, type, zone, status and quantity, without opening a table.
- Easy to find your way around. The browser takes you straight to MH-02 on a large drawing, instead of you hunting for it.
About the demonstration
The demonstration above runs entirely in your browser, on a synthetic example drawing of a simplified road. Pick a grey object to identify it, change its status or zone in Properties, find structures with the browser or the command line (type HELP), and compare the CAD Terminal export with a plain CAD export of the same drawing. "Reopen drawing" stands in for closing and opening the DWG.