Autodesk Assistant - Standards Checker

Standards creation is the easy part...enforcement can be a real bear. Autodesk Assistant, with Tech Preview turned on, has the ability to check any drawing file against your company standards file and run a drawing standards report that will include recommendations.

Autodesk Assistant is available within Civil 3D 2027 and is an excellent resource for online Autodesk research.

When Tech Preview is turned on, Autodesk Assistant gains some analysis functionality. 

I would like to stress the word assistant.

Autodesk Assistant does not replace you as the intelligent designer/creator. My example today will be a prompt requesting Autodesk Assistant to check the current drawing against a standards file. This tool can quickly compare layers, styles, linetypes, and text objects against your company standard .dwt file in order to generate a report of discrepancies, but it will not change the drawing file. All recommendations should be reviewed before making the changes yourself. 

Lets look at the steps required to run this workflow and the resulting report.

Autodesk Assistant is accessed in the top-right corner of the Civil 3D 2027 interface. 

Type the following sentence into the prompt: Check the current drawing against a standards file.

Read the response generated in the chat box. Autodesk Assistant relies on you to provide a .dwt or .dwg file as a standards file. Copy and paste the url of your company .dwt into the text prompt. 

After you provide the necessary information Autodesk Assistant will fulfill your request to check the current drawing against a standards file and generate a report. The process is lightning fast. 

The finished report can either be exported to a CSV file or copied as a table:

You can also scroll to the bottom of the response to copy it into a Word document. That is what I have done in this example. The screenshots of the copied response are shown below. 

Recommendations must be performed manually.

I will explore the capability of Tech Preview in a subsequent blog post during the month of August so stay tuned for any tips and tricks I learn. 

About the Author

As an Applications Expert, Dana is responsible for supporting, training, and implementation of software for survey and civil engineering professionals. Dana began her career as an AutoCAD and Civil 3D draftsperson in the civil engineering industry. She supported surveyors and engineers by managing CAD templates, assisting with preliminary design, processing field data, and creating construction documents. After a decade in production work, Dana transitioned to a CAD manager, working in both the private and public sectors. She has more than 24 years of experience helping large and small, public and private organizations in the southeastern United States.

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