Assuming you have already played with Dynamo for Civil 3D, (which was introduced in Civil 3D 2020) you may have already seen its potential in eliminating repetitive tasks and ease of use. You may also have noticed that as of the 2022 release, it still has some large holes with respect to available functionality especially around AEC objects. Below is an explanation on how to expand that functionality and fill many of those holes by including a package called the Civil3DToolkit.
Looking at the Dynamo library from within Dynamo, if we expand CivilObjects we can see that we have access only to the following AEC objects:
- Alignment (and profiles tied to these alignments)
- CivilObject (a catch-all for access to things like object name and description)
- CogoPoints
- Corridors
- Surfaces
Nowhere is there mention of Pipe Networks, Profile View, Sections, etc.
Where to Find and Install Toolkits
This is where “packages” come into play. Packages are additional code objects in Dynamo that can be installed to add additional functionality and AutoCAD object interoperability.
Within Dynamo, you should see a header on the menu bar at the very top called Packages. Click on this header and select Search for a Package
To make this work you need to have an internet connection so that published packages can be accessed. It should be noted that installing packages does not come without some risk of including malicious code. The package that we will be discussing is mature and published directly from Autodesk.
Within the package search field, type “Civil3DToolkit” as all one word. The top result should be a package with thousand of downloads. As of the time of this blog, the current version is 1.1.28. Please note that certain packages may only work with certain versions of Civil 3D and it will be up you to research which version is most appropriate for your current version. Select the version that you want and click “Install”.
Once you finish the installation, you will see a new heading at the bottom of the Library search window called Add-ons. Expand Add-ons and Civil3DToolkit to see a whole host of additional options for Dynamo scripting.
Using these additional tools, I can now do things like access my current drawing’s Pipe Network collection and either get or set properties of that pipe network that I could not previously access.
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