Hacking the Nvidia performance driver (powerdraft) into Civil 3D

Several months ago, Nvidia released a performance driver for AutoCAD 2009. Unfortunately, using the included installer, this driver can only be installed on AutoCAD. When you only have Civil 3D installed, you get an error which reads, "Setup was unable to find an installed version of AutoCAD 2009."



I was able to hack the driver in to my Civil 3D 2009 installation on an XP (32) system by doing the following:

1. Download Powerdraft2009_XP_Vista_32_64.exe from nvidia's website.


2. Run the install program and let it error out as noted above.


3. At this point the install program has actually unpacked the archive to a directory called C:\04-28-2008-0710\ navigate to C:\04-28-2008-0710\Disk1\win32 and copy all of the files from that location to C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009\Drv


4. Finally, back in Civil 3D, run 3DCONFIG and select the new Nvidia specific driver for either Direct3D or OpenGL.
   

Unfortunately, since I don't have a supported video card on my notebook, I haven't had the opportunity to test this workaround with Civil 3D 2009 (a 32 bit application) on Vista x64.

RegappID cleanup utility

It just came to my attention that Autodesk quietly released their own RegApp cleaner a couple of months ago. This still doesn't do anything to prevent Registered Application IDs from propagating through xrefs and inserts so unless you clean everything that your file might come into contact with, you can count on getting infected with AppIDs over and over again. Still, along with the -purge R option that was reintroduced in 2005 or 2006 (after a very long absense), it's a step in the right direction.

Autodesk's CleanupRegApp tool isn't any more or less effective than cadthinking's PurgeIDs, and in fact, its interface is lacking compared to PurgeIDs. Still, it's nice to know that this is an Autodesk developed (and, presumably, Autodesk supported) tool to address a problem that has been swept under the rug for far too long.

Importing color images from Google Earth into Civil 3D

Ever since Civil 3D added the ability to import georeferenced imagery from Google Earth, I regularly get comments from users who would prefer the image to appear in color. While it doesn't appear to be a feature, with a little hacking this is actually very easy to do.

First, open your Civil 3D drawing file and make sure to set the coordinate system properly.

Then open Google Earth and navigate to the area that you'd like to import. Once you've centered on your project area, go back to Civil 3D and go to File -> Import -> Google Earth Image. When prompted, specify coordinate system for the image location. At this point, the georeferenced image is dropped in at the appropriate northing and easting coordinates. Unfortunately, it is in black and white.

To create a color image file, go back to Google Earth, and being careful not to reorient the display, hit CTRL-ALT-S to save the image. Save this jpg to your relevant project location.

Back in Civil 3D, open the xref palette and find the Google Earth image. Hit the "found at" button to respecify the image file location.

Point the image reference to the color jpg by selecting the file that you saved earlier. Finally, perform a regen and the color image will appear in the proper location.